President Donald Trump insisted Thursday morning that the withdrawal from Syria would keep the U.S. from becoming mired in another long-term conflict in the Middle East. | Mark Wilson/Getty Images Foreign Policy Trump defends surprise Syria withdrawal despite withering GOP criticism

President Donald Trump on Thursday mounted a vigorous defense of his abrupt decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria amid a rising torrent of bipartisan criticism, arguing in a series of tweets that the move should come as “no surprise."

The president also backed away from earlier claims that the Islamic State had been defeated in Syria, warning that the U.S. risked becoming the "policeman of the Middle East."


“Getting out of Syria was no surprise. I’ve been campaigning on it for years, and six months ago, when I very publicly wanted to do it, I agreed to stay longer,” Trump wrote in one tweet. “Russia, Iran, Syria & others are the local enemy of ISIS. We were doing there [sic] work. Time to come home & rebuild. #MAGA.”

The president's assertion that battling Islamic State militants should be the responsibility of nations in that region marked a shift from his rhetoric a day earlier, when Trump suggested that U.S. forces had "defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency.”

The sudden announcement that the U.S. would withdraw its forces in Syria sent allies scrambling and prompted some in the U.S. to wonder whether the move was an attempt to divert attention from Trump’s backing down from threats to shut down parts of the federal government over funding for his long-promised border wall.

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Although the president claimed Thursday that his decision to pull U.S. troops from Syria should come as "no surprise," several of his administration's top national security officials appeared to be caught off-guard by the move. Congressional Republicans, including some close allies of the president, panned the notion that the Islamic State had been defeated.

Some in the GOP compared the White House’s announcement to former President Barack Obama's decision to dramatically scale back the number of U.S. troops in Iraq, a move many have blamed for creating the vacuum that allowed the Islamic State to flourish in the first place.

Still, despite protests from within his own party, Trump insisted Thursday morning that the withdrawal from Syria would keep the U.S. from becoming mired in another long-term conflict in the Middle East. The president has long expressed skepticism of long-term U.S. military engagements in foreign countries, a position that dates back to his presidential campaign and has at times put him at odds with members of his national security team and the more hawkish members of his own party.

“Does the USA want to be the Policeman of the Middle East, getting NOTHING but spending precious lives and trillions of dollars protecting others who, in almost all cases, do not appreciate what we are doing?” Trump asked in another tweet. “Do we want to be there forever? Time for others to finally fight.”

The president spent Wednesday and early Thursday morning tweeting out the messages of those who have spoken in support of his announcement, including GOP Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah), who have long opposed the U.S. presence in Syria.

Critics of all political stripes slammed the announcement as a victory for the dictatorial regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, as well as for Russia and Iran, who have backed Assad’s forces in the ongoing civil war there, and Turkey, which has branded U.S.-allied Kurdish fighters as terrorists. But Trump on Thursday called that line of thinking “fake news” even though Russian President Vladimir Putin himself applauded news of the impending withdrawal.

“Russia, Iran, Syria & many others are not happy about the U.S. leaving,” Trump wrote, reasoning that “now they will have to fight ISIS and others, who they hate, without us. I am building by far the most powerful military in the world. ISIS hits us they are doomed!”

But in his end-of-year press conference in Moscow, Putin concurred with Trump’s initial assessments of the Islamic State in Syria, proclaiming, “On this, Donald is right — I agree with him."

"We've achieved some major advances when it comes to defeating the terrorists and we have struck major blows on terrorists in Syria,” Putin told reporters hours before Trump’s tweets Thursday.

Putin suggested that a U.S. presence in Syria wasn’t necessary, calling Trump’s move to begin withdrawing troops “the right decision.”

Lawmakers on Thursday continued to rail against both the substance of the announcement and its roll-out.

“It’s terrible,” GOP Rep. Will Hurd, a former CIA agent, said in an interview on CNN’s “New Day.” “Our allies weren’t notified. Our senior leaders in our government, in the military and the intelligence community were not notified.”

Other Republicans even slapped Trump's favored "fake news" label on the president himself, saying ISIS remains a potent threat.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, a GOP hawk who’s been one of president’s biggest allies on Capitol Hill, was particularly incensed. Speaking on the Senate floor late Wednesday, Graham said leaving Syria would be a “stain on the honor of the United States,” and a "disaster on multiple fronts."

The South Carolina Republican pledged to get to the bottom of why Trump was moving toward withdrawal, citing conversations with national security officials that led him to conclude the president was acting “against sound military advice."

Graham popped up all over cable networks Thursday in order to make his case to the president, oftentimes addressing the Trump directly. In a winding interview on CNN, Graham compared the U.S. presence in Syria to Trump’s desired border wall with Mexico.

“Taking our forces out of Syria … would be akin to tearing down the wall with the southern border,” he said.

In a press conference Thursday, Graham was more bombastic: “The idea that Russia, Assad and Iran are not really happy about us leaving, I disagree with that — they are ecstatic. The only reason they're not dancing in the aisles in Tehran and ISIS camps is they just don't believe in dancing. This is a big gift to them.”

And Sen. Bob Corker, the retiring GOP chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called it “factually incorrect that ISIS has been exterminated in Syria,” arguing that even if Trump opts to reverse his decision, the chaos of the last 24 hours will have irreparably damaged America's global reputation.

“We were six weeks away from a major, major threshold in this whole fight against ISIS and to walk away from it now — this type of retreat is just a major mistake,” he said in an interview Thursday with BBC. “We’ve shown that we’re not reliable to partners, with others who have been dealing with us for years in this fight.”

Graham echoed those sentiments, contending that leaving U.S.-backed Kurdish forces to fend for themselves could come back to bite U.S. troops later.

”How do you justify leaving Syria at a time when those who helped us, the Kurds, are certain to be overwhelmed and slaughtered,” he said. “And if we do this to the Kurds, who’s going to help us fight in the future?”

Corker, who has repeatedly clashed with the president on a host of issues, was reportedly set to meet with Trump at the White House on Wednesday. But the meeting, which had been planned before the president’s announcement, was scrapped at the last minute while Corker waited on the premises.

“Much of what has happened is — candidly — is gonna be hard to put back in place just in 24 hours,” he said. “We are saddened, stunned and in disbelief the president would make this type of decision."

Trump, not one to let criticism slide, swiped back at Graham in a tweet Thursday afternoon.

"So hard to believe that Lindsey Graham would be against saving soldier lives & billions of $$$," he wrote. "Why are we fighting for our enemy, Syria, by staying & killing ISIS for them, Russia, Iran & other locals? Time to focus on our Country & bring our youth back home where they belong!"

But Graham, despite his reputation as a war hawk, has insisted that his opposition remains the hasty and disorganized nature of Trump's plan as well as its direct contradiction to what key officials in the administration say is the right approach to the conflict.

"What I want to do is let [Trump] know that there are a lot of Republicans and Democrats who will stand with him to see this through, that bringing our troops home from Syria is the goal," Graham said Thursday on CNN. "We’ve just got to do it smartly.”

Matthew Choi contributed to this report.