Never has an American president so errantly abandoned allies to slaughter, against U.S. strategic interests, when avoiding the slaughter and strategic retreat would have cost so little, and at a greater stain to U.S. prestige and honor, than Donald Trump has done this week in his betrayal of the Kurds in northeast Syria. He has fomented a humanitarian crisis and a massive strategic and tactical retreat for U.S. interests, and almost single-handedly given the ISIS terrorists a new lease on life.
First, here’s the official Washington Examiner editorial (I helped write it) that ran the very first day after Trump’s decision:
Trump abandons allies and enables enemies (Oct. 7). President Trump has made a fateful and terrible decision in announcing that the United States will abandon the Kurds in northeastern Syria to the mercies of Turkey’s autocratic leader, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Trump’s betrayal leaves our Kurdish allies open to the possibility, nay likelihood, of mass killings. It also sets up conditions for a wider geopolitical disaster. The winners are Turkey, Russia, Syria, Iran, and the Islamic State. The biggest loser, after the Kurds, is the U.S…. [Please read the full editorial at this link.]
Trump’s Kurdish betrayal already is reviving ISIS and hurting Israel (Oct. 9).
President Trump has betrayed and cut loose our Kurdish allies in northeast Syria. He says he wants to extricate American soldiers from “endless wars,” but this week he relocated no more than 100 U.S. personnel from a place of relative peace — a place where Americans were not being fired upon. Sure enough, on Wednesday that place already was bursting into open warfare. Trump surrendered peace and effectively invited war back in.
Some 1,000 U.S. personnel remain in Syria anyway. Trump hasn’t removed them, despite his ignorant Twitter posturing, but he has left them in a place less stable than it was before he cowered in front of the Islamist Turkish thug, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. If the Kurds are unable to ward off the Turks’ vicious assault, it stands to reason that the first role they will abandon is that of jail keeper for 10-12,000 ISIS fighters. Once escaped, those ISIS fighters surely will terrorize the U.S. and its allies….
[There are no words strong enough to express what a horrendous situation it is that Trump has unleashed. For the rest of this column — which, strongly worded as it is, is actually not even as strong as it should be in explaining the disaster unfolding before our eyes — please do follow this link.]