| A taste. |
Trump has betrayed the Syrian Kurds" ‐ so goes a popular refrain regarding the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the areas of northeast Syria held by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The events that have followed ‐ namely, a
In fact, much of this is overblown. For one thing, the U.S. still maintains extensive troop deployments elsewhere in the Middle East, and those are not being drawn down anytime soon. Insofar as many of the pundits, analysts, and policymakers condemning Trump consider the recent developments in Syria to be a disaster, they primarily have themselves to blame, however popular bashing Trump might be.
Indeed, these critics of Trump did not learn the relevant lessons from December 2018 when the president ordered preparations for a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria. They should have appreciated that Trump is ultimately the commander-in-chief of the U.S. armed forces and that he had made his own preferences on Syria clear: namely, that after the military defeat of the Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
, U.S. forces should leave. As the president’s record on issues like climate change and the Iran
...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for
spontaneouslytaking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet
militiasto extend the regime's influence. The word
Iranis a cognate form of
Aryan,the abbreviation
IRGCis a cognate form of
Stürmabteilung (or SA),the term
Supreme Guideis a cognate form of either
Shahor
Führeror maybe both, and they hate
nuclear deal illustrates, he has generally been forthright and sincere in trying to fulfill his policy promises. When he told his advisers that he wanted to withdraw U.S. forces from Syria, he meant it. The message should have been clear: devise an orderly withdrawal plan.
But that is not what happened. Instead, efforts and attention were geared towards U.S. forces remaining indefinitely in Syria. The advocates for this "stay indefinitely" approach argued that the deployment as it existed was supposedly an example of a successful projection of U.S. leverage and influence with a relatively small number of troops. They claimed that U.S. presence was vital for political negotiations on Syria’s future and important for limiting Iranian influence and blocking its "land route" to the Mediterranean.
In reality, none of these assertions holds up but rather reflect dubious expansions of the original purpose of the U.S. mission in Syria: countering the Islamic State. At the same time, the "stay indefinitely" crowd tended to downplay the major problem regarding the U.S. partnership with the SDF: the issue of relations with
...Qatar's satrapy in Asia Minor...
, which considers (with some justification) the SDF to be an extension of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has fought the