Vice President Mike Pence is back in Washington after a whirlwind visit to Iraq over the weekend.
Besides bringing Thanksgiving cheer to American soldiers, Pence consulted with Iraqi and Kurdish officials in the wake of violent demonstrations in Iraq and the withdrawal of U.S. troops from northern Syria.
In a trip that was not announced ahead of time for security reasons, Pence slipped into Irbil, capital of Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdish region, in a U.S. military C-17 on Saturday.
There, Pence met with Kurdistan President Nechirvan Barzani, who had nothing but praise for President Trump, according to an official transcript released by the White House.
“Thank you again, on behalf of all of the communities in the Kurdistan region, for the effort and support that the United States military provided in our fight against ISIS,” Barzani said. “We hope that you convey our sincere gratitude and thanks to President Trump.”
For his part, Pence said he wanted to convey, on behalf of Trump, “the strong bonds, forged in the fires of war, between the people of the United States and the Kurdish people across this region.”
“Because of the courage of our armed forces and the courage of the Peshmerga and our Kurdish allies in Syria, we were able to capture the last inch of territory controlled by ISIS in Syria,” he said. “And this would not have been possible without the extraordinary alliance and partnership between the Kurdish people and the people of the United States.”
Later, Pence told reporters traveling with him that he didn’t sense any feeling of betrayal by the Kurdish leader, despite Trump’s decision last month to abandon territory that had been held by the Kurds in northern Syria, which is now under Turkish and Russian control.
“I don’t think there was any confusion now among the leadership here in the Kurdish region that President Trump’s commitment to our allies here in Iraq, as well as to those in the Syrian Defense Forces, the Kurdish forces who fought alongside us, is unchanging,” Pence said. “I could tell, in speaking to President Barzani and his team, that they know the American people are with them.”
