It's Time for US Troops to Leave Syria

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There are roughly 4,500 U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria today, and they represent a potentially significant strategic vulnerability to our country.

U.S. service members have been stationed in Syria since early 2016, with troops kept in the country by both President-elect Donald Trump during his first term and now by President Joe Biden under the mission of fighting the Islamic State terrorist group during the Syrian civil war. But now that the Assad regime has fallen, our troops should be fully withdrawn.

Biden once said he would never "ask our troops to fight on endlessly in another -- in another country's civil war." He should match action to those words and immediately end this pointless deployment in Iraq and Syria, before his term ends on Jan. 20.

National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, however, is making the case not only that those troops have value to the United States but that their presence should endure even after the arrival of Trump. At the Ronald Reagan Defense Forum earlier this month, Sullivan claimed that our troops in Syria are "there to work hand in hand with local partners, to continue to suppress the threat that ISIS [Islamic State group] has posed, going back many years now."

That mission statement is a major red flag. To "suppress" the enemy is an ambiguous term that can mean almost anything the political leadership wants it to mean. If we take out one midlevel Islamic State figure per month, that could be interpreted as "suppression" and thus a successful military operation. Yet nowhere in Sullivan's speech -- nor anywhere else in U.S. policy since at least 2019 -- has there been any clue as to what the end state of this "suppression" of the Islamic State is supposed to look like.

The result is that the troop presence becomes an end unto itself. Clearly, the intent is to never withdraw. By not even proposing an identifiable end state, there is no criteria against which the administration could ever declare the mission a success. Likewise, the absence of objective criteria means they can never be accused of failing the mission.

And if "suppressing ISIS" never eliminates the group, this deployment will never increase our national security. The truth is that the Islamic State was badly weakened when its territorial holdings in Iraq and Syria were taken away in 2019. It is a shell of its former self and poses no threat to the United States that can't be handled with the normal global counterterror assets we already rely on to keep the homeland safe.

Keeping our troops in Syria and Iraq, then, is a gross misuse and unnecessary risk for our service members. For all the public claims by the White House and Congress that we care for our troops, that they're all heroes, actions suggest our leaders give little actual consideration to the men and women whom they send into harm's way in Syria and Iraq.

We've already lost U.S. troops in Jordan this year owing to regional instability, and scores more have been wounded in recent years. Asking our service personnel to continue risking life and limb for a mission that produces unclear value to our country is to dishonor the selfless service provided by the men and women of our armed forces.

For the good of the country, for the good of our military, the Biden administration should reverse course, even in the limited time before Biden leaves office, and pull our troops out of pointless harm's way. If he won't do the right thing, then let us hope Trump does.

-- Daniel L. Davis is a senior fellow and military expert for Defense Priorities and a retired Army lieutenant colonel with four combat deployments. He is also the host of Daniel Davis Deep Dive on YouTube.