Posted on 10/12/2019 8:31:59 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
The near consensus view of President Donald Trump’s decision to remove US special forces from the Syrian border with Turkey is that Trump is enabling a Turkish invasion and double crossing the Syrian Kurds who have fought with the Americans for five years against ISIS. Trump’s move, the thinking goes, harms US credibility and undermines US power in the region and throughout the world.
There are several problems with this narrative. The first is that it assumes that until this week, the US had power and influence in Syria when in fact, by design, the US went to great lengths to limit its ability to influence events in Syria.
The war in Syria broke out in 2011 as a popular insurrection by Syrian Sunnis against the Iranian-sponsored regime of President Bashar al Assad. The Obama administration responded by declaring US support for Assad’s overthrow. But the declaration was empty. The administration sat on its thumbs as the regime’s atrocities mounted. They supported a feckless Turkish effort to raise a resistance army dominated by jihadist elements aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood.
Obama infamously issued his “redline” regarding the use of chemical weapons against civilians by Assad, which he repudiated the moment it was crossed.
As ISIS forces gathered in Iraq and Syria, Obama shrugged them off as a “jayvee squad.” When the jayvees in ISIS took over a third of Iraqi and Syrian territory, Obama did nothing.
As Lee Smith recalled in January in the New York Post, Obama only decided to do something about ISIS in late 2014 after the group beheaded a number of American journalists and posted their decapitations on social media.
The timing was problematic for Obama.
(Excerpt) Read more at carolineglick.com ...
If you define “reason” as the US attacking Iran, which has been her recommendation every time I’ve heard her talk for years.
I’m also not sure about some of her reasoning in this piece.
In other words, the claim that the US has major influence in Syria is wrong. It does not have such influence and is unwilling to pay the price of developing such influence.
We’ve had enough influence to keep Turkey from attacking the Kurds for 5 years. Seems material to me.
Aside from ISIS’s direct victims, the major casualty of Obama’s deliberately feckless anti-ISIS campaign was the US alliance with Turkey.
She then goes on at length about how Turkey really isn’t an ally and says there’s a compelling case that the Kurds are a better partner.
She’s all over the place.
She doesn’t think we need to defend the Kurds, she doesn’t trust Turkey or Syria or Iran, and she has no prescription on how to deal with the situation beyond a full scale invasion by the US (and attacking Iran).
The hard truth is that the fifty US soldiers along the Syrian-Turkish border were a fake trip wire. Neither Trump nor the US military had any intention of sacrificing US forces to either block a Turkish invasion of Syria or foment deeper US involvement in the event of a Turkish invasion.
That’s just wrong on its face. The trip wire has worked for years and there’s no way Turkey would openly attack positions where Americans soldiers could be killed.
Apparently in the course of his phone call with Trump on Sunday, Erdogan called Trump’s bluff. Trump’s announcement following the call made clear that the US would not sacrifice its soldiers to stop Erdogan’s planned invasion of the border zone.
BS. Glick would have you believe that Erdogan told the President of the US that we had to move our troops or his forces would kill them, and POTUS caved.
I don’t think that’s Trump’s style - at least I hope not.
If the Pentagon can be brought on board, Trump’s threats can easily be used as a means to formally diminish the long hollow US alliance with Turkey.
That’s rich. It’s up to the Pentagon now but before everything was Obama’s fault?
Where was the Pentagon then?
Here it is critical to note that Trump did not remove US forces from Syria. They are still deployed along the border crossing between Jordan, Iraq and Syria to block Iran from moving forces and materiel to Syria and Lebanon.
This is the part that directly contradicts Trump’s rationale for pulling back, which was that we’re getting out.
If we’re not bringing our guys home but just leaving this part of Syria so Turkey can invade then we absolutely are stabbing the Kurds in the back.
It is to beat down threats to US and world security as they emerge and then let others – Turks, Kurds, Europeans, Russians, UN peacekeepers – maintain the new, safer status quo.
And we’ve done the diplomatic work to make sure that happens?
The best move Trump can make now in light of the fake narrative of his treachery towards the Kurds is to finally retaliate against Iran.
Surprise, surprise.
But what is clear enough is that Trump avoided war with Turkey this week.
Nonsense on stilts.
I think you’ll find that going to war with Iran is Ms. Glick’s solution to a lot of the world’s problems.
If my organization had unlimited funds I’d be pretty pissed off if they made me hide out in Northern Syria.
Something tells me the Deep State likes a few more creature comforts.
Too true - except for the fact that I’ve been watching the trends for some years, I’d be shocked at how many on FR let reality-starved emotions control them.
There is a giant fly in the ointment Caroline Glick spreads out.
Her hard links between the YPG and Iran are a fiction of hers, as is her fiction that the YPG and Assad are allies.
Iran has no real trust for any Kurds, as it has its own suppressed Kurdish minority to contend with.
If the YPG and Assad were even on “friendly” terms, Assad would not have suppressed them forever, in the past, until his country was destabilized by a fight that Erdogan was supporting, against Assad.
It is clear that the Pentagon is the organization that sits opposed to major changes in U.S. long term strategic policy. Not surprised there, it has always been the most resistant to change. It prefers the knowns and hates having to figure out how to go with a paradigm change.
As ISIS forces gathered in Iraq and Syria, Obama shrugged them off as a “jayvee squad.” When the jayvees in ISIS took over a third of Iraqi and Syrian territory, Obama did nothing. As Lee Smith recalled in January in the New York Post, Obama only decided to do something about ISIS in late 2014 after the group beheaded a number of American journalists and posted their decapitations on social media.
The Partisan Media Shills, without fail, carry Zero's water. Why were fighting ISIS in the first place? Thanks Tolerance Sucks Rocks.
We owe the Kurds nothing. We couldn’t possibly have betrayed them.
If that’s accurate, the Kurds sound like treacherous douchebags.
Maybe. But sure as sh*t, they’d watch Buck Rogers.
That’s why they made a deal with Assad...right?
The Kurds hve fought with us against the Islamofascists, and they have been protecting Christians, Yazidis, and other victims of the jihadis.
Erdogan is an Islamofascist aligned with Russia and Iran. He is an enemy of the US and the Wet, despite Turkey’s membership in NATO.
I’m not sure Erdogan will let us just stand aside. I think he wants a fight with the US, which will draw Russia and Iran into the fight to support him, and then he intends to invoke Article 5 and try to get NATO to fight us. The Islamists WANT a world war to hasten the arrival of the Twelfth Imam.
If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.
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The Kurds would disagree, but then they're not our problem
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