Report: Top U.S. diplomat in Syria thinks Trump administration didn't do enough to try to stop Turkish assault

In an internal memo sent on Oct. 31, William Roebuck, the senior U.S. diplomat for northeast Syria, wrote that the Trump administration didn't do nearly enough to try to talk Turkey out of launching a military offensive against Kurds in Syria, a person familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal.

Roebuck, a former ambassador to Bahrain, sent the unclassified memo to James Jeffrey, the U.S. special envoy on Syria issues, plus officials in the White House, Pentagon, and State Department. During an Oct. 6 phone call, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told President Trump he did not want Kurds near the Syrian border. The Kurds controlled land in northeastern Syria they seized from the Islamic State, and that was too much for Erdogan, who considers them terrorists.

Following the call, Trump ordered U.S. troops near the Syrian border to move out, paving the way for Erdogan to launch a military assault. In his memo, the Journal reports, Roebuck wrote that threatening sanctions and sending more troops to the Syrian border might not have scared Erdogan, "but we won't know because we didn't try." He also accused Turkish-backed Arab fighters of carrying out "war crimes and ethnic cleansing."

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A State Department spokeswoman told the Journal the government has concerns these fighters may have killed unarmed civilians and prisoners, and "we have raised them with the highest level of the Turkish government."