President Trump’s botched removal of United States troops from northern Syria quickly caused a firestorm in Washington. Pundits and members of Congress from across the ideological spectrum bashed the president for supposedly abandoning the Kurds, even though staying would require risking U.S. soldiers’ lives to thwart Turkey’s offensive. Critics were concerned that the Kurds, our short-term partners in the fight against the Islamic State, were forced to turn to Damascus and Moscow for help, but this is something the U.S. should have encouraged them to do a long time ago.
It’s true that the Trump administration handled the whole episode terribly, especially since this seems likely to result in a reshuffling of troops rather than a full withdrawal. But the critical mistake that put the U.S. in this no-win situation in the first place was the failure to leave Syria following the fall of ISIS’s caliphate.
