Trump mocks critics of Syria withdrawal

Donald Trump has taken a swipe at critics of his decision to withdraw US troops from Syria by saying if anyone else brought soldiers home they would be branded a 'hero'.

In a series of fiery tweets tonight, POTUS also dismissed the top US envoy in the fight against ISIS as an 'Obama appointee' who he claimed he did not know.

Earlier today Brett McGurk announced that he is resigning in the wake of Trump's decision to pull troops out of Syria and just days after Secretary of Defense James Mattis stepped down.

McGurk was to leave the role in February but moved up his departure date by two months to December 31 after very publicly stating that the move to pull American forces at this time could result in a 'possibly catastrophic outcome'.

Responding to the news , Trump tweeted: 'Brett McGurk, who I do not know, was appointed by President Obama in 2015.

'Was supposed to leave in February but he just resigned prior to leaving. Grandstander? The Fake News is making such a big deal about this nothing event!.

'If anybody but your favorite President, Donald J. Trump, announced that, after decimating ISIS in Syria, we were going to bring our troops back home (happy & healthy), that person would be the most popular hero in America. With me, hit hard instead by the Fake News Media. Crazy!

The veteran diplomat, who got his start in the administration of George W. Bush and was appointed to his current post by Barack Obama, now joins Defense Secretary Jim Mattis in an administration exodus of experienced national security officials.

Trump also fired a parting shot at Mattis, the most respected foreign policy official in the administration who will leave by the end of February.

He tweeted: 'When President Obama ingloriously fired Jim Mattis, I gave him a second chance.

'Some thought I shouldn’t, I thought I should. Interesting relationship-but I also gave all of the resources that he never really had. Allies are very important-but not when they take advantage of U.S'.

The former United States Marine Corps general commanded the 1st Marine Division during the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

He later served as the Commander of United States Central Command under Obama.

In his resignation later on Thursday, he told Trump that he was departing because 'you have a right to have a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours.'

Only 11 days ago, McGurk urged those who believed ISIS had been defeated to reexamine that notion while explaining why he believed it would be unwise to bring American forces home.

He reiterated those points in his resignation letter, stating that the militants were on the run, but not yet defeated.

McGurk also noted that the premature pullout of American forces from Syria would create the conditions that had initially given rise to ISIS and other terror groups in the past.

He also cited gains in accelerating the campaign against IS, but that the work was not yet done.

McGurk said at a State Department briefing on December 11 that 'it would be reckless if we were just to say: 'Well, the physical caliphate is defeated, so we can just leave now.

'I think anyone who's looked at a conflict like this would agree with that.'

A week before that, Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the U.S. had a long way to go in training local Syrian forces to prevent a resurgence of IS and stabilize Syria.

He said it would take 35,000 to 40,000 local troops in northeastern Syria to maintain security over the long term, but only about 20 percent of that number had been trained.

McGurk, whose resignation is effective December 31, was planning to leave the job in mid-February after a US-hosted meeting of foreign ministers from the coalition countries.

However said he he felt he could continue no longer after Trump's decision to withdraw from Syria and Mattis' resignation.

Mattis outlined similar reasons for his departure, suggesting that Trump has left the United States unable to defend its interests overseas.

'Because you have the right to a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours on these and other subjects,' Mattis wrote after his litany, 'I believe it is right for me to step down from my position.

Mattis declared that America 'must be resolute and unambiguous in our approach to those countries whose strategic interests are increasingly in tension with ours.'

In clear references to Russia and China, he wrote about four decades of 'immersion' in global affairs, leading him to believe in 'treating allies with respect and also being clear-eyed about both malign actors and strategic competitors.'

Trump is acting to pull all 2,000 U.S. troops from Syria and has now declared victory over ISIS, contradicting his own experts' assessments. On Saturday, Trump tweeted:

'On Syria, we were originally going to be there for three months, and that was seven years ago - we never left.

'When I became President, ISIS was going wild. Now ISIS is largely defeated and other local countries, including Turkey, should be able to easily take care of whatever remains. We’re coming home!'

Many lawmakers have called his action rash and dangerous.

The U.S. began airstrikes in Syria in 2014, and ground troops moved in the following year to battle IS and train Syrian rebels in a country torn apart by civil war.

Trump, in a tweet this past week, abruptly declared their mission accomplished.

The decision will fulfill Trump's goal of bringing troops home from Syria.

However military leaders have pushed back for months, arguing that the IS group remains a threat and could regroup in Syria's long-running civil war. U.S. policy has been to keep troops in place until the extremists are eradicated.

McGurk, 45, previously served as a deputy assistant secretary of state for Iraq and Iran, and during the negotiations for the landmark Iran nuclear deal by the Obama administration, led secret side talks with Tehran on the release of Americans imprisoned there.

McGurk, was briefly considered for the post of ambassador to Iraq after having served as a senior official covering Iraq and Afghanistan during President George W. Bush's administration.

A former Supreme Court law clerk to the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist, he worked as a lawyer for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion and joined Bush's National Security Council staff, where in 2007 and 2008, he was the lead U.S. negotiator on security agreements with Iraq.

Taking over for now for McGurk will be his deputy, retired Lt. Gen. Terry Wolff, who served three tours of active duty in Iraq.

Jim Jeffrey, a veteran diplomat who was appointed special representative for Syria engagement in August, is expected to stay in his position, officials said.

IS militants still hold a string of villages and towns along the Euphrates River in eastern Syria, where they have resisted weeks of attacks by the U.S.-supported Syrian Democratic Forces to drive them out. The pocket is home to about 15,000 people, among them 2,000 IS fighters, according to U.S. military estimates.

But that figure could be as high as 8,000 militants, if fighters hiding out in the deserts south of the Euphrates River are also counted, according to according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The SDF, a Kurdish-led force that is America's only military partner in Syria, said Thursday: 'The war against Islamic State has not ended and the group has not been defeated'.

The group is at the front lines of the battle against IS along the Euphrates River. It said a U.S. withdrawal would leave Syrians 'between the claws of enemy forces'.

At their height in 2014, Islamic State militants controlled approximately a third of territory in Syria and Iraq, including major cities in both countries.

The group flourished in the political vacuum of Syria's civil war, in which President Bashar Assad has violently put down a 2011 uprising against his family's 40-year rule.