Senate Rebukes Trump Over Troop Withdrawals From Syria and Afghanistan.
'The Senate, in a stinging bipartisan rebuke to President Trump’s foreign policy, voted overwhelmingly to advance legislation drafted by the Senate majority leader to express strong opposition to the president’s withdrawal of U.S. military forces from Syria and Afghanistan.
The vote to cut off debate ensures that the amendment, written by Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and backed by virtually every Senate Republican, will be added to a broader bipartisan Middle East policy bill expected to easily pass the Senate next week.
The vote was the second time in two months that a Republican-led Senate had rebuked Mr. Trump on foreign policy. In December, 56 senators voted to end American military assistance for Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen in what was the strongest show of bipartisan defiance against Mr. Trump’s defense of the kingdom over the killing of a dissident journalist, Jamal Khashoggi.
This time, the vote was even more lopsided. Mr. Trump’s declaration of victory over the Islamic State provoked a swift and bipartisan backlash from Capitol Hill in December when he announced that the United States would pull 2,000 troops from Syria and 7,000 from Afghanistan. . .
The president on Thursday found some solace in an odd place, the Democratic Party. Senate liberals, many of them exploring presidential runs in 2020, including Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, voted against the measure, signaling a growing willingness in the party to question long-running conflicts. Several prospective candidates, including Ms. Warren, Mr. Sanders and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, had endorsed Mr. Trump’s decision to withdraw troops from Syria and Afghanistan.
“We’ve been in Afghanistan for a longer period than any war in American history; Syria, we’ve been there for too long and we’ve got to get out,” Mr. Sanders told reporters Thursday. “What McConnell is saying is, ‘Let’s maintain the status quo.’”'>>>
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/31/us/politics/senate-trump-syria-afghanistan.html?
