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President Trump will meet with Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip ErdoÄŸan in Washington next week, ending weeks of uncertainty over whether ErdoÄŸan would make the trip amid tensions over Syria. ErdoÄŸan committed to visiting Trump at the White House following a phone call between the two leaders on Wednesday. Trump tweeted that the two discussed the situation in Syria, "the ending of hostilities with the Kurds" and the Turkish capture of Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) fighters. He added that he looked forward to welcoming ErdoÄŸan to the White House. ErdoÄŸan had been expected to make the trip, but...

U.S. president outsmarts Putin -- leaves him with Syria headaches as U.S. withdraws According to conventional thinking, President Trump’s decision to withdraw U.S. troops from northeast Syria opened the door to a resurgence of ISIS. “Make no mistake, President Trump ignores the national security threat posed by ISIS at our nation’s peril,” Senator Bob Menendez, the top-ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said last week. How foolish Senator Menendez and his fellow critics look now after President Trump announced on Sunday that a special operations raid, which he had approved and closely monitored, resulted in the cowardly death...

U.S. president outsmarts Putin -- leaves him with Syria headaches as U.S. withdraws. According to conventional thinking, President Trump’s decision to withdraw U.S. troops from northeast Syria opened the door to a resurgence of ISIS. “Make no mistake, President Trump ignores the national security threat posed by ISIS at our nation’s peril,” Senator Bob Menendez, the top-ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said last week. How foolish Senator Menendez and his fellow critics look now after President Trump announced on Sunday that a special operations raid, which he had approved and closely monitored, resulted in the cowardly death...

Vice President Pence said Tuesday that President Trump is following through on his promise to bring U.S. troops home from Syria and talked up the prospect of a permanent ceasefire in the region. Pence insisted that a ceasefire the administration helped broker between Turkey and Syria last week “has held” and claimed Trump’s own moves had paved the way for the possibility of a permanent ceasefire. “Earlier today, we received word from the Syrian defense forces commander that all of their military forces have withdrawn from the safe zone under Turkish military control and before I came here, our team...

Everybody thought we had to keep our troops around so the Turks wouldn't invade Northern Syria and kill off all the Kurds. Everybody wanted them to negotiate with the Kurds and figured the only way to do that was little by little, by getting allies to reason with Turkey and hem and haw and maybe buy her off as in times past. Meanwhile, we had to keep the two ancient enemies, Kurds and Turks, apart. Negotiations would ever happen only if our troops stayed. Trump saw the situation differently. As beautifully laid out by Sundance at Conservative Treehouse, removing our...

President Trump’s acquiescence to Turkey’s move to send troops deep inside Syrian territory has in only one week’s time turned into a bloody carnage, forced the abandonment of a successful five-year-long American project to keep the peace on a volatile border, and given an unanticipated victory to four American adversaries: Russia, Iran, the Syrian government and the Islamic State. Rarely has a presidential decision resulted so immediately in what his own party leaders have described as disastrous consequences for American allies and interests. How this decision happened — springing from an “off-script moment” with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey,...

President Trump has played this out perfectly. By isolating Turkish President Recep Erdogan, and effectively leaving him naked to an alliance of his enemies, Erdogan is now urgently asking for the U.S. to mediate peace negotiations with Kurdish forces. This request happens immediately after President Trump signed an executive order [See Here] triggering the sanction authority of Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. Erdogan called the White House requesting an urgent phone call with President Trump. After President Trump talked to Kurdish General Mazloum Kobani Abdi, the commander of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, President Trump then discussed the options available to...

Turkish warplanes have bombed parts of north-eastern Syria at the start of an offensive which could lead to conflict with Kurdish-led allies of the US. Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the operation was to create a "safe zone" cleared of Kurdish militias which will also house Syrian refugees. The strikes have killed at least two civilians, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said. The group vowed to resist any Turkish advance across the border. It asked the US and the coalition against the jihadist group Islamic State (IS) to establish a no-fly zone in the area to stop "attacks on...

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced Wednesday the beginning of a military operation in northeastern Syria, days after President Donald Trump pulled U.S. troops out of the region. "The Turkish Armed Forces, together with the Syrian National Army, just launched #OperationPeaceSpring," Erdogan wrote Wednesday in a tweet. "Our mission is to prevent the creation of a terror corridor across our southern border, and to bring peace to the area." Mustafa Bali, a spokesman for the U.S.-backed Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, said Turkish warplanes started carrying out airstrikes on civilian targets Wednesday. "There is a huge panic among people of the...

Withdrawing US forces from Northern Syria is a catastrophic mistake that puts our gains against ISIS at risk and threatens US security. This decision ignores lesson of 9/11. Terrorists thousands of miles away can and will use their safe-havens to launch attacks against America.

Top Republicans in Congress -- including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell -- criticized President Donald Trump over his decision to remove US troops from northern Syria as Turkey plans a military offensive there. McConnell urged Trump to reverse his move, saying "a precipitous withdrawal of US forces from Syria would only benefit Russia, Iran, and the Assad regime."

Many observers have asserted that the withdrawal gives victory in Syria to Russia, Iran and the Syrian government. That’s absurd. Bashar al-Assad’s regime already controls about two-thirds of Syria, including all of the major cities. The portion of Syria that U.S. forces control alongside their Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) allies is mostly either desert or drought-prone plains. The oil fields there produce high-sulfur, low-value crude, and production has long been diminishing. Oil revenue made up only about 5 percent of Syrian gross domestic product before the 2011 uprising, according to the International Monetary Fund. In sum, holding northeastern Syria would...

On Saturday, Brett McGurk submitted his resignation and is leaving the Trump administration. McGurk served as the US envoy in a global anti-ISIS coalition and reportedly resigned amid President Trump’s decision to pull out of Syria—a decision which also reportedly led to the resignation of Defense Secretary James Mattis.

Former national security adviser Susan Rice has penned a highly critical op-ed tearing into President Trump over foreign policy. The piece, “The Threat in the White House,” was published Sunday in The New York Times and details what she calls “dangerous dysfunction” in the Trump administration. In the op-ed, Rice wrote that the U.S.’s national security decisionmaking process is “more broken” than at any time since 1947, when the National Security Act become law.

Neocons, some defense officials, and even Democrats normally opposed to overseas military entanglements all heavily criticized POTUS Donald Trump’s decision to pull all American troops out of Syria, characterizing it alternately as rash, unhinged, or irresponsible. But as is usually the case involving this president, the first impression we were given by the “mainstream” media regarding his decision was incomplete and not based on a complete understanding of the action. As it turns out, one could even say that POTUS acted on the indirect advice of his national security adviser, John Bolton, simply because he was unable to answer one...

Unlike my colleagues, I’ve been a bemused spectator during this week’s Syria follies. As readers of these columns know (see, e.g., here, here, here, here, and here), I believe the United States has less interest in Syria than in the persistence of drought in Burkina Faso. That is why I was a steadfast naysayer on American intervention in a conflict among rivals whose common ground consists of hatred for America and affinity for sharia supremacism (and the abetting thereof — I’m looking at you, Vladimir). The current frenzy was ignited by the president’s abrupt decision to pull U.S. forces (all...

Earlier this year, President Donald Trump was shown a disturbing video of Syrian rebels beheading a child near the city of Aleppo. It had caused a minor stir in the press as the fighters belonged to the Nour al-Din al-Zenki Movement, a group that had been supported by the CIA as part of its rebel aid program. The footage is haunting. Five bearded men smirk as they surround a boy in the back of a pickup truck. One of them holds the boy’s head with a tight grip on his hair while another mockingly slaps his face. Then, one of...

Oh noes, how is the U.S. media going to find a way to spin this? It was only a matter of time. President Trump and Secretary Tillerson played out the global strategy perfectly. By assembling international allies in a coalition of influence, specifically by pulling China into a close relationship with President Trump, Russia has been cast into a brutally diminished role. Secretary Tillerson’s exceptionally well received visit to the U.N. Security Council yesterday appears to have been the final straw. The international diplomacy of President Trump, Vice-President Pence, Secretary T-Rex and even Ambassador Nikki Haley has been incredibly well...

Many of President Donald Trump's staunchest supporters — the very people who put him in the White House — expressed feelings of anger and betrayal following the administration's illegal military attack on Syria. Among the prominent Trump backers who have spoken out so far are conservative pundit Ann Coulter, one of Trump's earliest and fiercest supporters, along with radio host Michael Savage, one of America's most popular talk-show personalities, who is credited by some analysts with putting Trump in the White House. Also speaking out was former U.K. Independence Party (UKIP) leader and Brexiteer Nigel Farage, along with his successor...

President Donald Trump deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. And if he doesn't get it, then Barack Obama should turn over the one he got in 2009 -- and didn't deserve -- to Trump. In the blink of an eye, Trump's Tomahawk missile attack on Syria restored American prestige around the world, and probably saved the lives of innocent Syrians from future poison gas attacks by dictator Bashar Assad. He knows what Trump will do to him if he does it again. Russia, Iran and North Korea know as well. It was a forceful message that went around the world. There...