Ex-US General In Afghanistan Calls Trump 'immoral, Dishonest'

NEW YORK, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 31st Dec, 2018 ) :A former US four-star general who once led American forces in Afghanistan, criticized President Donald Trump on Sunday, saying he considers Trump "immoral" and wouldn't work in his administration because of concerns about his honesty.

"It's important for me to work for people who are basically honest," Gen. (rtd) Stanley McChrystal said on ABC's news show: This Week. asked McChrystal, who resigned as the head of U.S. forces in Afghanistan in 2010 after a Rolling Stone profile in which he and his aides criticized the "Do you think he's a liar?" the former top general was asked by anchorman George Stephanopoulos.

"I don't think he tells the truth," McChrystal responded.

"Is Trump immoral, in your view?" he was asked. "I think he is," he said.

McChrystal said that contrary to Trump's claim, ISIS/Da'esh has not yet been defeated."I don't believe ISIS is defeated. I think ISIS is as much an idea as it is a number of ISIS fighters. There's a lot of intelligence that says there are actually more ISIS fighters around the world now than there were a couple of years ago," he said.

President Trump tweeted this month that "we have defeated ISIS in Syria" and abruptly announced plans to withdraw all U.S. forces from that country, against the counsel of his top advisers.

The decision - along with Trump's directive days later to withdraw nearly half of the more than 14,000 troops deployed to Afghanistan - prompted the resignation of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis.

McChrystal, who recently wrote a book on leadership, on Sunday praised Mattis as "selfless" and "committed" and said his departure should give Americans pause. He also decried Trump's decision on Afghanistan, saying it effectively traded away U.

S. leverage against the Taliban and "rocked (the Afghan people) in their belief that we are allies that can be counted on." McChrystal has been outspoken in his criticism of Trump earlier, as well. Last month, when the president pushed back against criticism from retired Admiral .William McRaven by saying the decorated Navy SEAL and Special Operations commander should have caught Osama bin Laden more quickly, McChrystal rallied to McRaven's defense, saying there has to be a "confidence" in the "basic core values" of the country's leaders.

Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican, one of Trump's closest allies on Capitol Hill, said Sunday that he was having lunch with the president and would try to get him to reconsider his decision to withdraw troops from Syria.

"I'm asking the president to make sure we have troops there to protect us," Graham said on CNN's "State of the Union." In Sunday's interview, McChrystal said he would decline if asked to work in the Trump administration, citing what he described as the president's lack of honesty.

"I'd say no. It's important for me to work for people who I think are basically honest, who tell the truth as best they know it," the retired general said.

McChrystal added that although he couldn't tell others not to support Trump, Americans should ask themselves whether the president embodies the country's values.

"If we want to be governed by someone we wouldn't do a business deal with because their background is so shady - if we're willing to do that, then that's in conflict with who I think we are," he said. "And so I think it's necessary at those times to take a stand."