There is no end to the evil caused by Donald Trump. He has announced an end to the US alliance, set up in Obama’s time, with the Kurds in eastern Syria. Immediately Turkey carried out its threat of invasion. (“Operation Peace Spring.”) Kurdish women are putting the mangled remains of their men and children into body bags.
The Kurds’ militia was raised to defend Kurdish towns and villages against Assad and Isis (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria). Joined by smaller groups of freedom fighters it became the SDF, Syrian Democratic Forces. The US in 2015 desperately needed allies in the struggle with Isis, and the only ones to be relied on were the Kurds: efficient, democratic, up to liberal values such as gender equality. The Kurds defeated Isis for us. You know, the extremists who have tortured and beheaded American and British journalists and aid workers. The Kurds did the ground fighting, with the loss of 11,000 of their own lives, the US helped with air-strikes. Trump then declared victory.
The thirty million Kurds, divided between Turkey, Syria, Iran, and Iraq, are the world’s largest nation that has never been granted a country of its own. There is an enormous list (as a preface to my human-rights picture book) of their uprisings, bloodily repressed by these countries. They fight on in the south-eastern part of Turkey that they inhabit. Their force there, called the PKK, no longer asks for independence, just for autonomy. But Turkey is suspicious of all Kurds and lumps those in Syria with those in Turkey.
Turkey intends to drive the Kurds out of a twenty-mile wide strip along the Syrian side of the border, so as to separate Kurds from Kurds. And this zone (reminiscent of the depopulated zone that Saddam Hussein created along the Iraq-Iran border) will also be useful to Turkey for dumping the million refugees that have fled into it from Assad-ravaged Syria.
Turkey has one of the world’s largest armies. Erdogan, in power as prime minister and president for 16 years, is described by one writer as “a truculent nationalist-populist with dictatorial tendencies” (remind you of anyone?).
The Kurds, besides trying to defend themselves, are having to use many of their personnel to maintain and guard, without any international help, detention camps containing their eleven thousand Isis prisoners, and Isis wives and children. Two thousand of these prisoners are fanatic volunteers from countries such as the US, Britain, and Australia, which refuse to take them back. If the Kurds have to divert the camp guards into the defence against the Turks, “defeated” Isis may very well burst out anew.
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President Trump is recalling troops from Northern Syria. Since those troops were committed several years ago, there has not been a good moment to bring them home. Nor is it likely that the future would bring a good moment to bring them home. At whatever moment those troops are brought home – past, present or future, that action would generate vehement opposition both from the peoples affected abroad (the betrayal) and by the political dissenters at home (the outrage). War is a horrible thing. I say bring the troops home and never commit them again unless failure to do so will cost American lives. President Trump campaigned to bring the troops home. I applaud his belated promised delivery, though I regret that in recent months President Trump has committed greater numbers of our troops in other middle eastern locations that he has withdrawn from Syria.
This was the worst moment to bring them home, if we want to be free of Isis terrorism. The Kurds defeated Isis for us, at a cost of 11,000 of their own lives, and are holding the remains of Isis as prisoners, without our help. As soon as Trump was persuaded by Turkey to withdraw the troops, Turkey invaded Syria and is attacking the Kurds, and the Isis prisoners are escaping.
Regarding the timing of the return of our troops from Northern Syria, would a month ago have been a better time? Two months ago? Next month? Just when would be a good time? If we had never committed troops, would that have been a betrayal?
A good time to withdraw would be when both Erdogan of Turkey and Putin of Russia have undertaken not to send their forces into Syria. Both are unlikely. Result is that more Kurds are being killed – civilians as well as the defence forces who were our allies – and Isis terrorism may revive, and US influence in the region is ceded to Russia.
An article in yesterday’s Guardian summarized the likely successors to the US as most influential superpower, now that the US has shown itself an unreliable ally and is retreating into isolationism.
Certainty does not pervade American public life. It has been difficult to separate meaningful issues and policies from the personality of our president. It has been difficult to discern truth in the opposing reports from our media. It is easy to suspect the covert influences of our large corporations especially the influences of the military industrial complex. The reports that Kurds will be slaughtered is difficult to accept at its meer reporting. So, confusion, uncertainty, distrust all are appropriate in this complex international matter. However, some certainty reigns. Certainty hovers over the death, dismemberment, torn families, and crying American mothers of the young men and women committed to the endless battles of the Mideast. These certainties are known in advance and are present in all wars regardless of the information’s veracity, veracity so often lacking.
A military retreat into isolationism coupled with humanitarian expansionism would do wonders for our reputation within the world as well as for our own feelings of self-respect.
The people in Hong Kong are being persecuted and killed and the island is slowly being destroyed due to China refusal to live up to an agreement with Great Britain. These people are the victims of British abandonment and I have not yet heard a peep from the government, not even a stern letter of rebuke.
What gives???
This is a good article. The betrayal of the Kurds is indeed a shameful and dishonorable act by president who has shown no sign of adherence to any interest but his own. Turkey, Russia and the brutal regime of Hafez Assad will now have their way in a region that has seen devastating conflict which these countries have encouraged or carried out. Add these to the list of those abandoned by the Trump administration– the Ukrainians, the Syrians, and now the Kurds. Yet in the U.S.A. Trump’s politically drunk followers continue to delude themselves that his program is somehow “America First”–that he will promote the interests of workers, farmers and business that have been ignored. The amazing reality is that Trump has continued to practice obfuscation, obstruction of justice, and the petty manipulations of rhetorical bigotry to maintain a following among the narrow, the demented and the deluded. Part of the problem may be that the true extent of his financial dealings with Putin and his oligarchs has been concealed through endless investigations that seem never to add up. We are sliding down a very dangerous slope into ultra nationalism, financial collapse and confrontational rhetoric. Better thinking people must become stronger, more outspoken and defiantly determined to restore order and good sense.
As a veteran of the US Army, I am ashamed of my country for abandoning an ally on the battlefield.
The Turkish military is committing war crimes against Kurdish civilians. ISIS fighters and sympathizers are escaping from the prison camps which had been guarded by Kurdish fighters. Assad’s army is moving into the region. Assad’s Iranian and Russian allies will undoubtedly support them. European NATO countries have declared arms embargoes against their nominal NATO ally, Turkey. When Syrian and Turkish forces come into direct conflict, if Turkey calls for mutual aid from NATO, it could spell the end of the NATO alliance.
The biggest winner of this fiasco will be Vladimir Putin. The simplest conclusion is that Trump is doing Putin’s bidding.
The truth of the matter is that the US government has been alternatively befriending and betraying the Kurds for several decades now. I’m pretty sure that, unless they’re incredibly naive (which I’m sure they are not) the Kurds are not surprised.
I believe the long-term problems the U.S. is causing result from abandoning the principles set down by the founders, who warned against foreign entanglements. We continually make commitments that we can’t keep. South Vietnamese, Shia Iraqis, Kurds, the Afghan government, Syrian rebels, all were or will be abandoned because it’s impossible to continue to artificially prop up a system that defies historical and geopolitical reality. The same will happen at some point to Taiwan when we are unable to “defend” it from mainland China.
I was in the Army during the first Gulf War and was stationed in Turkey and northern Iraq for several months during the humanitarian relief operation for the Iraqi Kurdish refugees. Most of the soldiers were quickly disillusioned by the mission and ended up wondering “what are we really doing here?” when the realities of drug trafficking and bombings and retaliation and simmering historical grudges became apparent.
Abandoning people to whom you have made commitments that you can’t keep is tragic, but the solution going forward is to stop making them in the first place.
There is a great range in the scale and morality of “foreign entanglements”. Do you think those of the First and Second World Wars should have been avoided?
I do think they should have been avoided, absolutely. Despite court historians’ attempts to whitewash the manner in which the United States entered World War II, the assessment of Admiral Theobald in his book from the 1950’s, “The Final Secret of Pearl Harbor,” is being brought to light and I predict will someday become common knowledge.
https://mises.org/library/how-us-economic-warfare-provoked-japans-attack-pearl-harbor
President Wilson’s decision to bring the U.S. into World War I, tipping the scales in favor of a one-sided defeat of Germany, followed by the harsh and punitive peace treaty of Versailles, was instrumental in setting the conditions for World War II.
Irrespective of the issues leading up to WW I and WW II, I believe the idea of the “just” war is really just a propaganda exercise to set the conditions for browbeating people into supporting the next (almost assuredly totally unjust) war.
Eric says (better) what I had partly written and then omitted from my comment.
My wish to be pacifist, if possible, was helped some years ago by a publication (which I can’t at the moment find on my shelves) of the Friends (Quakers) making the case that wars can be avoided by steps that can be taken in advance – if there is enough forethought.
The most difficult crux is WW2. The forethought would have had to be taken before 1914. The conscientious objectors of that time were fully justified. In 1939 it was difficult not to justify war.
There is lawful war and unlawful war.*
Lawful war
Is war we are all for.
If you fall in war
You may have lawfully fallen
Since the war you fall in
May be lawful war.
Don’t fall for
The falsehood that all war
Is unlawful war.
In all war
There is someone waging unlawful war
And someone else therefore
Waging lawful war.
Or else someone offering lawful war
And therefore someone else uncalled-for
(Formally no more laudable than a whore)
Retorting with unlawful war.
But sometimes there is a more awful war
In which someone is waging lawful war
And someone else also and furthermore
Is waging lawful war
And in fact all–
Moreover all–
Are waging lawful
Lawful<$>
WAR.
The Kurds do have an area in northern Iraq where they live semi autonomously. I believe that the goal of the Turkish invasion is to create a safe zone where the Kurds can also live semi autonomously in northern Syria.
The Kurds are not a unified culture. Some are radical, some are moderate. Some are Christian, some are Muslim. Some of the Kurds in Turkey will report fellow Kurds to the Turkish government if they exhibit terrorist behavior.
The Turks were going to invade northern Syria regardless of Trump’s actions. Trump merely moved about a hundred American troops out of harm’s way.
The rift between the Turks and Kurds has been going on for many decades. There is a lot of bad blood between the Turks and the Kurds so a military operation like this will produce some unfortunate atrocities.
Trump’s ultimate plan is to withdraw U. S. presence from the Middle East so that the countries can work things out so everyone can coexist.
The silence coming from the United Nations is truly deafening. The USA has been involved in mid-east conflicts for decades. Perhaps it’s time for the rest of the civilized world to step up.
Thank you for raising these issues. What is happening now to the Kurds is shameful. We need to press all of our governments to put pressure on Turkey, including kicking them out of NATO.
“Not everything is lost. Responsibility cannot be lost, it can only be abdicated. If one refuses abdication, one begins again.” –James Baldwin