Susan Rice tells Stephen Colbert why Trump is 'batsh-t crazy' to abandon the Syrian Kurds

Susan Rice, who served as President Barack Obama's national security adviser for four years, was Stephen Colbert's guest on Monday's Late Show, and he began by asking for her thoughts on President Trump's late-Sunday decision to pull back U.S. troops from Kurdish-held northern Syria, allowing Turkey to invade and presumably crush America's Kurdish allies. She had thoughts.

"This is batsh-t crazy," Rice began. The Syrian Kurds "are the people who for the last four years have been fighting on our behalf, with our equipment, to defeat ISIS. And they have done it with enormous efficacy and they've sacrificed immensely, and we've basically just said to them, 'See ya.'" The Turks, she added, "are like the hungry wolf trying to kill the lamb," but "Trump woke up on the wrong side of the bed, it appears," and he decided to give Turkey the green light, "which is why, finally, the Republicans in Congress have gotten a pulse today."

Rice said Trump "seems to be trying to couch this in 'We've been at war too long, you know, I'm sick and tired of all this, somebody else should take up the burden, bye.'" Colbert said Trump's forever-wars argument isn't a bad one, and Rice pointed out that this isn't one of those wars, and in this case, America has "very smartly" let "these very brave Kurdish allies" do the fighting while U.S. troops offer advice and support.

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"That's a smart way to fight terrorism," Rice said, but after Trump's decision, "the problem is, ISIS is still there, and when they come back, and when those prisoners that the Kurds have been holding on our collective behalf, get released, supposedly into Turkish hands, those are terrorists that are going to come back and try to harm us and try to harm our European allies."

Rice also recounted a time she got tough on Obama, though "tough" is pretty subjective here. Watch below. Peter Weber