fact that it s not going to end and our withdrawal is only probably going to prolong the effort by those rebel groups to continue fighting assad. brett mcgurk, the u.s. envoy fighting isis also resigned. what have you heard about his departure? well, i ve known brett mcgurk since we started working together in iraq in 2007. and he is a dedicated public servant. and i can only imagine that this was a very difficult decision for him. but as we talk about syria and the way forward, and admiral kirby made good points, the global coalition to defeat isis isn t just about boots on the ground, they have many musions ahead of it, like countering the extreme rhetoric that isis continues to spread online. and when you think about someone like brett mcgurk, if he had to go back and talk to the 78 other countries and organizations that still comprise that coalition, he would be in a much more difficult position today, when the u.s. is withdrawing. right. we cut off stabilization
this week. who benefits if we pull out of syria or afghanistan? russia and iran, turkey to degree and isis isn t, which is not defeated. russia came in in 2015 and kept assad propped up. our own policies stated within the last month is we have three goals, stated by others than trump, three goals to get rid of iran, defeat isis and construct a political settlement. with his decision here, he s overturned all three goals without any intergovernmental process that normally would take place to sort out secondary and tertiary consequences of that. it s complete folly i think. questions surrounding why donald trump made this move. talking about vladimir putin here, nick, questions surrounding something he promised him or discussed in one-on-one meeting they had in
k k kensinger, a member of the foreign affairs committee. what was your first reaction when you heard this announcement from president trump? i didn t believe it, you know, we got indications, i was sitting eating breakfast, that this was going to happen. i thought, obviously, this was some untruth and then to see the president s tweet and to realize that, in fact, he had made a decision, i think against all his national security advisers, to leave syria immediately, i was blown away. i ll tell you, i m still speechless today. i have a lot to say on it. i sit around and i m kind of numb because the president ran saying he was going to defeat isis. isis isn t defeated. we re defeating them, but what this is going to do if the president follows through on it is double or triple the size of isis probably overnight and it s very sad. so why do you say isis hasn t been defeated? because that was his specific claim today. yeah, well, we know by numbers that there s still at least i ve
this area was my studio with big windows. reporter: this is all norma has left of the home she lived in for 30 years. a macabre reminder of the day her physical world turned to ashes. the fire was behind us. reporter: she and her family had five minutes to escape the atlas fire in fall of 2017. when they returned, it was all gone. i couldn t negotiate the loss. i couldn t negotiate the loss of a home. couldn t. reporter: across northern california, the fires in october of 2017 fueled by high winds and drought would kill 44, burn 8,900 homes and other buildings. as the burning ended, the burning question began. how did this happen? we had a number of fires that were the result of some type of ignition from power lines. reporter: cal fire investigators concluded that 17
isis isn t defeated. we re defeating them, but what this is going to do if the president follows through on it is double or triple the size of isis probably overnight and it s very sad. so why do you say isis hasn t been defeated? because that was his specific claim today. yeah, well, we know by numbers that there s still at least i ve heard some estimates as low as 2,000, and some estimates as high as 20,000 or 30,000. as long as there s one member of isis, we re going to have to continue this fight. you know, fighting terrorism is not a choice we have. it s a choice that terrorists make on our behalf. what we do have a choice about is where we fight them. do we fight them in syria? do we fight them in iraq? do we find them in their home area or do we fight them here on the streets of new york or d.c. or channahon, illinois? that s the question. if the president follows through on what he said and we leave syria, that fight is going to move somewhere else because they re not going