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Caroline is such a voice of reason when all is said and done.

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.