Monitoring desk
\nWASHINGTON
\nA senior Republican senator said Sunday he would be meeting with US President Donald Trump to urge him to reconsider his plan to withdraw all US troops from Syria and many from Afghanistan.
\n\u201cIf we leave (Syria) now, the Kurds will get slaughtered,\u201d Lindsey Graham said on ABC\u2019s This Week, referring to the Kurdish troops allied with US forces in Syria.
\n\u201cI\u2019m going to ask the president to do something that President Obama would never do: reconsider.\u201d He did not say when the two would be meeting.
\nGraham, who sits on the Armed Services Committee and has frequently visited US troops in conflict regions, said Trump was \u201cfrustrated\u201d by the limited options available in Syria.
\n\u201cI\u2019m going to talk to him,\u201d Graham said. \u201cThe president is reconsidering how we would do this. He\u2019s frustrated.
\n\u201cI get it. We\u2019re not the policemen of the world here. We\u2019re fighting a war against [Daesh],\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019re not defeated in Syria. I\u2019m asking the president to make sure we have troops there to protect us.\u201d
\nGraham added: \u201cI\u2019m going to ask him to sit down with his generals and reconsider how to do this. Slow it down. Make sure we get it right and [Daesh] never comes back. Don\u2019t turn Syria over to the Iranians.\u201d
\nA Trump announcement?
\nKellyanne Conway, a close Trump advisor, seemed to hint on Sunday that the president might be tweaking his withdrawal plans.
\n\u201cIn Iraq, he had a closed-door meeting and he said watch what happens… Watch what happens because he\u2019s got plans and I won\u2019t get ahead of his announcement, but he did want me to convey that,\u201d she said on \u201cFox News Sunday.\u201d
\n\u201cThis president is cleaning up the mess left by the last administration, which never took the threat of [Daesh] seriously.\u201d
\nTrump\u2019s abrupt decision on Syria stunned regional players, US politicians of both parties and military leaders, who expressed surprise that such a major decision would be announced after apparently so little advance consultation, against the advice of his national security advisors \u2014 and on Twitter.<\/p>\n
US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis resigned following the announcement, which came on the same day that US officials said Trump was also planning a significant drawdown in Afghanistan, with some reports suggesting as many as half of the 14,000 troops could leave.<\/p>\n
Graham warned at the time that a reduction now of US forces in war-torn Afghanistan risked \u201cpaving the way toward a second 9\/11\u201d.<\/p>\n
A prominent critic of the move was retired US army general Stanley McChrystal, the former commander of US and international forces in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n
On Sunday, he told ABC the dual drawdowns could seriously weaken US influence in the region.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a tumultuous regime or region (in Syria) that now has a Russian presence which had been out for about 30 years… and now Russia is back. They\u2019re back in an influential way,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIran has increased influence across the region now. If you pull American influence out, you\u2019re likely to have greater instability, and of course, it will be much more difficult for the United States to try to push events in any direction.\u201d<\/p>\n
Similarly, he said, Trump\u2019s planned drawdown in Afghanistan could seriously undercut American leverage there.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust when we were starting to sit down with the Taliban, just as we were starting to begin negotiations, he basically traded away the biggest leverage point we have… Their incentives to try to cut a deal dropped dramatically,\u201d McChrystal added.<\/p>\n
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Monitoring desk WASHINGTON A senior Republican senator said Sunday he would be meeting with US President Donald Trump to urge him to reconsider his plan to withdraw all US troops from Syria and many from Afghanistan. \u201cIf we leave (Syria) now, the Kurds will get slaughtered,\u201d Lindsey Graham said on ABC\u2019s This Week, referring to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-world"],"yoast_head":"\n