Donald Trump came face-to-face last week with the consequences of the horrific war in Syria. He also should have been forced to face the folly of his misguided policy to withdraw troops from an area that obviously still needs American support.

The president traveled to the Air Force base in Dover, Del., to receive the flag-draped caskets of four Americans, including a St. Louis contractor who was a former Navy SEAL. The four had been killed in a suicide bombing at a restaurant popular among U.S. personnel in war-torn Syria.

The St. Louis victim, Scott Andrew Wirtz, a decorated SEAL and operations support specialist with the Defense Intelligence Agency, was admired by family members and friends for his strong patriotism and desire to serve his country in the fight against the Islamic State. Among his many decorations was the Secretary of Defense Medal for the Global War on Terrorism.

The tragic deaths of Wirtz and the other three Americans amounted to the deadliest assault on U.S. troops since American forces entered the country in 2015 as part of a coalition of opposition forces seeking to oust Syrian President Bashar Assad from power.

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson spoke for the entire state when he said of the killing of Wirtz: “Scott died bravely serving our nation in a dangerous part of the world and for that we are grateful.” 

He asked all Missourians to join in prayer for Wirtz’s family and “other brave men and women that are serving our country.”

We are indeed grateful to Scott Wirtz and his comrades who died when a suicide bomber detonated an improvised explosive device in Mabij, Syria. The attack came in an area where anti-Assad troops, with major support from Kurdish fighters and the 2,000 U.S. forces in Syria, have been fighting the Islamic State for control of the enclave. Islamic State, or ISIS, took responsibility for the deadly attack.

The attack came amid a strong backlash against Trump’s impromptu, misguided decision to withdraw the U.S. troops from Syria, a decision he made during a telephone conversation with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who considers the brave Kurdish fighters to be terrorists. Trump’s decision to withdraw troops prompted Defense Secretary James Mattis to resign along with Brett McGurk, the former special presidential envoy for the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS.

Almost immediately, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and John Bolton, the national security adviser, tried to walk back Trump’s withdrawal decision, but their hasty trip to the Middle East, designed to reassure our allies in the region, only added to the confusion.

Bolton indicated that the United States had received assurances from Erdogan that he would not order an attack on the U.S.-allied Kurdish forces in the Syrian enclave. But almost before the words were out of Erdogan’s  mouth, the Turkish foreign minister said that no such promise had been made.

During his campaign for the White House, Trump promised to withdraw remaining U.S. troops from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. But that promise does not justify the poorly planned decision to pull troops out before their mission to stabilize their area of control has been achieved. Yes, Trump authorized U.S. forces to destroy the ISIS “caliphate,” which possessed a swath of land as large as the state of Indiana. But defeat of the caliphate, while a major victory, did not eliminate ISIS as a movement or as a continued threat.

Mideast observers speculate that last week’s terrorist attack is a sign that ISIS has now retreated to its former tactic of terrorist bombings of smaller or softer targets. That threat has only increased since the caliphate was defeated.

As far back as 2003, then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld pointedly asked, “Are we capturing, killing or dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and replying against us?” 

Rumsfeld advanced the idea that even though the United States can deplete the ranks of terrorist groups like ISIS or al-Qaida, they can quickly attract new recruits.

Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a Republican who generally supports Trump, traveled to Turkey over the weekend to meet with Erdogan. There, according to a New York Times story by Carlotta Gall, Graham “called for a slower, smarter withdrawal of American forces from Syria to avoid setting off a broader war and a nightmare for Turkey.”

“I can understand the desire to withdraw, but withdrawal without a plan is chaos. It would be Iraq on steroids,” Graham said, referring to how ISIS gained power after the withdrawal of U.S. forces from that country in 2011.

Graham offered support for a plan advanced by Gen. Joseph F. Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, under which American forces would maintain control of the airspace in eastern Syria. Under the proposal, other international forces could continue support for the Syrian Democratic Forces, along with solid protection for the brave Kurdish fighters.

Wirtz, a true American hero, paid the ultimate sacrifice while serving to help combat terrorism and the brutal regime of Bashar Assad. Instead of impulsive phone-chat deals with Turkey, Trump needs to start making decisions based on advice from wiser members of his administration, to assure that Wirtz and his fellow victims will not have died in vain.