So...the author expected to own Northern Syria at the cost of 1k (50) soldiers? For my understanding, what does owning Northern Syria actually mean? What do your fellow countrymen get out of this great investment? Syria is a country. Its leader is Assad. If the Kurds in the North of Syria don’t accept that then that’s their fight. Maybe they need to pick up arms or maybe they can Kexit (doesn’t seem to work for the UK but who knows). Assad, as the leader of Syria, decides to share his North with Russia and Turkey, that’s on him. The Obama admin tried to take him own and were not able to. That’s not on Trump. The idea was ridiculous on its face at the very beginning.
Pretty valuable and an independent Kurd state in North Syria as a de facto American protectorate and client state would have given our political class great power to sell