The government spending bill expected to pass Congress this week would require President Trump to submit a plan to defeat the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and outline his strategy for the civil war in Syria.<\/p>\n
Lawmakers have been asking for Trump\u2019s Syria strategy since he decided to launch 59 cruise missiles at Syrian air field last month. That bombing, the first direct U.S. military intervention in the civil war, was in retaliation for a chemical weapons attack against civilians that U.S. officials say was carried out by forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad.<\/p>\n
Since the bombing, administration officials have given conflicting statements on their Syria strategy.<\/p>\n
The bill would also require the president to submit a broader Syria strategy 90 days after it passes.<\/p>\n
That strategy would have to include a description of U.S. political and military objectives toward the Syrian government, U.S. and multilateral efforts to address the needs of Syrian civilians, U.S. efforts to engage regional and international partners to achieve the objectives and efforts undertaken by any relevant agencies to achieve the objectives.<\/p>\n
While no funds would be withheld while the Syria report is pending, some $2.5 billion for the fight against ISIS hinges on the submission of Trump’s plan to defeat the terror group.<\/p>\n
Trump signed an executive action in January asking the Pentagon to delivery a new counter-ISIS strategy in 30 days.<\/p>\n
The Pentagon provided the White House its initial review within that timeframe, but the strategy has yet to be finalized. Defense Secretary James Mattis said April 11 the strategy \u201chas been put in skeleton form\u201d and that \u201cit’s being fleshed out now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Under the spending bill, $2.5 billion would be withheld until 15 days after the president delivers Congress an ISIS strategy.<\/p>\n
The strategy would need to include a description of U.S. objectives, the roles of the Pentagon and the State Department, an estimate of needed resources and benchmarks used to measure success, among other aspects.<\/p>\n
The Pentagon and the State Department would then have to provide Congress an update every 90 days.<\/p>\n
Congress is expected to have the votes to win approval of the broad $1 trillion spending package, which would prevent the government from shutting down, at the end of this week.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Source:\u00a0<\/strong><\/em> thehill.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The government spending bill expected to pass Congress this week would require President Trump to submit a plan to defeat the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and outline his strategy for the civil war in Syria. Lawmakers have been asking for Trump\u2019s Syria strategy since he decided to launch 59 cruise missiles at Syrian air field last month. That… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=599"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":600,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599\/revisions\/600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}