Posted on 10/12/2019 7:39:46 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
President Trump’s decision to withdraw our few troops from the Syria-Turkey border area earned him considerable criticism from allies. Senator Lindsey Graham said the decision is “a catastrophe in the making.” Representative Lin Cheney said it’s “a catastrophic mistake.” Former UN Secretary Nikki Haley said, “We must always have the backs of our allies.”
President Trump has answered these critics. The Kurds were engaged in a contractual relationship fighting the Islamic State (ISIS). They were well paid and equipped for their fighting, much like any mercenary group. Further, they were given three years to consolidate eastern Syria to feed their long-held desire to form an independent Kurdistan with other Kurds in Turkey, Iraq, and Iran. They failed.
The Kurds’ problem, and by association that of the U.S., is that regional powers like Turkey and to a lesser extent Iran and Syria have long held the Kurds in disdain. In fact, Turkey considers the Syrian Kurds to be allies of the Kurdistan Workers' Party or (PKK), which are Turkish Kurds and terrorists fighting for independence for the last 35 years.
Basically, the Kurds hijacked our fight with ISIS to feed their regional civil war to earn independence.
President Trump is aware of that agenda and is also trying to constrain American hawks who want to use our military willy-nilly across the world. Remember that Trump frequently said during his 2016 campaign that he wants to escape from endless wars and bring our fighters home.
Also, we need to ask ourselves whether the withdrawal of few American troops really matters in the conflict either against ISIS, and did it really grant the Turkish government the “green light” to attack “terrorist” Kurds? Perhaps. The Syrian civil war which led to the rise of ISIS is over and the bloody dictator in Damascus won,
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Thanks for posting.
Senator Lindsey Graham said the decision is “a catastrophe in the making.”
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Criticism from Graham usually means you’re doing the right thing.
The Syrian civil war was planned by the West and did not lead to the “rise’ of ISIS, Bush and obama policy failures in Iraq led to the rise of ISIS, The US military released the elusive mysterious leader of ISIS from an Iraq war prisoner camp,
ISIS became a sharp instrument the Clinton/ obama State Department and perhaps “ other” nations thought could be used to tear Syria apart and hobble an Assad-Russian defeat of Western backed regime change, The barbaric cruelties of ISIS were of less concern than toppling Assad.
My two cents, Ashamed the US military was used this way before Trump
Bflr.
Thanks for the insightful comments.
Trump was right — he was left a mess by Obama.
This is a well written article on the Kurd situation in Syria.
President Trumps policy is accurate and one must remember that the Kurdish fight has been going on for over 100 years. Also Most Kurds are Sunni while the Iranians and much of the rest of Syria are Shiite.
The Kurds have a successful, great enclave in Northern Iraq, which is where they all should go to balance the Shiite influence in Iraq.
The Turks want control of the oil pipeline which comes up through Syria into Turkey, upon which the Turkish economy relies.Once that is secured, they will likely leave the Kurds to their own devices.
The extended problem will be when Iran and Russia start arming the Kurds to fight Turkey, keeping the region at instability for their own purposes of cutting off the oil supply to Turkey and the West. Ame4rica makes a lot of oil now, and doesn’t care as much as the EU should.
It’s sick. These critics can pay attention to what’s going on on our own southern border.
They can also go to a greet the dead ceremony at Dover AFB
From my perspective we went the desert to get Hussein ot of Kuwait. That was a stretch. Cheney, ghwbush, Powell James Baker
The deal would be that we stop depending on the oil in the region so we would never have to be involved with those wackos again. First hand, I experienced the hatred those people have for us. And that’s the “allies” I’m talking about.
But that administration and the following, Clinton, administration increases our dependence on them and their oil by over 50%
Wha?
No war for oil. That wasn’t just a leftist hippie I hate republicans poster.
It took Trump to get us away from that dependence and out of fighting in the region.
The Syrian Kurds ok. Well maybe Liz Cheney can go over there. See how she can help them out. Bow to the saudis. Stop by Walter reed on her way out
“The Syrian civil war which led to the rise of ISIS is over and the bloody dictator in Damascus won...”
” For our national interests, we too must “mind to keep” our powder dry and not squander our resources on others’ wars. Let’s put Syria in the rearview mirror.”
Good article.
Amen to that.
I don’t give a Shiite
> Bush and obama policy failures in Iraq led to the rise of ISIS <
I put most of the blame for this mess on George W. Bush. ISIS operated out of western Iraq and eastern Syria. Saddam Hussain never, ever would have allowed that.
Bush did ISIS a big favor by getting rid of Saddam. Just like Carter did the mullahs a big favor by getting rid of the Shah.
Bush and Carter, the best you can say about them is that they naively ignored the law of unintended consequences. But I would not be so kind. I consider them both fools whose meddling made ugly situations much, much worse.
Understand that US refineries cannot process the US light or West Texas Crude. The refineries were built for heavy crude from the ME. We still need that oil, until such time as new light crude refineries are built ... somewhere in the US. Problem is no one wants a refinery built near them.
With Obama it could be assumed that most of what he did was based on fear and ignorance. With Trump the opposite is true. I believe he can be trusted.
It’s nice to see a rational case supporting Trump’s actions. The media makes this out to be like we left the Brits stranded on the beaches of Normandy after we got tired of the fight. The truth is Turkey was coming in with or without our approval, and unless we wanted to get into a fight with a NATO ally over some scraps of sand in a worthless country, our best bet was to get clear of the unfolding disaster.
Heck, if this was such an obvious abandonment of allies, why didn’t the French or British or the EU or UN rush in to block Turkey? The cold hard truth is that it was all posturing and bluster by people complaining about this. In war, allied troops shift and cede occupied territory with other allies all the time. Granted, Turkey isn’t a model country, but it is our ally. We are in a mutual defense treaty with them. Getting into a scuffle with them over this would be the height of wasted American resources, including the lives of our men and women in uniform.
Trump acted rationally, and I would add he got the added benefit of putting Democrats on the side for wanting to keep up the endless wars.
All that said, Trump might have done the PR side a little bit better, or moved our troops out well ahead of the Turks, rather than the day before, but I trust he knows more than I do on this, so my criticism is minimal. As long as my son doesn’t have to fight as a proxy in someone else’s civil war...
I dont see Russia or Iran “ arming” the Kurds esp vs Turkey, but working together on a regional plan with Turkey to create a cordon sanitaire along the recognized border and working out some degree of autonomy in the Syrian Kurd areas, as long as the Kurds agree to keep fighting ISIS and al Qaeda, and accept being part of Assads Syria... and stop being used by the West to lead a resistance force vs Assad, ie the “ SDF”
This will take Russian diplomacy because the Syrians see the Kurds as disloyal, and the Turks seem them as enemies
The Kurds need to get serious about their real prospects and real Western support for an independent Kurdistan carved out of resource rich areas of Syria, Iraq, Turkey and Iran,
Not. Gonna. Happen.
Trump is the first honest POTUS.
We owe the Kurds protection from real genocide ( delivered in Iraq) and support for continued ops vs ISIS. But we dont owe them a chunk of Turkey Syria Iraq and Iran, and American lives, to establish an independent nation,
I’m not from the US but I have been a Trump supporter up till now. I understand why he pulled US troops out, but it was a very cynical move that could have waited another 12 months. Turkey with Erdogan at the helm will slaughter as many Kurds as possible, and they are one of the few genuine moderates in that region.
Trump has betrayed these allies and many of them will die as a result of his decision. I can’t think of any reasonable justification for this other than saving a few dollars. The Isis prisoners were all celebrating the news of the Turkish invasion. They know Erdogan is on their side. His son was buying oil from them and funding their jihad.
I expected Trump to value loyalty. Erdogan is one of the biggest forces of evil in the region and Trump has given him a green light to slaughter these people.
“The (US)refineries were built for heavy crude from the ME”
Saudi crude is very light.
Our refineries for heavy crude are more for the Venezuelan product.
Just how big is the Kurdish lobby in our country to get so many politicians to support them? Who supplies the Kurdish lobbying resources? How many pictures do we have to see of dead/wounded Kurdish babies before we realize that Americans are being played for suckers. Let The EU and ME take care of politics/war fighting in their back yard and we will focus on our own hemisphere for a while.
According to this article, the Kurds were well paid mercenaries, rather than allies. Turkey is an actual NATO ally.
OK here is what is happening in Syria. We have 50 troops there plus some weapons makers who are testing weapons in limited live combat conditions. We are keeping this little war going, not to protect the Kurds, but to test military AI. We are literally running product tests for American AI weapons that are being tested on the Turks and Syrians.
This is not a real war. Its a limited battle that we keep going. It’s whole purpose is a test lab. Its like a war game. But in this case its live, so there are real casualties.
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