2/3/19
The Republican chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee on Sunday torched the Trump administration’s plans for a complete withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria, saying the exodus of American soldiers from the region would be “tragic” and “unconscionable.” “ISIS was able to rise from the thoroughly defeated ashes of al-Qaeda in Iraq, and I don’t want to be making the same statement six months from now that we bugged out of Syria unwisely and that ISIS has re-emerged from the defeated ashes of ISIS in Syria,” Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin told host Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday.” “I think it would just be tragic if we bugged out, left the Kurds who, by and large, have done the fighting and have defeated the ISIS caliphate, the territorial caliphate and ISIS, if we just abandoned them to the mercies — and I use that term loosely — of Russia and Iran and, possibly, Turkey,” Johnson said. “It would just be unconscionable.” Johnson was one of 43 Senate Republicans to back a measure by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Thursday that rebuked the president’s Syria policy in a bipartisan vote. “I think Republican senators are sending a very strong signal to the president. We don’t want to see that happen, and I hope he is listening,” Johnson said, warning that “as it relates to pulling out of Syria, there’s a pretty serious split” in terms of foreign policy and military strategy.
Johnson also encouraged the president to heed the objections of former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Brett McGurk, the former top U.S. envoy overseeing the effort to defeat the Islamic State terrorist network. Both officials resigned in December, in part because of the planned troop draw-down. “It’s a very bad sign when Secretary Mattis resigns, Brett McGurk, our envoy there for the defeat of ISIS, also resigns because they simply can't carry out this policy,” Johnson said. “These are people that are intimately knowledgeable of the conditions on the ground, of our allies there, and they simply couldn’t in good conscience stay in office. That’s a pretty bad sign, and I hope the president is listening to those people, as well.”
