You don’t know how much it pains me to even partially agreed with Trump, but he is right on one thing, the USA does need to get out of Syria. Of course Trump went about it all wrong, and his throwing our Kurdish allies under the bus was cowardly, selfish and stupid.
Some Points:
- We should never have gone into Syria in the first place. President Obama made a huge error in doing so. We got in partially because the Europeans were in a panic over the waves of refugees pouring into the Continent from Syria. Another part was the presence of ISIS, plus general muddled thinking on our part. Syria is a place with more little Islamic sects per mile than anywhere else in the Islamic world and each one thinks the others are infidels and should be killed. They also hate outsiders and think they should be killed. Not a good place for Americans to be.
- The Kurds were probably screwed from the moment they shook hands with the US in Syria. I hate to say it but the US has a terrible track record with minor allies. We never kept all our promises to the Kurds in Iraq so it was doubtful we could be relied on in Syria. This does not in any way justify the way Trump betrayed the Kurds.
- It’s the manner in which the US dumped the Kurds that is so offensive. We should have negotiated this with our Kurdish allies, arranged to move the fighters and Kurdish civilians beforehand not after the fact. We should have been forthright with the Kurds that we had to get out and tried to make the pain minimal. You negotiate with your faithful allies, not the Turks, not the Russians and not Assad. It might have taken an extra year, but it would have been the right thing to do.
- Let the Russians, Assad, Iran and the Turks get bogged down in Syria. Sorry but even with ISIS, this wasn’t our fight.
Instead, Trump did it all wrong and in the most inept manner possible. I’m guessing his motivation is the presidential election in 2020 and he wanted to brag about how he got us out of part of the Middle East. Instead the US looks inept and he’s turned us into the bad guys. Maybe it’s too hard to understand this when you are too busy Tweeting every day in the Presidential toilet. Dunno.
