US sends more forces to Mideast while Trump vows withdrawal

Bloomberg

The Pentagon said it’s ramping up the deployment of US forces to the Middle East to “assure and enhance the defense of Saudi Arabia” against Iran at the same time President Donald Trump has vowed to start bringing troops home from the region.
Combined with other recent deployments, about 3,000 personnel are being sent or having their missions extended in the Mideast, according to the Pentagon. Since May, an additional 14,000 US personnel are in the region, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said.
“Saudi Arabia at my request has agreed to pay us for everything we’re doing — that’s a first,” Trump told reporters, without elaborating on terms for such reimbursement.
The deployment to Saudi Arabia comes as Trump and his top aides defend his decision to pull back some US forces in northern Syria, a move that cleared the way for Turkey to send its forces into the country and attack American-allied Kurdish militias. Esper, speaking to reporters at the Pentagon, said most US troops remain “co-located” with Kurdish-led forces in northern Syria.
“We are not abandoning our Kurdish partner forces,” Esper said at a briefing alongside Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Mark Milley.

‘Endless Wars’
The latest deployment appeared at odds with statements Trump has made repeatedly in recent days about pulling US forces out of “endless wars” in the Mideast.
“It’s time to bring them home,” Trump said at a rally in Minneapolis. “We’ve done our job, we’ve defeated everyone that we’re supposed to defeat.”
The Trump administration’s combination of moves in the Middle East drew sharp criticism by House Armed Services Chairman Adam Smith.
“In less than a week’s time, the president managed to allow the Turks to displace tens of thousands of people in Syria, further destabilising the region, while promising to deploy an additional two thousand troops to Saudi Arabia, in a misguided effort to deter Iran,” the Democrat from Washington state said.
Esper and Milley said they’ve told their Turkish counterparts that they oppose Ankara’s attacks in northern Syria and said the US never “green-lighted” the operation despite the White House announcement that American troops “would no longer be in the immediate area” if Turkey moved into Syria. Amid denunciations, including from many Republican lawmakers, Trump later said he had warned Turkey that the incursion was “a bad idea.”
Esper and Milley are likely to face tough questioning on whether Trump served as an enable for Turkey’s incursion when they testify in a closed session of the Senate Armed Services Committee next Thursday on “The Situation in Syria and the Wider Region.”