So the firing of Tillerson was a setback for Syrian jihadis?
Tillerson wanted regime change in Syria. That would support the jihadist.
Trump was able to fight the jihadist by cutting out their funding, mainly the terrorist sponsor Qatar. Tillerson wanted to ease up on the sanctions the Gulf States imposed on Qatar.
I read a piece by Steve Bannon this morning.
Here’s an excerpt:
http://www.wnd.com/2017/10/bannon-credits-trump-for-defeating-isis/
“What’s happened in the last nine months – President Trump has accomplished something that I think people would have laughed and mocked at in the campaign. Raqqa fell the other day. The physical destruction of the ISIS caliphate, which shocked the world on its rapid rise, and I think put the world back on its heels,” the Breitbart executive said. “It was breathtaking, the whole world kind of backed off.”
But in less than a year, Trump’s strategy, executed by Gen. James Mattis, the secretary of defense, is forcing jihadists around the globe to retreat, Bannon said.
“That strategy was not a war of attrition; it was very specific from day one. This will be a war of annihilation. We will physically annihilate the caliphate, and that’s what’s been accomplished,” he said.
Trump created the conditions for better relations in the Middle East by warning U.S. allies there against funding terrorism during the Arab Islamic American Summit he held in Riyadh in May, Bannon argued.
“We went into the summit with UAE and Saudi Arabia and others, and the number one thing is that we must take care of this financing of radical Islam and there can be no more – as President Trump says – ‘no more games’ – you can’t have it both ways, you can’t on one side say you are a friend and an ally and on the other side be financing Hamas,” he said.
In the worst diplomatic crisis to hit Gulf Arab states in decades, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates broke off relations with Qatar in June. The three Gulf countries and Egypt accused Qatar of supporting terrorism and destabilizing the region.
Bannon said that break was because of Trump’s leadership.
“I don’t think it’s just by happenstance, that two weeks after that summit you saw the blockade by the United Emirates and … Bahrain, Egypt and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia on Qatar,” he said. “I’ve said from day one, even in the situation in the northwest Pacific, Korea, I think the single most important thing happening in the world is the situation in Qatar.”