Tim Kaine: “I thank my colleague from Delaware for his comments. I rise to continue to speak about the U.S. retreat from Syria and…”

“I thank my colleague from Delaware for his comments. I rise to continue to speak about the U.S. retreat from Syria and our alliance with our Kurdish allies. The hasty withdrawal of the United States from northern Syria produced vivid and painful pictures of U.S. troops being pelted with stones and rotting vegetables as they walked away from the Kurdish allies they had stood alongside in the fight against ISIS for years-- those Kurdish allies who had fought so valiantly with the United States--our best battlefield partners--in the defeat of ISIS. The Trump retreat has been pitched by the President as a great victory for American foreign policy. It isn't. It is a grave failure that will ultimately make our country less safe. It is paving the way for potential ethnic cleansing. That has been testified to by administration officials. In the last 2 weeks, 176,000 Kurds--more than half of them children-- have been displaced. President Trump claims that the Kurds understand we are doing them a great service. That is just flatly wrong. The Trump retreat empowers Russia, empowers Iran, empowers the Syrian dictator, Bashar al-Assad, who is an international pariah because he is responsible for human suffering at an unimaginable scale, and it also empowers Turkey, which, despite being a NATO member, has undergone a troubling slide toward authoritarianism. The Trump retreat has led us to abandon a steadfast U.S. ally, the Syrian Kurds.…”