Fox News Contributor Marc Thiessen: Trump Knows Syria Withdrawal Is Wrong, He ‘Castigated’ Obama For Same Mistake

Over the past week, traditionally Trump-friendly Fox News has begun to see a noticeable shift as the commander-in-chief finds himself increasingly isolated on foreign policy stances — namely his decision to withdraw troops from Syria and Afghanistan against the advice of his Department of Defense, which has led to the resignation of Secretary James Mattis.

Appearing on America’s Newsroom, Fox News contributor and fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute Marc Thiessen laid out his argument for why President Donald Trump is falling into a similar trap that former President Barack Obama made when he pulled troops out of Iraq.

“This is what Obama did in 2011 when he pulled all American troops out of Iraq, and the result was the disastrous rise of ISIS, which took over a massive caliphate the size of Great Britain and spread its tentacles around the world, carrying out its terror attacks everywhere,” Thiessen explained. “The difference is is that Obama didn’t have the benefit of hindsight — he should have seen it coming, but he didn’t. Donald Trump has the benefit of hindsight, in fact, he campaigned against Obama’s withdrawal from Iraq — remember when he called Obama the ‘founder of ISIS’… why would he now repeat Obama’s mistake?”

Thiessen went on to note that ISIS is not defeated before praising Trump for “unleashing our military to remove them from their physical caliphate.”

“He’s done that,” Thiessen said. “They no longer control territory.”

But Thiessen warned that that doesn’t mean the terrorist group is dead.

“Keep in mind in 2011, they didn’t control any territory either — according to the CIA they had about 700 fighters left in 2011 when Obama pulled out and because we pulled our boot off their necks, they rose up and developed tens of thousands of fighters and became a global terrorism network,” he said.

According to current Defense Department measures, ISIS has about 30,000 fighters in Syria and Iraq, and, according to Thiessen, are “actually more powerful now as an insurgency than they were before.”

“Taking our boot off of their necks right now will be disastrous,” he warned. “It’s the wrong decision and Donald Trump knows this because he castigated Barack Obama for the mistake he made in doing that.”

Watch above, via Fox News.