President Donald Trump posted a video on Twitter where he defends the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria, saying that the U.S. has won the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and now its time to bring the soldiers back home.
“They’re all coming back and they’re coming back now. We won, and that’s the way we want it and that’s the way they want it,” Trump says in the video.
The video came hours after the White House announced that U.S. soldiers would be leaving the war-torn country.
According to The New York Times, many Republicans are angered by the President’s decision because they were left out of the loop while they argued that pulling out of Syria would aid U.S. adversaries Iran and Russia, the main backers of Syrian leader Bashar Assad.
Administration officials struggled to explain how many of the 2,000 U.S. troops in Syria would be coming home when they would return and the reasoning for the decision.
Top U.S. national security officials had previously said the military was committed to maintaining a presence in Syria until ISIS was completely eradicated.
“It was the President’s decision to make, and he made it,” said one senior administration official, who requested anonymity to discuss the withdrawal.
Trump has long spoken about his desire to pull U.S. troops out of Syria, dating back to the 2016 presidential campaign.
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