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https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/22/politics/brett-mcgurk-resignation/index.html
US envoy in ISIS fight, Brett McGurk, resigns over US withdrawal from Syria
Washington (CNN)Brett McGurk, the special presidential envoy for the global coalition to counter ISIS, submitted his resignation Friday because of President Donald Trump’s decision to pull US forces out of Syria, according to two senior officials and several sources familiar with his thinking.
McGurk had previously said privately that he was going to leave the administration in February of next year.
A State Department official told CNN that McGurk had informed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday that he was resigning, effective December 31.
CBS News was the first to report the news of McGurk’s resignation, which came one day after Defense Secretary James Mattis resigned, also in part due to the Syria decision.
Going against the advice of his military and national security advisers, Trump on Wednesday announced the “full” and “rapid” withdrawal of US military from Syria, declaring that the US has defeated ISIS.
McGurk was in Iraq meeting with senior leaders when Trump tweeted out the decision. Sources familiar with the matter said McGurk was frustrated over Trump’s sudden announcement, which was the opposite of the strategy he had just been briefing coalition partners on while in the region: to stay in Syria, fight ISIS and counter Iran.
According to the sources, McGurk viewed the Syria decision as reckless and couldn’t defend it, let alone execute it. He felt his integrity and his credibility were on the line, the sources told CNN.
“Brett was able to get US coalition partners to commit troops based on a code of trust with allies that the US was in the fight with them,” said one source familiar with McGurk’s thinking. “So after this sudden snap decision by the President to get out, he knew he could not be the one carrying this out.”
I wonder how many more will resign over this.
I think the U.S. has been way too involved in the Middle East, but once a commitment is made, leaving as we are evidently going to do is leaving those we have made a commitment to in the lurch.
The Kurds are undoubtedly one of the strongest allies we have had in the Middle East and have done all we can to make them involved in the middle of the conflicts. Now we’re leaving them in the foxhole and we’re walking away, washing our hands as if we were Pontius Pilate.
". . . those who claim to know the Mind of God, who will tell you what God thinks and how He will judge and condemn others—those people are the greatest of all blasphemers." Aloysius Xingu Leng Pendergast
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