---
title: "‘A Complete Reversal Of Policy’: Departing US Envoy For Anti-ISIS Fight Rebukes Trump Over Syria Withdrawal"
date: "2018-12-22"
modified: "2018-12-22"
authors:
  - name: "Jared Keller"
    job_title: "Former Managing Editor"
    link: "https://taskandpurpose.com/authors/jaredkeller/"
url: "https://taskandpurpose.com/news/brett-mcgurk-email-trump-syria/"
categories:
  - "News"
tags:
  - "ISIS"
---

# ‘A Complete Reversal Of Policy’: Departing US Envoy For Anti-ISIS Fight Rebukes Trump Over Syria Withdrawal

![](<https://taskandpurpose.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/19044576-1.jpg>)

Brett McGurk, the top Trump administration envoy to the global anti-ISIS coalition who abruptly tendered his resignation on Friday following President Donald Trump's surprise decision to withdraw all U.S. troops from Syria, blasted the Trump's sudden about-face in an email to colleagues on Saturday, the New York Times [reports](<https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/22/world/brett-mcgurk-isis-resign.html>).

- “The recent decision by the president came as a shock and was a complete reversal of policy that was articulated to us,” McGurk, who the Times described as "considered by many to be the glue holding together" the [Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS,](<https://www.state.gov/s/seci/c72810.htm>) he [wrote](<https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/22/world/brett-mcgurk-isis-resign.html>) in his email. "It left our coalition partners confused and our fighting partners bewildered."
- “I worked this week to help manage some of the fallout but — as many of you heard in my meetings and phone calls — I ultimately concluded that I could not carry out these new instructions and maintain my integrity," McGurk [added](<https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/22/world/brett-mcgurk-isis-resign.html>).
- McGurks' scathing condemnation of Trump's quixotic approach to the current U.S. involvement in the anti-ISIS campaign in Syria came just one day after Secretary of Defense James Mattis submitted his own letter of resignation vocally objecting to the president's sudden pivot.
- Unlike Mattis, Trump did not directly address McGurk's departure, [writing](<https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1076515352249597954?ref_src=twsrc%255Egoogle%257Ctwcamp%255Eserp%257Ctwgr%255Etweet>) on Twitter on Saturday afternoon that, "when I became President, ISIS was going wild ... Now ISIS is largely defeated and other local countries, including Turkey, should be able to easily take care of whatever remains.”

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![](<https://taskandpurpose.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/image-placeholder-title-615.png>)

## Author
Jared Keller is the former managing editor of Task & Purpose. His writing has appeared in Aeon, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the New Republic, Pacific Standard, Smithsonian, and The Washington Post, among other publications.

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