Politics The Syria Gamble
Time|April 23, 2018

Can the U.S. deter war crimes without going to war?

W.J. Hennigan
Politics The Syria Gamble

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP HAD MADE UP HIS mind about Syria. It was March 29, and to the cheers of the crowd at a campaign-style stop in Richfield, Ohio, the Commander in Chief declared that after 3½ years and billions of dollars sunk into the Middle East’s bloodiest civil war, America’s troops would soon be coming home. “We’re knocking the hell out of ISIS,” Trump said. “We’re coming out of Syria, like, very soon. Let the other people take care of it now.”

Caught off-guard, Trump’s advisers scrambled through the Easter weekend both to craft an exit strategy to fulfill his vow—and to come up with arguments on why pulling out might not be wise. Trump did not want to hear it. During a meeting with his national-security principals in the Situation Room in the White House the following Tuesday, the President laid into his military leaders, fuming about the U.S. costs in Syria and demanding a clearer time frame for withdrawal.

At one point, General Joseph Dunford, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staffand an opponent of a rapid pullout, responded to Trump’s venting by asking what, exactly, the President wanted to see happen in Syria. Trump said he didn’t want a drawn-out nation-building exercise, nor did he want to telegraph a pullout that would leave a power vacuum that militants could fill, according to two people familiar with the deliberations who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

This story is from the April 23, 2018 edition of Time.

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This story is from the April 23, 2018 edition of Time.

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