Note to Republicans: Trump Will Betray You Just Like He Betrayed the Kurds
As noted in this brilliant article, Trump’s decision to abandon the Kurds and leave them to face slaughter at the hands of the Turks has implications far past Syria. Anyone looking at this moral catastrophe who has any current or potential relationship with Trump, either domestically or internationally, in business or in diplomacy, must now realize the intense danger in which he finds himself. If he’d do that to an entire population of heroes, how much honesty and loyalty will he show towards me?
It’s really inexplicable, especially for someone who tried to sell himself as a deal-maker. Who on Earth would trust him at this point?
Most Senate Republicans say they support the president, but do they really? They’re spineless, soulless cowards, but they’re generally not idiots. What are they saying in private conversations? How close are they to flipping?
Ironically, it’s precisely because they’re spineless, soulless cowards that Trump finds himself in such a precarious position when the impeachment reaches the senate. Every single one of them who votes for acquittal will be known henceforth as someone who sold out his country and kept a psychopath in power and news flash: they don’t want that.
Craig,
You seem to be in a weird state of conflict, on the one hand you bitterly berate President Trump for being a potential war monger, then in the same breath claim he is “treacherous” for not starting a war with the most powerful military nation in the Middle East, a NATO power at that, and do so with less that 1000 us soldiers!
The war in Syria is a regional conflict requiring little or no involvement by the US. Suppression of ISIS has been accomplished and a US presence in what is a confusing, and increasing prolonged civil war can serve no useful purpose.
President Trump is simply pursuing his policy of disengagement from military quagmires in far away civil wars, America neither understands nor can play any useful role.
President Trump election promises were quite clear. America under a Trump administration will no longer play “the world’s policeman”.
It’s true the Kurds are a tragic people. Living as persecuted minorities in Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran, the Kurds have been denied the right of the independent state, promised so many times since the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire.
The most recent opportunity was lost by President George W Bush,when an independent state could have created out of northern Iraq.
President Obama’s policies towards the Kurds during the Syrian conflict was far more treacherous. It was the and confusing action of America during that period which openly displayed the real . limitations of US power and influence in the region.
President Trump is simply facing reality. He is unable to stop an incursion into Syria by Turkey who sees such an action as essential to national security, but can limit the Turkish conduct reach by threatening economic retaliation.
You seem very anxious to throw away the lives of young American soldiers in futile causes when it suits your political aims.
Confusingly, you indignantly screech when the President prevents further bloodshed, (odd behaviour for a “psychopath!) yet you still call the President a “war monger”!
make up your mind! You can’t have it both ways!
The US has no commitment to protect the Kurds. America’s central commitment in the Middle East for the past 70 years has been the protection of Saudi oil installations and maintaining the safety of maritime routes in and around the Persian Gulf. The other major US interest has been the protection of Israel.
The Iraq war was a mistake. Hopefully, the last of America’s futile interventions in never ending regional civil wars it neither understands nor help resolve.
The unhappy Kurds were unfortunately always just “allies of convenience”. merely pawns in a greater conflict.
The eventual fate of the Kurds in northern Syria is pretty bleak, and always was. The Turks, the Iranians, Assad etc will pursue their national interests both diplomatically and by ongoing warfare for maybe decades to come. \\
What is clear is President Trump has begun extracting America from an open-ended commitment to the Kurds he never made and his predecessors never intended to fulfill.
If ending America’s involvement in a hopelessly confusing military conflict, and bring US military back home is the actions of a psychopath, then something is wrong with your values.
It would be more honest if you could describe what US policy should be in the region, but you can’t! Like Obama you can only mutter vague promises and make symbolic gestures.
George W Bush had his faults, and made mistakes, but at least he was honest.
If you believe the US should commit the men and money necessary, to create by military force, an independent Kurdish homeland, defended by US soldiers, then say so.
That would be at least honest. But just castigating the President for accepting reality and acting in the best interests of America, when you know there is no alternative, is both cowardly and dishonest.