"That's what America wants"

(Washington) United States President Donald Trump defended on Wednesday the withdrawal of US troops from Syria, highlighting his campaign promises and minimizing the threat to Kurdish forces.

Updated October 16, 2019 at 16:51 Posted on October 16, 2019 at 12:06 pm

Jerome CARTILLIER
France Media Agency

One by one, the Republican billionaire has swept away all the arguments of his many critics on this issue, including within his own camp, ignoring the main lines of US policy in this region of the world vis-a-vis its allies as of his adversaries. And hammered that his approach was "brilliant from a strategic point of view".

By abruptly withdrawing from Syria, will Washington not risk letting Moscow become an even more omnipresent player in Syria?

"If Russia helps to protect the Kurds, it's a good thing, not a bad thing," he replies.

The influential Republican Senator Lindsey Graham believes he is doing "the biggest mistake of his presidency"?

"Lindsey should focus on the democrats-who-do-nothing," he retorted, calling the elected with whom he plays golf regularly to devote more time to his constituents in South Carolina than to the geopolitics of the Middle East.

"We do not need to be involved in endless wars, we bring back our soldiers," he insists. "I won the election on that basis. Whether it's good or bad, it's like that! ".

"I'm willing to bet-it's my political instinct telling me-that's what America wants."

And the president to distance himself from the ongoing conflict between Turkey and Kurdish allies from Washington in Syria.

"If Turkey enters Syria, it is a matter between Turkey and Syria, it is not a matter between Turkey and the United States as many stupid people would have you believe".

Kurds? "No angels"

An argument returns in a loop for a few days in the mouth of the 45^e US President: It is time for other countries-friends or foes-to take over in the fight against ISIS jihadists.

"Everyone hates IS," he insists. "Why protect Syria, which is not a friendly country? Why protect their territory? "

To those who point out that the United States has a particular responsibility towards the Kurds, who fought alongside them against the jihadists of the IS group, the tenant of the White House retorts that we should not worry too much, and not to idealize them.

"They are not angels, they are not angels," he says. "Kurds know how to fight," he adds, even saying that they "are safer today".

Then, in a surprising exit from a US president, but sweet in the ears of his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan, he claims that the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which leads a bloody guerrilla war against Turkey for several decades, is "probably" a greater "terrorist threat" than the jihadist group Islamic State (IS).

Calling loudly for his decision to withdraw troops, Trump said he had given Erdogan no agreement for his military offensive in northern Syria against a Kurdish militia, which is considering like the Syrian branch of the PKK.

"I did not give him a green light. When you say that, it's very misleading, "he says, though without elaborating. "It was the opposite of a green light. First, we had almost no soldiers there. They had left for the most part. "

"I'm not going to get involved in a war between Turkey and Syria," he insists, even as his vice president Mike Pence is about to leave for Ankara to try to get an "end to the Turkish invasion and an "immediate cease-fire".

"We have a situation in which Turkey takes territories to Syria. Syria is not happy. Let them find a solution.