By Andrea Widburg, AMERICAN THINKER
In December 2018, Trump ordered the withdrawal of American troops from Syria, where they’d been hard at work destroying the last military vestiges of ISIS, the one-time “JV team” that ignited a reign of terror across Iraq and Syria. The Democrat party and its lapdog media promised us that our Kurdish allies would be slaughtered and we’d be on the verge of yet another one of the many Trump initiated World Wars.
None of that happened, but it appears that two regimes hostile to American interests are at each other’s throats. And of course, it’s always preferable when one’s enemies turn their aggression towards each other.
The New York Times´ reporting from 2018 about Trump’s planned withdrawal is a good example of the concern the Democrats and the foreign policy establishment had that Trump would get America into war by getting America out of war:
In overruling his generals and civilian advisers, Mr. Trump fulfilled his frequently expressed desire to bring home American forces from a messy foreign entanglement. But his decision, conveyed via Twitter on Wednesday, plunges the administration’s Middle East strategy into disarray, rattling allies like Britain and Israel and forsaking Syria’s ethnic Kurds, who have been faithful partners in fighting the Islamic State.
[snip]
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and other top national security officials argued that a withdrawal would, essentially, surrender Western influence in Syria to Russia and Iran. The Trump administration’s national security policy calls for challenging both countries, which are the chief benefactors of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria and have provided him with years of financial and military support.
To date, World War III (or IV or IV or VI) has not started. What has started, however, is an increase in hostilities between Iran (America’s open enemy since 1979) and Turkey (an increasingly overt enemy to America as Erdogan has entrenched his permanent Islamist power structure).
Although both are Muslim countries, Iran is Shia while Turkey is Sunni, and the two sects have been deadly, intractable enemies practically since Mohammed’s death. Syria, which is an Iranian proxy, is becoming the battleground (emphasis added):
Seven Turkish soldiers and one civilian personnel were killed in Syria on Sunday, Turkey’s first fatalities as a result of direct confrontation between the countries since the start of Syria’s civil war in 2011.
The Turkish Defense Ministry released the latest death toll on Tuesday. Several other troops had been also wounded in northwest Syria’s Idlib province after they came under heavy artillery fire from the Syrian government, according to an earlier statement from the ministry, which specified that the troops were reinforcements.
On Monday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said up to 35 Syrian government soldiers had responded and pledged further retaliation.
Daniel Greenfield, one of the most astute analysts of the situation in the Middle East, spells out what’s happening behind that dry and somewhat confusing report:
In Syria, the Turkish Islamist dictatorship of Erdogan, which invaded it in support of its allied Turkmen Jihadis, is battling Iran’s Shiite allies propping up Assad’s Alawite regime. (If you didn’t follow all that, it’s fine. Suffice it to say two sets of terror groups and their state sponsors are getting closer to fighting each other properly.)
As Greenfield further explains, Erdogan can control Putin, so Russia probably will not get involved. Meanwhile, Assad’s military is actually an Iranian military. That means that the real fight will be between Turkey and Iran – although Iran, squeezed by Trump’s sanctions, does not want a fight. However, with Erdogan stretching his wings, Iran may not have an option.
It’s true that yet another war is bad for the region, but it’s also not a fight in which America needs to be, or even should be, involved. It’s enough that the fighting distracts those two nations from the West and keeps them busy.
Here’s a pretty good website covering that theater, from a Kurdish POV:
https://www.rudaw.net/english
I notice that US withdrawal from the Kobane front has allowed the Kurds to freely associate with the Syrians against Turkey. Meanwhile, we stopped flying US intelligence drones that had been helping attack PKK Kurds in Iraq. Turkey’s advances around Idlib are part of a long-term expansion southward. They take some land, under various pretenses, then halt for a while, not relinquishing their gains. This has been going on since before WWII. They now control Hatay, N. Cyprus, Afrin, Kobane Idlib and bases in Iraq, Qatar, Sudan and Somalia; and they are also involved in Libya (where they are fighting against troops allied with Russia).
Trump’s let’s you and him fight strategy in Syria has begun to work.
From today’s Jerusalem Post.