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Trump repeatedly broke pledge to withdraw US troops from Mideast: Analyst

Keith Preston

US President Donald Trump has repeatedly broken his pledge to withdraw American troops from the costly wars in the Middle East, and is instead moving them to other parts of the region, says a political analyst in Virginia.

Trump is "trying to make it appear as though he’s winding down the war in Syria. One of the things that Trump ran for president for back in 2016 was he claimed that he was going to wind down America’s involvement in all of these various wars in the Middle East,” said Keith Preston, chief editor of AttacktheSystem.com.

“[But] since then, he’s been dragging his feet to a large degree when it comes to doing some of that,” Preston told Press TV on Saturday. "For example, he’s been very slow to withdraw from Afghanistan.” 

US Army chief of staff, General Mark Milley, said Sunday that American troop levels in Syria are expected to stabilize at around 600 and the presence of US military forces in the Arab country is for American national interests.

The US Army general also claimed that it was important for US troops to remain in Syria so long as the Daesh (ISIS) terrorist group has a presence there.

Although Trump recently ordered the withdrawal of a small number of US troops from northern Syria, he is still planning to keep a military presence in that same region to “secure” the oil fields in the border area.

Getting American troops out of costly wars in the Middle East has long been a promise of Trump, but his latest decisions in Syria and other countries in the region may not be achieving much of that promise.

And a large number of US forces that are being withdrawn from Syria are not to be sent back to the United States, but the plan has been to move them to neighboring Iraq and keep them in the region.

Experts say American military presence in the Middle East is not really decreasing and argue that there are many chances for the US to get entangled in further conflict in the region.

Trump has also repeatedly advocated for bringing US troops back from Afghanistan. American forces have remained bogged down in Afghanistan since 2001 through the presidencies of George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and now, Trump.


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