Senior National Security Council, Pentagon, and State Department officials had no advance warning of the president’s decision on the phone with Erdogan to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria in anticipation of Turkey’s invasion. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley were suddenly forced to execute the wishes of a foreign autocrat. At 3:00 a.m. in Syria, a senior U.S. official contacted General Mazloum Abdi, the commander of their Kurdish brothers-in-arms, the Syrian Democratic Forces, to ask him to join an important video teleconference with an
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