ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — US presidential candidates from the Democratic party criticized US President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from Syria in a debate on Tuesday.
Several of the politicians seeking to run against Trump in the general election next year said that the president abandoned Kurdish forces allied with the US in the country.
“I'd like to hear from him about how leaving the Kurds for slaughter...how that makes America great again,” Senator Amy Klobuchar said unprompted in the debate, taking a swipe at Trump’s 2016 campaign slogan.
The debate, hosted by the network CNN in the midwestern state of Ohio, focused heavily on healthcare and efforts to impeach Trump. Towards the end, host Anderson Cooper asked the candidates to weigh in on Trump’s decision to remove US forces from Syria, where they were supporting the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) against the Islamic State (IS).
The move paved the way for Turkey to begin its long-planned operation to remove the SDF, which it considers a terrorist organization, from its border.
Cooper started the Syria conversation by asking former Vice President Joe Biden if he would send US troops back to Syria. However, Biden dodged the question twice, including after Cooper pressed him on it, saying only that he would not have withdrawn them in the first place.
“I would not have withdrawn the troops...which are in retreat now, being fired on by Assad’s people,” said Biden, referring to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, an Iraq war veteran and vocal critic of US foreign policy, criticized how Trump left Syria, but blamed the carnage that ensued Turkey’s intervention on the “regime change war” against Assad.
“The slaughter of the Kurds being done by Turkey is yet another negative consequence of the regime change war,” said Gabbard. “Donald Trump has the blood of the Kurds on his hands, but so do many of the politicians in our country from both parties who have supported this.”
The US originally supported various rebel groups fighting against the Syrian regime in the civil war, but Trump ended the CIA arming Syrian rebels in 2017. Since then, the US has focused on helping the SDF fight ISIS.
Gabbard is a strong opponent of US interventions in the Middle East and US support for Saudi Arabia. In a previous debate, she accused Trump of supporting al-Qaeda, the group which carried out the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the US.
Earlier this year, Gabbard invited Syrian Kurdish leader Ilham Ahmed, the co-president of the Syrian Democratic Council (SDC), to Washington to attend Trump’s State of the Union address. The SDC is the SDF’s political wing.
Senator Elizabeth Warren also endorsed removing US troops from the region, but criticized how Trump went about pulling them out from Syria.
“I don’t think we should have troops in the Middle East, but we have to do it the right way,” said Warren. “In Syria, he has created a bigger-than-ever humanitarian crisis. He has helped ISIS get another foothold.”
Trump announced his desire to leave Syria more than a year ago, but his decision still came as a surprise as the US was negotiating with Turkey to prevent them from attacking for much of this year.
Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend and a veteran who fought in Afghanistan, said the US should have a military presence in Syria.
“A small number of specialized, special operations forces and intelligence capabilities were the only thing that stood between that part of Syria and what we’re seeing now, which is the beginning of a genocide and the resurgence of ISIS,” he said.
Buttigieg took issue with his fellow military veteran Gabbard’s comments, saying “the slaughter going on in Syria is not a consequence of American presence.”
Gabbard, in turn, accused Buttigieg of supporting a US military presence in Syria for an “indefinite period of time,” and said efforts to topple Assad are akin to supporting al-Qaeda.
Rebel forces in Syria mostly only control two areas of Syria now. One is near the Turkish border, where Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) is currently fighting the SDF. The other is the northwest Idlib province, where Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), formerly al-Qaeda’s Syria affiliate, is the dominant force.
Senator Bernie Sanders, full of energy despite suffering a heart attack two weeks ago, said Turkey is no longer a friend of the US after its attack on Kurdish forces in Syria.
“No, Turkey is not a US ally when they invade another country and engage in mass slaughter,” he said.
Other candidates, like former mayor of San Antonio Julian Castro and Senator Kamala Harris, said Trump’s withdrawal of US forces helped lead to ISIS prisoner escapes.
Biden and Warren are atop most polls for the Democratic primary election, followed by Sanders.
