Exiting Syria and the Rest of the Iceberg
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 22 December 2018
⏱️ 66 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week, President Trump made the unexpected announcement that he was immediately withdrawing U.S. troops from Syria, ending their involvement in the counter-ISIS campaign that the United States has led there for the last four years. As the week went on, it became clear that the decision on Syria was just the tip of the iceberg.
To help us make sense of all that has happened over the last 72 hours, Lawfare's Scott R. Anderson sat down on Friday with a panel of Middle East experts at the Brookings Institution: Dan Byman, a senior fellow; Tamara Cofman Wittes, a senior fellow and former State Department official; and Mara Karlin, a nonresident senior fellow, professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and former Pentagon official. They talked about the Syria withdrawal, what it means for U.S. policy in the Middle East moving forward, and about Defense Secretary James Mattis's resignation.
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Transcript
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| 0:22.0 | rational security, chatter, law fair no bull, and the aftermath. |
| 0:29.0 | The US military presence in Syria had slightly more than a superficial role against the Iranians, |
| 0:41.0 | but what it did do is it, I think, put the Iranians and Hezbollah a little bit on edge, |
| 0:47.0 | and that's not necessarily a good thing if it is not really thought out. |
| 0:51.0 | I mean, it's been a little surprising to me that you have not seen an attack by the Iranians or by Hezbollah |
| 0:57.0 | or any of the other sort of proxies out there on the US presence, |
| 1:01.0 | sort of a law 83, Barut, and the Marine Baric's bombing. |
| 1:05.0 | But it seems to me it was probably only a matter of time before something like that happened, |
| 1:09.0 | because you've been hearing from a lot of folks, yes, were there to fight ISIS, |
| 1:13.0 | but oh wait, actually were there to have this big effect on the Iranians. |
| 1:16.0 | In reality, it was having a somewhat kind of minimal effect on the Iranians |
| 1:21.0 | beyond starting to get the more nervous. |
| 1:23.0 | So were they looking over their shoulder a bit? Probably, but that also means they were almost surely trying to figure out what do I do under these circumstances. |
| 1:33.0 | I'm Scott Ar Anderson, and this is the Lawfare Podcast, December 21, 2018. |
| 1:39.0 | This week, President Trump made the unexpected announcement that he was immediately withdrawing US troops from Syria, |
| 1:44.0 | ending their involvement in the counter-ISIS campaign that the United States has led there for the last four years. |
| 1:49.0 | As the week went on, it became clear that the decision on Syria was just the tip of the iceberg. |
... |
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