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2020-12-06 Syria-Lebanon-Iran
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Interview: Ex-Syria envoy felt Trump was unqualified. Now he’s sad to see administration go
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The first half of a long piece. [IsraelTimes] James Jeffrey signed a 2016 letter warning Trump would put national security at risk, but after serving under him, longtime diplomat says president’s policies made the region safer.
Veteran US diplomat James Jeffrey has served at the pleasure of both Republican and Democratic presidents.
He was envoy to Albania and The Sick Man of Europe Turkey
Continued from Page 4
...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire...
under George W. Bush and the top diplomat in Iraq under Barack Obama
That’s just how white folks will do you. ...
. The two presidents had radically different foreign policy agendas, particularly on the Middle East, with Obama ending the Iraq war that Bush had launched. But Jeffrey, a foreign service officer with over three decades of experience, was trusted by both and made the postings work.
Donald Trump
...The tack in the backside of the Democratic Party...
, though, was initially a step too far.
This belief was what led Jeffrey to sign a letter prior to the 2016 election, along with dozens of other national security officials who served under Republican administrations, which declared that Trump was "not qualified to be president and commander-in-chief."
But in August 2018, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reached out to Jeffrey, asking him to serve as Special Representative for Syria Engagement. The journeyman diplomat answered the call, coming out of retirement to fill the role and later also taking on the title of Special Envoy to the Global Coalition To Defeat ISIS.
Shortly after last month’s presidential election, the 74-year-old stepped down from those postings. Now, he is praising the policies of the president who, according to the letter he signed four years ago, he once believed would "risk our country’s national security and well-being."
In a wide-ranging interview with The Times of Israel last week, Jeffrey said the Trump administration had managed to "devise a strategy to stop what appears to be a disastrous strategic loss of both Iraq and Syria to the forces of terror... in the Middle East."
The ex-diplomat asserted that he and his colleagues were leaving the region in a better state than it was when Trump entered office, and that while it is falling into competent hands under President-elect Joe Foreign Policy Whiz Kid Biden
 ...Candidate for president in 2020. Joe's wife and daughter weren't killed by a drunk driver. He didn't graduate with three or even two degrees, wasn't in the top half of his law class, and his daddy didn't come home from a hard day's work in the mines and play football with the guys. The NAACP hasn't endorsed him every time he's run. If you believe Tara Reade you probably shouldn't vote for him....
, American allies in the region may come to miss the more polarizing, outgoing commander-in-chief.
The Trump administration was unable to achieve its three goals of a complete withdrawal of Iranian forces from Syria, the total defeat of the Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not really Moslems....
and a political resolution in Syria, he said, but the US did manage to secure a "military stalemate" in the country that has denied gains to dictatorial president Bashir al-Assad.
&RSQUO;SHELL GAMES&RSQUO;
The former Syria envoy appeared careful at times not to give too much credit to Trump, instead lauding Pompeo for much of the administration’s policy in the Middle East.
Asked if he was pleasantly surprised by Trump’s performance as president, given the letter he signed ahead of the 2016 election and the praise he was now giving the administration’s policies, Jeffrey dodged.
"I was pleased very much to work with Mike Pompeo. I think he is a brilliant secretary of state... [who] had the faith and the trust of the president, and thus could talk [Trump] out of things and persuade the president of things," he said.
Jeffrey specified that that trust was "certainly necessary" in convincing the president to walk back initial decisions to pull American troops entirely out of Syria.
"Several times it looked like we were withdrawing our forces. That would have been a terrible mistake. But in [all] three cases... President Trump correctly reversed himself and decided to keep forces on the ground," he said.
Trump last year abruptly announced that some 1,000 US troops were leaving northeast Syria where they had kept an uneasy peace between neighboring Turkey and Kurdish fighters, who had lost thousands as they led the Western-backed operation that crushed the Islamic State group.
Amid a wrath of criticism at home and abroad, the president went on to later say that a small number of troops would remain in southern Syria to secure the oil there. Israeli officials have expressed concern that an American withdrawal would create a power vacuum in the region, allowing Iran
...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for spontaneously taking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet militias to extend the regime's influence. The word Iran is a cognate form of Aryan. The abbreviation IRGC is the same idea as Stürmabteilung (or SA). The term Supreme Guide is a the modern version form of either Duce or Führer or maybe both. They hate Jews Zionists Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol...
to expand its military entrenchment near the Israeli border.
Jeffrey made waves last month when he told the Defense One news site that he and others in the administration supportive of US presence in Syria were deliberately ambiguous in communications with senior Trump officials regarding the number of American troops in the area.
"We were always playing shell games to not make clear to our leadership how many troops we had there," he said, adding that the number remaining in Syria was "a lot more than" the 200 troops Trump agreed to leave there. The actual figure of deployed soldiers is classified.
The longtime diplomat declined to comment further on the matter now, admitting that the remarks to Defense One had gotten him into "trouble," as they were incorrectly interpreted to suggest people were deliberately passing false information to the president, which was never the case. 
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Posted by trailing wife 2020-12-06 00:00||
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Posted by Mullah Richard 2020-12-06 08:31||
2020-12-06 08:31||
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