President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw U.S. special operations forces in advance of a Turkish offensive into northeastern Syria continues to roil the region. Gayle Tzemach Lemmon of the Council on Foreign Relations, Nick Danforth of the German Marshall Fund, and Sam Heller of the International Crisis Group join the show to help us understand why this happened, how it affected people on the ground, and what happens next in this long-running civil war. We also preview a WarCast with Aaron Stein of the Foreign Policy Research Institute on the death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed caliph of the self-proclaimed Islamic State.

Further reading and listening:

Aaron Stein, "U.S. Officials Ignored Trump on Syria and Now We're All Paying the Price"

Sam Heller, "America In Search of an Un-Geneva for Syria"

Nick Danforth, Doug Ollivant, Elizabeth Saunders, and Ryan Evans, "Mayhem and Misadventures in the Middle East"