Filed under: Foreign Policy, National Security, Politics, The United States | Tags: Middle East, President Donald Trump, The Kurds
The Outcry about President Donald Trump abandoning the Kurds in Syria has been loud and accusatory. How dare he? He’s removing U.S. special forces from the Syrian border with Turkey, thereby enabling a Turkish invasion by the Syrian dictator Erdogan. He’s double crossing the Syrian Kurds who have fought with Americans for five years against ISIS. It seems to be almost unanimous.
Fortunately there is Caroline Glick, American born Israeli journalist, writing from Israel:
There are several problems with this narrative. The first is that it assumes that until this week, the US had power and influence in Syria when in fact, by design, the US went to great lengths to limit its ability to influence events in Syria.
The war in Syria broke out in 2011 as a popular insurrection by Syrian Sunnis against the Iranian-sponsored regime of President Bashar al Assad. The Obama administration responded by declaring US support for Assad’s overthrow. But the declaration was empty. The administration sat on its thumbs as the regime’s atrocities mounted. They supported a feckless Turkish effort to raise a resistance army dominated by jihadist elements aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood.
Obama infamously issued his “redline” regarding the use of chemical weapons against civilians by Assad, which he repudiated the moment it was crossed.
As ISIS forces gathered in Iraq and Syria, Obama shrugged them off as a “jayvee squad.” When the jayvees in ISIS took over a third of Iraqi and Syrian territory, Obama did nothing.
As Lee Smith recalled in January in the New York Post, Obama only decided to do something about ISIS in late 2014 after the group beheaded a number of American journalists and posted their decapitations on social media.
Do read the whole thing. I have always found Caroline Glick to be an outstanding journalist, and given the local temper, an account of action in Syria fairly unavailable elsewhere. Too much partisanship out there, too little careful investigation. Whether you agree with her or not, you will understand the situation a lot better.
ADDENDUM: Here’s another view of the Kurds and Syria from National Review’s Andy McCarthy: “Turkey and the Kurds: It’s More Complicated Than You Think”
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American Elephants 
[…] American Elephants explains that Trump did not betray the Kurds […]
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