Sen. Rand Paul Thursday lauded President Donald Trump's decision to pull U.S. troops from Syria, while saying he does not think the surprise move was made to put the money toward border enforcement in the United States.
"I think we have won the war against ISIS and taken back 99 percent of the land,' the Kentucky Republican, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told Fox News' "America's Newsroom." "We spent trillions of dollars. Should the Iraqis defend their territory and the Kurds defend their territory? Absolutely. We should not always have to fight everyone else's battle and pay for it."
But while Paul said he doesn't think the move was made for US border security, "I advised the president that we're spending $50 billion a year and we should declare victory, come home from Afghanistan, and that money would be and could be used for the wall."
Trump's move, meanwhile, is "exactly what he promised the American people," said Paul.
The decision to pull out should have been made five years ago "when we started supporting jihadists," he added.
"Hillary Clinton was a big supporter of the radical Islamists, the people for violent jihad in Syria," said Paul. "They were no better than Assad but Hillary Clinton and [Barack] Obama got us involved in that Syrian war."
The United States' original goal was to defeat ISIS and "we did," said Paul. "The people who live there need to stand up and keep ISIS from reorganizing. We have people struggling in our country to make a living, struggling on bad roads and bad schools. Let's take care of America first."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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