President Donald Trump says he’s determined to get out of “endless wars” in Afghanistan and Syria and “bring our folks back home,” doubling down on his pledge to remove troops from the war-torn region.
In an interview aired Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” the president renewed his pledge to pull troops out of Syria and touted his administration’s success in fighting ISIS in the region.
“When I took over Syria it was infested with ISIS. It was all over the place,” Trump told host Margaret Brennan. “And now you have very little ISIS and you have the caliphate almost knocked out.”
“We will be announcing in the not too distant future 100 percent of the caliphate, which is the area, the land, the area, 100 [percent],” he added. “We’re at 99 percent right now, we’ll be at 100.”
Trump’s comments on the Islamic State were in stark contrast with the testimony his top intelligence officials last week at a congressional hearing.
“ISIS is intent on resurging and still commands thousands of fighters in Iraq and Syria,” said Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats at Tuesday’s hearing, adding the terrorist group will seek to “regain territory in Iraq and Syria in the long term.”
The president also expressed measured optimism for ongoing peace negotiations with the Taliban to end U.S. military presence in Afghanistan.
“I’ve been hitting very hard in Afghanistan and now we’re negotiating with the Taliban,” Trump said. “We’ll see what happens, who knows.”
“If you look at Afghanistan we’re going in very soon we’ll be going into our 19th year spending $50 billion a year,” Trump added.
Prodded by Brennan, Trump indicated his disagreements on Afghanistan strategy with former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis led him to fire him. Earlier reports indicated Mattis resigned of his own volition.
“He resigned because I asked him to resign,” Trump said of Mattis, adding that “I gave him big budgets and he didn’t do well in Afghanistan. I was not happy with the job he was doing in Afghanistan.”
Mattis announced his resignation in December in apparent protest of Trump’s decision to withdraw U.S. forces from Syria.
Trump also indicated there were no plans to remove troops from Iraq, saying the big U.S. military base there is necessary to “watch Iran.”
“We’re going to keep watching, and we’re going to keep seeing. And if there’s trouble, if somebody is looking to do nuclear weapons or other things, we’re going to know it before they do,” the president added.
Trump withdrew the U.S. from an Obama-era nuclear accord with Iran aimed at curbing that country’s development of nuclear weapons.
