Speaking at the State Department on Wednesday morning, Vice President Mike Pence reportedly told assembled diplomats that the “caliphate has crumbled and ISIS has been defeated.”
Those remarks ran headlong into reality as reports simultaneously poured out of Syria, including from official mouthpieces of Operation Inherent Resolve, the U.S.-led coalition fighting ISIS, that U.S. troops had been killed in an attack in the city of Manbij. The attack has since been claimed by the Islamic State.
U.S. service members were killed during an explosion while conducting a routine patrol in Syria today. We are still gathering information and will share additional details at a later time.
— OIR Spokesperson (@OIRSpox) January 16, 2019
Although yet unconfirmed, initial reports indicate that a blast from a suicide attack left four U.S. service members dead and three others injured during a routine patrol.
For the Trump administration, eager to claim victory against ISIS and to make good on the promise of bringing troops home, the reality of the unstable situation on the ground, far from the more rosy descriptions President Trump has publicly pitched, just became very, very real.
If anybody but Donald Trump did what I did in Syria, which was an ISIS loaded mess when I became President, they would be a national hero. ISIS is mostly gone, we’re slowly sending our troops back home to be with their families, while at the same time fighting ISIS remnants……
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 31, 2018
…I campaigned on getting out of Syria and other places. Now when I start getting out the Fake News Media, or some failed Generals who were unable to do the job before I arrived, like to complain about me & my tactics, which are working. Just doing what I said I was going to do!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 31, 2018
…..Except the results are FAR BETTER than I ever said they were going to be! I campaigned against the NEVER ENDING WARS, remember!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 31, 2018
The latest attack should be a sobering realization for the Trump administration that declaring victory on the ground does not make it so — and a reminder that a clean cut from current operations in Syria is far more complex than a promise to leave.
The ongoing conflict, however, doesn’t mean that Trump has to give up on his promise of extracting the U.S. from forever wars.
Indeed, even the staunchest of interventionists won’t argue for a permanent force on the ground. But prematurely leaving runs the risk of allowing ISIS to continue its reign of destruction, leaving carnage and perpetual instability in its wake.
That, as President Barack Obama learned the hard way after pulling troops from Iraq, might be even worse than existing simmering conflicts. In the end, trading chaos for political rhetoric sells allies, troops, and the American people short.
The exit from Syria is not quite going as planned. As a Pentagon spokesman said this fall, the danger is far from gone, and the Islamic State “is well-positioned to rebuild and work on enabling its physical caliphate to re-emerge.”
Trump needs a policy firmly grounded in reality. It won’t do for U.S. troops to die as evidence disproving his cavalier declarations of victory and stability. That only undermines U.S. credibility and interests and its stated goals. When talk and blasts contradict each other, the blasts win.
