Trump keeps winning

8 Comments / 8 Comments

1. @ Adam Dalgliesh:Yes, to be blunt most Americans do not know a Kurd from a Martian. They could care less and are generally very ignorant on foreign affairs. Trump was done using the Kurds and so shoved them aside when Erodgan decided to attack. Trump then tried to mitigate the damages.

   I would have hoped that the USA would have helped the Kurds keep an autonomous zone or get a country. It would be costly and since Americans and Trump do not care about Kurds for the most part it was not to be.

2. @ Edgar G.:
   Actually the General thanked the Russians also. Betrayal is Betrayal whether one decides it is okay to white wash it or not.

3. @ Bear Klein: Yes, this article makes a reasoned case for what Trump did, in terms of our great-power competition with Russia.

   My problem with Trump’s Syria decisions has less to do with the decisions themselves, then with the explanations of them that he has given to the American people and foreign audiences, which create the impression that he is uncaring about the he is uncaring about the suffering endured by the Kurds and in general , contemptuous if Middle Eastern peoples and their conflicts with each other (“tribalism, ancient hatreds,” etc.) While there is much truth in this, the message “let these primitive, barbaric peoples duke it out among themselves,” is not helpful, and gives the United States a bad image among all of these troubled peoples.

   What I wish he had said would be along the lines of “we deplore the Turkish government’s decision to invade the Kurdish speaking regions of Syria. We think this action will cause suffering to innocent people and will further complicate our efforts to end the bloodshed in that unhappy country, and to bring about a reconciliation between its warring communities. But we do not have the meansto prevent the Turkish invasion. We have done everything we could over the past year to persuade President Erdogan not to go through with this step, but to no avail. We also recognize the fact that there is considerable support for President Erdogan’s action among the Turkish people, who feel threatened by the Kurdish rebellion in eastern Turkey, and fear that the Syrian Kurds will support this insurgency. We are trying our best to mediate the Turkish-Kurdish conflict and achieve a reconciliation between the two peoples. But this is not an easy task, and can’t be accomplished in a day.

   We also have to take into consideration the importance of maintaining our strategic military bases in Turkey. We want Turkey to continue its membership in NATO, which goes back to 1952. We have also had to take into consideration the fact that many American corporations are invested heavily in trade with Turkey. A break in American relations with Turkey, and severe economic sanctions against it, would mean an end to trade with that country, and that would damage the U.S. economy. That is why I have decided to lift seconomic sanctions i on Turkey. But I will reinstate them as a last resort, if Turkey commits grave violations of human rights in Syria or elsewhere. I have explained this to President Erdogan.” I think something along those lines would be an honest explanation of Trump’s decisions, and would have made a much better impression on Congress, the American people, and our European allies, than his seemingly uncaring and contemptuous remarks. I am reminded of T.S. Eliot’s line, “the last temptation is the highest treason/to do the right thing for the wrong reasons.”

4. @ Bear Klein: General Mazloum’s thank you to Trump for continuing to be helpful to the Kurds, and Trump’s reply thanking him for his kind words, are somewhat comforting. Perhaps he has not ruled out some continuing military or at least humanitarian assistance to the Kurds (through air-drops, perhaps?).

5. @ Bear Klein:
   That was most likely the general’s “knee-jerk” reaction. Since he’s had time to evaluate the situation, he has promptly given praise to the right person.

   That kind of knee-jerk response is very common on this site….

6. Best Article I have reading supporting what Trump did in Syria. It is the opposite of what I have articulating but it is a solid reasoned argument.

   Full article at: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/10/18/trump-syria-turkey-kurds-news-analysis-229858

   Some Uncomfortable Truths about U.S. Policy in Syria – Aaron David Miller, Eugene Rumer and Richard Sokolsky (Politico)

   For nearly a decade, U.S. policy in Syria has been a never-ending mission impossible without realistic goals or the means to achieve them. The decision to abandon the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a mainly Kurdish-led militia, of which at least 40% are Syrian Arabs and other minorities, was predictable. It should have been clear that after the physical dismantling of the ISIS Caliphate, the U.S. relationship with the SDF would become increasingly fraught.
   The SDF did not sacrifice its fighters out of love for America; rather, it hoped to harness U.S. power to help protect Kurdish territory and guarantee autonomy in a future Syria. Washington and the Kurds formed a marriage of convenience to defeat ISIS, but over the longer term there would have been a reckoning over divergent goals. It is an open question whether the next administration, Congress and the American public would be prepared to foot the bill of getting drawn into what would have been a nation-building exercise.
   Putin did what the Obama and Trump administrations would not – intervene in the Syrian civil war. Putin won the Syrian civil war, and he deserves its spoils. And what spoils they are – a war-torn society, a ruined economy, bombed-out cities, and millions of refugees. If Putin wants to take on the burden of rebuilding Syria, fixing what his air force destroyed, and brokering peace among Syria’s many factions, then we should let him.
   But the idea that Putin’s Syria gambit will allow him to take over the Middle East is just silly. Few, if any, core U.S. interests – halting nuclear proliferation, preserving Israel’s security, preventing terrorist attacks against the homeland, and maintaining the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf – are likely to suffer.
   Rather than chase unrealistic ambitions, the U.S. should remain focused on what its core interest in Syria has been since 2011: countering the threat from ISIS. The conditions that created ISIS are not going to go away. But Washington should assume that at some point Assad and his allies will act in their own self-interest – and they all want to prevent a resurgence of ISIS.
   More importantly, attacks by ISIS, while horrific for the people of Syria, should not be conflated with a heightened threat to the American homeland. It has been 18 years since the U.S. suffered a terrorist attack that was planned and executed by foreign jihadists. Attacks on the U.S. homeland may well continue to be committed by radicalized U.S. citizens, but that problem won’t be solved by maintaining American troops in Syria.

   Aaron David Miller served as a State Department Middle East negotiator in Republican and Democratic administrations.
   Eugene Rumer is director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Russia and Eurasia Program.
   Richard Sokolsky was a member of the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Office in 2005-2015.

7. Trump has asserted that the Islamic State group is defeated. “We killed ISIS,” he said on Oct. 12.

   No one disputes that the Islamic State group has lost its “caliphate” – the large swath of territory it once controlled in parts of Syria and Iraq. But the group remains a threat to reemerge if the conditions that allowed its rise, including civil war in Syria and a lack of effective governance in Iraq, are not corrected.

   The General quoted in the above article is also on record as saying Trump has betryaed the Kurds.

8. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., is cautioning that Turkey’s President Recep Tayipp Erdogan has not agreed to stop all military operations in Syria.

   His comments came in a Wednesday tweet after President Donald Trump had announced that Turkey has agreed to permanently stop fighting Kurdish forces in Syria.

   Rubio wrote: “Erdogan has NOT agreed to stop all military operations in Syria.

   “Russia is going to:

   “–Remove Kurdish forces from east & west of current Turk controlled area, including Kurdish cities

   “–Help #Turkey push all SDF forced 30km south from entire border

   “–Take control of 5 oil fields”

   Trump said Wednesday he will lift sanctions on Turkey unless “something happens that we are not happy with.”

   Read Newsmax: Rubio: Turkey Has Not Agreed To End Military Operation in Syria