Bringing Home Troops from Syria

The United States has had military troops in Syria since 2014. The American-led intervention in the Civil War in Syria includes troops from the United Kingdom, Jordan, Turkey, France, Australia, Canada, and other nations. These troops joined to support the Syrian opposition to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and the al-Nusra Front.

The Syrian Civil War began in 2011, and the U.S. initially supplied Free Syrian Army rebels with non-lethal aid including pickup trucks and food but started providing selected Syrian commanders with training, intelligence, and money. The Obama administration began surveillance missions in September 2014 focusing on the ISIL’s positions and the U.S. was joined by other nations in attacking ISIL forces inside Syria shortly thereafter.

Details of the U.S. Presence in Syria

In mid-January of 2018, the Trump administration announced it would maintain an open-ended military presence in Syria to help oust Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad and to counterattack Iran’s influence. By December of 2018, President Trump ordered the withdrawal of about 2,500 American ground troops from Syria, with those troops ordered home to be home in 2019.

In January 2019, President Trump said America must “stop the endless wars” and has started withdrawing U.S equipment and troops from Syria. The president said the withdrawal of troops was long overdue, and despite bringing troops home, the U.S. is hitting the few remaining ISIS remaining targets.

U.S. troops have spent more than four years in Syria, but not all troops will leave the country until ISIS has been defeated and the allies are protected, according to John Bolton, the national security adviser. The United States has had seven servicemen killed while serving in Syria. There have been about 560,000 people killed in the Syrian Civil War including government forces, civilians, and rebels from 2011 to 2018, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Thanking our Military

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