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2019-10-16 Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Pres. Trump Wants to End the "Stupid Wars"?
[Unz Review] The discussion, if one might even call it that, regarding the apparent President Donald Trump decision to withdraw at least some American soldiers from Syria has predictably developed along partisan, ideologically fueled lines. Trump has inevitably muddied the waters by engaging in his usual confusing explanations coupled with piles of invective heaped upon critics. The decision reportedly came after a telephone call with Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, but what exactly was agreed upon and who else might have been present in the room to report back to the intelligence community remains uncertain. Trump clearly believed that he had obtained some assurances regarding limits to any proposed Turkish military action from Erdogan, who almost immediately launched air attacks followed by ground troop incursions against the former U.S. supported Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

It should be observed that the Syrian incursion by the American military, which was initiated by President Barack Obama and his band of lady hawks during the so-called "Arab Spring" of 2011, was illegal from the gitgo. Syria did not threaten the United States, quite the contrary. Damascus had supported U.S. intelligence operations after 9/11 and it was Washington that soured the relationship beginning with the Syria Accountability Act of 2003, which later was followed by the Syrian War Crimes Accountability Act of 2015, both of which were, at least to a certain extent, driven by the interests of Israel.

When American soldiers first arrived in Syria the U.S. War Powers act was ignored, making the incursion illegal. Nor was there any mandate authorizing military intervention emanating from any supra-national agency like the United Nations. The excuse for the intervention was plausibly enough to destroy ISIS, but the reality was much more complex, with U.S. forces in addition seeking to limit Iranian and Russian presence in Syria while also bringing about regime change. The objectives were from the start unattainable as Iran and Russia were supporting the Syrian Army in doing most of the hard fighting against ISIS while the regime of President Bashar al-Assad was not threatened by a so-called democratic alternative which only existed in the minds of Samantha Powers and Susan Rice.

Continued from Page 4



Unwilling to see large numbers of Americans coming home in caskets, the United States inevitably began to search for proxies to carry out the fighting on the ground and wound up willy-nilly arming, training and otherwise supporting terrorists, to include the al-Qaeda affiliate al-Nusra. The Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces eventually became the principal tool of U.S. military, but it must be observed that the Kurds in all likelihood had no illusions about the staying power of their American patrons. They were fighting Syrian forces as well as ISIS because they were seeking to carve out their own homeland of Kurdistan from the ruins of the Syrian state. Their expansion into northern Syria, aided by the U.S., was at the expense of the local population, which was overwhelmingly not Kurdish. Their occupation of that area was not reported honestly in the U.S. media, but other sources suggest that their behavior was often brutal.

So the lament about abandoning one’s Kurdish allies has a kernel of truth, but the Senator Lindsey Graham response, to include sanctioning Turkey, should be considered to be little more than a dangerous misstep that would lead to acquiring a new and more powerful enemy. And, of course, the argument in favor of leaving the Kurds to their fate found its most ridiculous expression from the mouth of Donald Trump himself, who, up until recently had praised the Kurds as friends who had "fought and died for us." Trump is now observing that "they [the Kurds] didn’t help us in the Second World War, they didn’t help us with Normandy." As President Trump did not serve his country in Vietnam due to alleged bone spurs and his father Fred likewise did not serve in the military, the comment is particularly ironic. Trump’s surname was changed from the original German Drumpf and if there were any Drumpfs present at Normandy they were undoubtedly on the German side.

Trump’s wild responses to criticism do indeed constitute the principal reason why a sound policy to, as he put it, to stop the "stupid, endless wars" should be raising so many flags. His telephone conversation with Erdogan almost immediately produced a warning to the Turks that the United States would "destroy" or even "obliterate the Turkish economy," presumably if the creation of a buffer zone inside northern Syria would prove to be "off limits" in the opinion of the White House. Trump elaborated that "Turkey has committed to protecting civilians, protecting religious minorities, including Christians, and ensuring no humanitarian crisis takes place‐and we will hold them to this commitment," a pledge that will surely be impossible to honor as the first two days of the Turkish offensive killed over 100, including sixteen Kurdish militiamen.
Posted by Besoeker 2019-10-16 00:00|| || Front Page|| [2 views ]  Top

#1 Syria Accountability Act of 2003, which later was followed by the Syrian War Crimes Accountability Act of 2015, both of which were, at least to a certain extent, driven by the interests of Israel

It's nice to rule the World.

Posted by g(r)omgoru 2019-10-16 01:07||   2019-10-16 01:07|| Front Page Top

#2 Essentially capturing it all, Vernal Hatrick's comment late last evening on the topic 'Trump Followed His Gut on Syria. Calamity Came Fast.'

#37 I'm generally on the side of staying out in Syria. There is nobody there (including the Kurds, who are moderates only the sub-standard standards of the region) worth fighting to protect. Israel would be, should they actually need it, but they don't need anybody's protection (except maybe help from us managing idiots in the EU and the theocracy in Iran on a larger scale). The idea that a stable, developed nation will ever emerge in the region looks increasingly like a foolish notion. Turkey came closer than anybody else ever has in the Islamic world, and they've essentially blown it now.
Posted by Vernal Hatrick 2019-10-15 21:48|| 2019-10-15 21:48|| Front Page Top
Posted by Besoeker 2019-10-16 01:36||   2019-10-16 01:36|| Front Page Top










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