weeks or months or even longer to fully withdraw. and of course conditions can change over a period of weeks or months. as keir suggested, i don t think anybody looking at the issue seriously would have used the word defeat to talk about where we are with isis right now. and so one can imagine all sorts of scenarios between now and the time that the last u.s. military, serving military personnel step off of syrian soil. one can imagine a whole lot of things that might cause this decision to be revisited at senior levels and the white house. it reeks of mission accomplished along that battleship all over again. nick, up until yesterday, the trump white house seemed to be preaching a longer term commitment to syria. in september john bolton said quote, we re not going to leave as long as iranian troops are outside iranian borders and that includes iranian proxies and militi militias. last week special envoy said this. nobody working on these
we have done a tremendous job in syria and in that region, eradicating isis, which is why we re there, and we re very close to being finished with that job. we re going to be coming home relatively soon. we finished at least almost our work with respect to isis in syria. i want to get out. i want to bring our troops back home. i want to start rebuilding our nation. and by the way, we re knocking the hell out of isis. we ll be coming out of syria like very soon. joining me now nbc s keir simmons and nick rasmussen, former director of the national counter terrorism center. nick, thanks for being with me. keir simmons good to have you here in the flesh. you spent some time in syria. you ve spent a lot of time in that part of the world. depending on the day, we have either defeated isis or not. depending on the day, depending on perhaps the president s moon on wednesday president trump tweeting this. we have defeated isis in syria. this morning he says of russia,
is there a danger that western foreign policy, including a decision like this might fuel those grievances and create more problems for the future? yes, there is. aside from isis, one of the big questions with this is that the kurds have been a great ally to the united states, and the kurds feel as if they re being abandoned skpsabando abandoned, and that sends a bad message to others who might consider themselves u.s. allies. nick, when do these troops actually leave? i mean, there s a lack of specificity in the order. putin said they see no signs of this. in fact, they said the u.s. has been pulling out of afghanistan for 17 years and we re still there. will this actually happen? will we actually pull the troops out of syria? i suspect not right away, craig because obviously the decision yesterday was quite an abrupt one, and my suspicion is that the defense department, the relevant military commanders have not had a chance to do a detailed plan for drawing down our forces there.
issues day-to-day is complacent. nobody is declaring a mission accomplished. we have obviously learned a will the lot of lessons in the past. we can t just pick up and leave. that s nine days ago. who is the president listening to? well, i m not sure i have a great answer for you on that, craig. i mean, i think the one thing that has been pointed to in public reporting is that the president spoke recently on the phone to presidenter erdowan in turkey. the turks have been opposed to our efforts to work with the syrian kurdish forces that were actually the ground forces that dislodged isis from its callow fit. i have no doubt if that phone call took place as reported that erdogan once again ran down his list of grievances against the united states for working with the syrian kurds on this issue.
iran and syria, quote, now they will have to fight isis. so is isis defeated or do they still need to be fought? i have trouble, too, parts of syria including the kurdish control area of syria that president trump is now pulling american troops out of. the question of whether isis has been defeated, certainly it s the case that isis is a lot weaker than it was. that s plain. they controlled the whole area of land. they don t have that anymore. then again the question is has the idea of isis been defeated, and i think the answer to that is no. just remember that isis, of course, is you know, the kind of son of al qaeda. it grew out of al qaeda. in many ways it s the same idea. are the grievances that allowed a group like isis to thrive in that region still there? yes, they are.