Is Trump Rethinking Abandoning The Kurds?

We’ve had more than 36 hours to absorb the news that President Trump was pulling our troops out of the way of an anticipated Turkish incursion into northern Syria. (And possibly out of the country entirely.) The response has been rapid and generally brutal across the board. Has any of this sunk in with the President yet, potentially leading him to reconsider this decision? As of last night, it certainly didn’t sound like it. (Associated Press)

“I held off this fight for almost 3 years, but it is time for us to get out of these ridiculous Endless Wars, many of them tribal, and bring our soldiers home,” he wrote, adding that, “WE WILL FIGHT WHERE IT IS TO OUR BENEFIT, AND ONLY FIGHT TO WIN.” He said it will now be up to the region to decide what to do with captured IS fighters, and warned of retribution in response to any future attacks.
“We are 7000 miles away and will crush ISIS again if they come anywhere near us!” he wrote.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has threatened for months to launch the military operation across the Syrian border. He views the Kurdish forces as a threat to his country. Republicans and Democrats have warned that allowing the Turkish attack could lead to a massacre of the Kurds and send a troubling message to American allies across the globe.

But at the same time that the tweetstorm was brewing, US News reported that an anonymous “senior administration official” said America is “not removing its forces from Syria in the face of a Turkish incursion.” The official went on to say that Trump had simply ordered approximately fifty special forces troops to relocate to “a different part of the country.”

But that’s sort of a distinction without a difference, isn’t it? If the expected Turkish assault is only going to move fewer than twenty miles into Syrian territory (as Erdogan intimated) and we’re pulling our troops to the south, that’s still “removing our forces” from the expected field of battle. Still, this apparent contradiction in the messaging makes me wonder if an extra night to sleep on it has the President reconsidering the plan.

I have no doubt that President Trump isn’t losing any sleep over the Washington Post’s comments about his “stunning ignorance” of the situation in Syria. He probably takes it as a badge of honor. But some of the other people weighing in must surely carry a bit more weight with him.

Two of the louder voices in Washington who are opposing this policy shift are Lindsay Graham and Cocaine Mitch. I’m not suggesting that Trump takes his marching orders directly from them (or anyone, for that matter) but he’s surely aware that if the Democrats move forward with impeachment, those will be two people he needs leading his defense in the Senate trial to follow. And they’re hardly alone. Elected officials and conservative media figures across the board are freaking out at this point, moreso than they have been over most any other controversial decision coming out of this White House.

The President is describing this as yet another campaign promise he’s keeping. Fair enough, but it’s not being done intelligently. Trump’s constant goal since taking office has been to keep his base revved up and solidly behind him. But those Republicans screaming most loudly about the abandonment of the Kurds were elected by that base. What few defenses of this decision I’ve seen thus far have been luke-warm and watered down at best.

If Erdogan’s forces come blasting into the border region this week and begin slaughtering the Kurds wholesale, the disaster will land squarely on the plate of Donald Trump and nobody else. And starting yet another trade war with Turkey in response isn’t going to solve anything. They’re already a marginal “ally” at best and such a move will simply push them further into Vladamir Putin’s arms all the faster. There is no good outcome from this scenario that I can see and the President needs to find a path to back away from this move even if he loses face in the process. Sadly, that seems totally out of character for him so I’m not hopeful at all.

It would be very reassuring to know that the nucs stored at Incirlik were quietly removed since the change in leadership n Turkey.

Actually not. Having tactical nuclear weapons readily available would make it easier to protect the Kurds and our base at Incirlik. We could just threaten to nuke the capital of Turkey if they bothered our friends in Syria. We could use the tactical nuclear weapons on the area surrounding the air base to protect the air base.

It doesn't take much thinking to realize that starting a war with Turkey would be crazy. Trump is smart enough to realize that. His critics are only claiming what he is doing is reckless in order to promote their own careers. If Trump actually engaged Turkey in any kind of military conflict, or even just threatened them we would here all the same voices criticizing Trump for being a war monger and starting trouble with a NATO ally.

You have to look at a map of the area involved in these decisions regarding a Turkish incursion into Syria.

It is less than a full pull out of U.S. forces, but it is still a giant gift to Erdogan that has zero to do with fighing ISIS or even keeping it under control in Syria.

Erdogan’s move is not about Russia, Assad or ISIS & Al Queda in Syria, it is 100% about the Kurds, and 100% about setting things up for a squeeze play involving Russia and Assad from the south, Turkey on the north and the Kurds to be squeezed out of the middle between them.

Erdogan says he seeks a “safe zone” and yes it is only about twenty miles in width. But where? It would be only twenty miles wide but is to stretch the entire length of Turkey’s boder with Syria. Erdogan contols only a bit of the eastern end of that area, around the city of Afrin. The entire rest of it is under the control of the Syrian and Kurdish forces led by the Kurds own militias.

So what is the true meaning of the “safe zone”?

It is to cut off the Kurds in Syria from ease of access to the Kurds in Turkey and Iraq. It is to make the Kurds in Syria caught, bound up, between the Turks to the north and Assad to the south.

To do it, Erdogan will have to take the major cities in northern Syria that the Kurds now hold - peacefully other than continued clashes with ISIS remnants - which are all in what Erdogan lyingly calls his “safe zone”.

Once he can hold that “safe zone” he will fill it with “Syrian refugees” from Turkey and anyone who knows the history of Erdogan and the extremist groups we and Assad have been defeating in Syria, then you know what that “ssfe zone” will become. It will become a sanctuary for Erodgan supplied extremists to continue to pursue Kurds south of the so called “safe zone”, just as the extremist “refugees” in Afrin do today.

“How is it that the Kurds survived for centuries and in the recent decades without us having any troops in Syria? “

From their point of view they would call their situation one of “existed” but hardly one of “survived”.

Since the end of the Ottoman empire, most of the nation state history in the region has been, collectively, (1) ignoring Kurd’s interests, (2) supressing Kurd’s interests, (3) state sponsored cultural genocide of Kurd’s interests by Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria, (4) direct attacks on the Kurds to diminish their interests and force them out of areas the officials of a state wanted to repopulate with Turks, Arabs, Syrians or Iranians.

Such actions did not happen for centuries under the Ottomans because all they sought from local officials was that they allow the Ottoman’s rule to keep the peace and they not rebel against that rule. Beyond that most people had a lot of local control over their own affairs. That made the Kurds in the Ottoman’s area more free than they have been under any of the modern state’s in the area today.

From the Kurd’s point of view, their demand for their own province in Iraq, their fights inside Turkey with its rulers, their gains (regains) in Syria are all collectively about fighting for their very identity as a people, a people that are not Arabs, not Turks, not Syrian and not Iranian; regardless of how their, Kurdish, lands got divided up into those other nations today.

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