Small Wars Journal

‘Get the Hell Out of Syria. It’s Sand and Blood and Death’: Inside America’s Chaotic Retreat

Fri, 10/18/2019 - 4:16pm

‘Get the Hell Out of Syria. It’s Sand and Blood and Death’: Inside America’s Chaotic Retreat by Dion Nissenbaum, Isabel Coles and Nancy A. Youssef – Wall Street Journal

America’s humiliating exit from the war in Vietnam was marked by chaotic images of people struggling to board the last helicopters leaving the rooftop of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon. The U.S. didn’t want to leave Syria in similar fashion.

That is what the Trump administration’s special envoy for the fight against Islamic State, James Jeffrey, told the top Kurdish military commander, a longtime U.S. partner against the militants, in one of their last conversations before Turkey attacked.

Days later, as Turkish-backed forces advanced into Syria, the U.S. military began a haphazard retreat from the Syria border that left thousands of Kurdish allies alone and outgunned…

Read on.