It's Really Hard to Say What the U.S. Wants in Syria
The White House says troops will stay to defeat ISIS. Beyond that is anybody’s guess.
Last week President Trump told an audience in Ohio, as an aside, that U.S. troops would leave Syria “like, very soon.” This was news to his national-security team, as the U.S. military was, at about the same time, reportedly planning to send dozens more troops to the country. Certainly Brett McGurk, the special presidential envoy for the global coalition to counter the Islamic State, did not indicate plans to leave soon when he said Tuesday: “We are in Syria to fight ISIS, that is our mission, and our mission isn’t over, and we’re going to complete that mission.”
As McGurk was making those remarks,
