just the opposite. eric: with the army for 33 years including service in iraq and afghanistan. general, first, thank you for your service. it s a great country to serve, eric. thank you very much. eric: that, sir, it is. however, we have this situation. just heard the defense secretary say no one green lighted this operation. but that s not the impression that they re reporting, they blame president trump for moving those 50 or so special ops away from the border and giving erdogan a green light to conduct what some fear could be a genocide and a mass slaughter of the brave and courages kurds who are fighting against terrorism. how can this be turned around? well, we had three objectives. the objectives were to be a buffer between the kurds and the turks. we also wanted the kurds assistance in deterring and keeping isis down. and then finally, wanted can security for the 11,000 prisoners, isis prisoners that have been taken. when we pulled those soldiers
democrats to be a little smarter, the democratic challenges to be smarter next time and not spend all of their energy attacking barack obama because joe biden will waltz he will waltz to the nomination as long as attacking barack obama is their strategy. for many reasons. still ahead, while president trump has hailed a total defeat of isis, a new report blames the troop withdrawal for the resurgence. we ll talk to a correspondent for vice news who spent years covering the islamic state. we have david ignatius who has been to syria on several occasions also talking about what he saw over there and some of the growing concerns that he heard firsthand when he was in syria with americans who were fighting to keep isis down. you re watching morning joe. we ll be right back. wn you re watching morning joe. we ll be right back. it s time for the biggest sale of the year on the
last night. the job is in a clearing stage. u.s. military strikes made this job possible and there is a lot of gratitude from people on the ground about that. you see signs of us air power here everywhere. president trump told the u.s. military to take the gloves off to defeat isis. that s what they did. the result can be seen all around me. troops here are bringing the black flag of isis down. it no longer flies over this town. for a short time they can enjoy this moment. there is no sign of any of the isis leaders. it is believed they have fled perhaps into western iraq. the critical piece now is stabilizing this region and making sure they can never return. once they ruled over 8 million people. today for now at least they re gone. back to you. jon: spectacular reporting benjamin hall. very good job by the u.s. forces and everybody who helped get rid of that group.
but an ability to monitor, gather intelligence, listen to the fighters, ensure that the kurds who bore the brunt of this fighting are protected from turkey and allowed to continue to exist and ensure that isis cannot work with iraq and keep them logistically supplied and trained to keep a pulse on things that are going because it will only be to intelligence that we will conduct the precision strike necessary to keep isis down. are you concerned about the influence of russia and iran in that area? absolutely. i have been for years. a lot of people in the intelligence and military communities worry about the expansion of iran into the area. they are surrounding the countries there that have been our allies and friends.
confrontation or conflict with the united states. i think from our perspective, we re going to focus on taking isis down. the pentagon has submitted plans for that. the president has approved the plans. we ll see the manifestation of that unfold in the next number of weeks. he s not going to tell us how or when he s doing it. it will unfold and the media will start reporting on it. in terms of the overall strategy object syria, let s be frank about it. there s nothing easy here. this is by and large an intractable situation. we squandered all the opportunities, shep, to do something favorable here for the syrian people over the last five or six years. we are out of options. i think safe zones still make some sense because it would be a way to get some of these syrian people away from these bombs that are going to fall on them, conventional bombs and artillery. we can protect them with international forces to do something.