US Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell warned President Donald Trump Monday against accelerating troop reductions in Afghanistan and Iraq, saying it would give extremists a “big propaganda victory.”
Addressing reports that Trump plans to announce within days sharp cuts to US forces in both countries, the Republican Senate chief said the US would be “abandoning” partners.
McConnell said on the Senate floor. “The consequences of a premature US exit would likely be even worse than President Obama’s withdrawal from Iraq back in 2011, which fueled the rise of ISIS and a new round of global terrorism. It would be reminiscent of the humiliating America departure from Saigon in 1975. The spectacle of US troops abandoning facilities and equipment, leaving the field in Afghanistan to the Taliban and ISIS, would be broadcast around the world as a symbol of US defeat and humiliation, and a victory for Islamic extremism. It would hand a weakened and scattered Al-Qaeda a big, big propaganda victory and a renewed safe haven for plotting attacks against America.”