The director of the Pentagon's Joint Staff said on Thursday that US military policy toward fighting Islamic State militants in Syria remains the same following discussions with President Donald Trump this week.

"President Trump is right about getting out of Syria, there is very little benefit from keeping 2,000 troops there, but at the same time there is enormous strategic risk", says Daniel Davis, a retired Army lieutenant colonel and now military expert at Defense Priorities, a Washington think tank that advocates a strict focus on traditional national security challenges and caution toward projection of military force.

"A lot of great work's been done in Syria", Lt. -Gen.

Regardless of exactly when the troops leave, the decision to remove them as soon as possible has forced an immediate realignment of long-term United States objectives in the country, officials said.

Then-President Barack Obama opposed any U.S. military involvement in Syria, but he then acquiesced in it as an assist to a humanitarian mission at Singar and then Kobane, Brenner recalled. They formed a key component of Trumps new Syria strategy, laid out by then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in a speech in January declaring it "vital for the United States to remain engaged in Syria".

A dominant theme in much current commentary about Trump's presidency is that, after more than a year in office, he at last feels comfortable in reverting fully to the demagogic habits and themes that characterized him as a campaigner.

He told the crowd in OH that "We are going to get back to our country, where we belong, where we want to be". He indicated earlier this week that he wanted to bring the troops home, though by Wednesday the White House was backpedaling on this, saying troops would stay. "I want to start rebuilding our nation".

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Trump also noted he'd been criticized for saying in his campaign kickoff speech that Mexico was sending rapists across the border. He repeated his unfounded and unsubstantiated claim that "millions and millions of people" voted illegally in 2016. .

Shortly before the meeting, Trump signaled that countries that want the U.S.to remain in Syria may have to pay for the continued military presence, singling out Saudi Arabia. The Saudi Embassy in Washington did not immediately comment. In fact, Trump was so critical of Obama for putting an arbitrary deadline on the 2011 Iraq withdrawal that he dubbed Obama "the founder of ISIS", arguing that Obama had signaled to al-Qaida sympathizers in Iraq that they need only wait the US out. USA forces advise the Syrian Democratic Forces, made up primarily of Kurds, which has been America's primary military partner in the fight against the Islamic State.

The president had opened the meeting with a tirade about USA intervention in Syria and the Middle East more broadly, repeating lines from public speeches in which he's denounced previous administrations for "wasting" $7 trillion in the region over the past 17 years.

That's not all. A USA withdrawal would create an Obama-style vacuum that would be filled by Iran, Hezbollah, Russia and the Assad regime.

The dominance of the PYD and YPG in northern Syria has created a region directly across Turkey's border from which the PKK can continue to threaten Turkey's security.

"Having won the war against ISIS we have to win the peace", observes national security analyst Bob Maginnis of the Family Research Council. So Obama decided, with the Islamic State apparently defeated, that it was time for the United States to come out and let Iraqis "take responsibility for their country".

The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces control about 25 percent of Syria, and the Kurds are hoping to emerge from the conflict with a degree of self-rule in their territory. The Pentagon has warned that the distraction could give IS the reprieve it needs to regroup after four years of being pummeled.