President Trump's abrupt and unilateral decision to pull all U.S. troops from Syria and half of American forces in Afghanistan has managed to unite left and right in opposition, even among people on both sides who broadly favor withdrawing from both countries. In Iraq on Wednesday, Trump told U.S. service members he has no plans to remove U.S. troops from that country too. Ironically, however, his brief and secret visit to the al-Asad airbase, especially his protocol-breaching failure to meet with Iraq's prime minister, "has infuriated Iraqi politicians who on Thursday demanded the withdrawal of U.S. forces," The Associated Press reports.
Trump's trip "came as curbing foreign influence in Iraqi affairs has become a hot-button political issue in Baghdad," AP says, and "officials from both sides of Iraq's political divide" — the nationalist Islah bloc aligned with cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and the pro-Iran Binaa bloc plus its allied militias — are now "calling for a vote in Parliament to expel U.S. forces from the country." U.S. forces withdrew from Iraq in 2011 to end the post-2003 occupation, then returned at Iraq's invitation in 2014 to help combat the Islamic State, a partnership that continues four years later.
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