A bit of common sense and clear thinking amid the current hysteria, from Caroline Glick.
“Trump did not betray the Kurds,” by Caroline B. Glick, Israel Hayom, October 11, 2019:
The near-consensus view of US President Donald Trump’s decision to remove American special forces from the Syrian border with Turkey is that Trump is enabling a Turkish invasion and double-crossing the Syrian Kurds who have fought with the Americans for five years against the Islamic State group. Trump’s move, the thinking goes, harms US credibility and undermines US power in the region and throughout the world.
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 there.
The war in Syria broke out in 2011 as a popular insurrection by Syrian Sunnis against the Iranian-sponsored regime of President Bashar 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. It supported a feckless Turkish effort to raise a resistance army dominated by jihadist elements aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood.
President Barack Obama infamously issued his “red line” 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 “JV squad.” When the JVs 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.
The timing was problematic for Obama.
In 2014 Obama was negotiating his nuclear deal with Iran. The deal, falsely presented as a nonproliferation pact, actually enabled Iran – the world’s greatest state sponsor of terrorism – to develop both nuclear weapons and the missile systems required to deliver them. The true purpose of the deal was not to block Iran’s nuclear aspirations but to realign US Middle East policy away from the Sunnis and Israel and toward Iran.
Given its goal of embracing Iran, the Obama administration had no interest in harming Assad, Iran’s Syrian factotum. It had no interest in blocking Iran’s ally Russia from using the war in Syria as a means to reassert Moscow’s power in the Middle East.
As both Michael Doran, a former national security adviser in the George W. Bush administration and Smith argue, when Obama was finally compelled to act against ISIS, he structured the US campaign in a manner that would align it with Iran’s interests.
Obama’s decision to work with the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) militia in northern Syria because it was the only significant armed force outside the Iranian axis that enjoyed congenial relations with both Assad and Iran.
Obama deployed around a thousand forces to Syria. Their limited numbers and radically constrained mandate made it impossible for the Americans to have a major effect on events in the country. They weren’t allowed to act against Assad or Iran. They were tasked solely with fighting ISIS. Obama instituted draconian rules of engagement that made achieving even that limited goal all but impossible.
During his tenure as Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton hoped to revise the US mandate to enable US forces to be used against Iran in Syria. Bolton’s plan was strategically sound. Trump rejected it largely because it was a recipe for widening US involvement in Syria far beyond what the American public – and Trump himself – were willing to countenance.
In other words, the claim that the US has major influence in Syria is wrong. It does not have such influence and is unwilling to pay the price of developing such influence.
This brings us to the second flaw in the narrative about Trump’s removal of US forces from the Syrian border with Turkey.
The underlying assumption of the criticism is that America has an interest in confronting Turkey to protect the Kurds.
This misconception, like the misconception regarding US power and influence in Syria, is borne of a misunderstanding of Obama’s Middle East policies. Aside from ISIS’s direct victims, the major casualty of Obama’s deliberately feckless anti-ISIS campaign was the US alliance with Turkey. Whereas the US chose to work with the Kurds because they were supportive of Assad and Iran, the Turks view the Syrian Kurdish YPG as a sister militia to the Turkish Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The Marxist PKK has been fighting a guerilla war against Turkey for decades. The State Department designates the PKK as a terrorist organization responsible for the death of thousands of Turkish nationals. Not surprisingly then, the Turks viewed the US-Kurdish collaboration against ISIS as an anti-Turkish campaign.
Throughout the years of US-Kurdish cooperation, many have made the case that the Kurds are a better ally to the US than Turkey. The case is compelling not merely because the Kurds have fought well.
Under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey has stood against the US and its interests far more often than it has stood with it. Across a spectrum of issues, from Israel to human rights, Hamas and ISIS to Turkish aggression against Cyprus, Greece, and Israel in the Eastern Mediterranean, to upholding US economic sanctions against Iran and beyond, for nearly 20 years, Erdoğan’s Turkey has distinguished itself as a strategic threat to America’s core interests and policies and those of its closest allies in the Middle East.
Despite the compelling, ever-growing body of evidence that the time has come to reassess US-Turkish ties, the Pentagon refuses to engage the issue. The Pentagon has rejected the suggestion that the US remove its nuclear weapons from Incirlik airbase in Turkey or diminish Incirlik’s centrality to US air operations in Central Asia and the Middle East. The same is true of US dependence on Turkish naval bases.
Given the Pentagon’s position, there is no chance that the US would consider entering an armed conflict with Turkey on behalf of the Kurds.
The Kurds are a tragic people. The Kurds, who live as persecuted minorities in Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran, have been denied the right of self-determination for the past hundred years. But then, the Kurds have squandered every opportunity they have had to assert independence. The closest they came to achieving self-determination was in Iraq in 2017. In Iraqi Kurdistan, the Kurds have governed themselves effectively since 1992. In 2017, they overwhelmingly passed a referendum calling for Iraqi Kurdistan to secede from Iraq and form an independent state. Instead of joining forces to achieve their long-held dream, the Kurdish leaders in Iraq worked against one another. One faction, in alliance with Iran, blocked implementation of the referendum and then did nothing as Kurdish-controlled Kirkuk was overrun by Iraqi government forces.
The Kurds in Iraq are far more capable of defending themselves than the Kurds of Syria. Taking on the defense of Syria’s Kurds would commit the US to an open-ended presence in Syria and justify Turkish antagonism. America’s interests would not be advanced. They would be harmed, particularly in light of the YPG’s selling trait for Obama – its warm ties to Assad and Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps….
Sue says
I am sorry – I don’t buy this. I am Jewish. The Jewish people need to work to rescue the Kurds and get them asylum – Israel or the United States. The Kurds have also been the allies of the Jews and Israel. Of all the peoples on the planet, they are the closest genetically to the Jews of any people. We as Jews need to do everything we can to rescue the Syrian Jews and Israel needs to open its doors to them.
Sue says
We as Jews, individually, and as a community, and as the state of Israel, need to band together to rescue the Syrian Kurds. They are our allies and we need to do everything we can to save them.
Ernie says
“We as Jews , individually , and as a community , and as the state of Israel , need to band together to rescue the Syrian Kurds . They are our allies and we need to do everything we can to save them .”…………………. Dear Sue , thank you for your statement . I think your statement is so important here because you embody the heart and soul ( and so the opinion ) of many if not most people in Israel concerning the fate of the Syrian Kurds . To me your opinion is paramount ; and it should be paramount to all good people on Jihad Watch . May your wish be fulfilled Sue , I”ll pray for its fulfillment .
janwog says
That’s the job of Assad to protect his own borders. Nato would be well inspired to get rid of this Nazi genocidal Islamist rogue state of Turkey out of Nato. Nato has not to support the Turkish Jihad.
elee says
+1. Turkey is no friend to anything westerners hold dear.
elee says
Sorry, nice try but Im not persuaded. (1) I understand, based on accounts of people who have been there, that the Syrian Kurds have operated the closest thing there is to a modern western polity outside of Israel, with tolerance for Christians of whaatever ethnicity. If your perception is different, let me know; (2) The Kurds have incapacitated ISIS and borne the cost of imprisoning them for months; (3) Turkeys sympathy and support for ISIS is I believe indisputable. Everyone but Recep Tayyip Erdogan seems to say so, though in Turkey one can so easily get imprisoned for saying so; (4) In fact it appears that the Turks are either abetting ISIS jailbreaks, or at least happily looking away when they occur; (5) I do not believe your assertion that Barack Obama favoured the Iranian scheme of seizing a land bridge to deploy Islamist forces against Israel or anyone else from locations in SE Syria or Lebanon; (6) The most credible view of Turkish intentions, based on my reading of people I trust to know, is that Turkey wishes to install a puppet regime of ISIS-friendly nominal Kurds on its border, and use said regime as a proxy to expand and displace Chaldean Chrisitians and Yazidis. Ill read whatever you post here, but you have not persuaded me yet, and I believe that POTUS has at the very best made an egregious miscalculation.
RonaldB says
Let’s take your points. If you judge a government based on whether it protects Christians and Yazidis, then the Syrian government of Assad is your government of choice.
Even if the Syrian Kurds had operated an ethno-state that resembled a western government, that does not mean the US has to be involved as a military protector. In fact, reading Glick’s article, exactly the same thing happened in Iraq: under US protection, the Kurds basically had their own state and blew it with internal bickering.
I really don’t care what happens to the ISIS prisoners, as long as they are not allowed back into Western countries. If the Kurds or Turks let them out, I don’t care. If they take them behind the hills and shoot them, I don’t care. I’m not thrilled with the idea of supporting, housing, and guarding a large hostile population for the next few centuries. If the Western countries are unwilling to assert their own needs and control their own borders, someone is going to destroy them…if not the ISIS fighters, then someone else.
I think the US ought to get out of NATO and its military entanglements. Geographic changes are going to take place, and the best strategy is let them happen. Russia’s taking of Crimea is not the business of the US. Russia itself is a de-populating, basically Western country with missiles. It’s Gross Domestic Product is considerably less than several of the countries supposedly needing US help to fend off the Russian hoards. NATO is just a tripwire that has not exploded yet. As you point out, there is no natural alliance between Turkey and the US. Why maintain the NATO fiction?
elee says
I agree with you about NATO and Turkey. I care about ISIS Aprisoners; it tends not to be easy to keep them out of the Occident once the Turks spring them from detention. Sorry for the typose; till I get a new keyboard, computer wont let me edit or apostrophise.
black adder says
Americans have lost their credibility, that’s what has happened here. Nobody will consider them trustworthy allies after that. They have been ridiculed by Erdogan, Trump is a clown. Smart people like Mr. Spencer should stop supporting him.
RonaldB says
Right.
Various groups will stop fighting wars when the CIA slips them some money and weapons, and make the best of their relations with other groups in the region. What a tragedy that will be, to stop having the US fight indeterminate actions in a hundred different failed countries.
Ernie says
Hear hear ” black adder “. In justifying /whitewashing this indeed betrayal by Trump , the Kurds are now vilified / smeared by several articles here , they are being smeared with a certain intention . The Kurds in general are not anti -Semites or anti Christian . Nor are they holy……. Well , My trust in and friendship for the USA is over now , and good luck to you America , especially knowing your POTUS ” is not well “.
RonaldB says
US meddling and interference and nation-building in the Middle East has uniformly turned out to be totally disastrous, beginning with the CIA-engineered overthrow and assassination of the Iranian government leading to the Shah. Who the US threw under the bus in 1979. The US then vastly expanded the power and influence of Iran by defeating and murdering Saddam Hussein, Iran’s natural enemy in the Middle East. So, having created one catastrophe after another, we’re supposed to continue playing at being chess-master in the Middle East.
Caroline Glick is an Israeli citizen and resident, so it’s understandable she would have the Israeli perspective in mind. As it turns out, in this case I agree with her: a conflict with Turkey to support yet another chronically-dependent mini state in the Middle East is a losing policy for the US. I wish she had stuck with Latma TV, a truly hilarious and biting satire with amazing talent.
elee says
Entire agreement regarding Persian recent history; i have posted before asking; are the men of our time less courageous and resourceful than the men of 1953? If not why does this regime remain in power? Look, the Middle East is a black hole thats been sucking our blood and treasure for millennia……but they decided to subjugate the world, and Id much prefer we fight them there instead of here.
Mark Swan says
Thank you Mr. Spencer, for sharing this, a very accurate critique here.
“A bit of common sense and clear thinking amid the current hysteria, from Caroline Glick.”
Absolutely.
Terry Gain says
Where does Glick argue that President Trump didn’t abandon the Kurds. Of course he did. The Kurds don’t have the weaponry to fight Turkey.
Beneath the Veil of Consciousness says
Again, we must be reminded that we’re dealing with people who follow the teachings of a long dead psychopath. It is best to avoid this ball of snakes called the middle east and beat them back harshly if they stray into our spaces. Nothing positive can come out of these hellholes no matter what side of the snake pit you are on.
elee says
Problem is that beating them back from our borders hasnt worked yet, we cant even stop the active jihadis much less the sleepers. Better to attack the tumour itself than palliate its latest metastases in adjacent tissues. Pardon the big words, and of course IMHO as always. Oh and hey Yanks how do you like the world with no Empire to protect you?
Terry Gain says
I don’t see where Glick even attempts to argue that President Trump didn’t abandon the Kurds. Where did she do that?
Angemon says
“Betray”, not “abandon”.
Terry Gain says
What’s the difference?
Flavius Claudius Iulianus says
Glick’s first mistake, among many, is to oversimplify the situation.
Kepha says
It sickened me to see the O’s maladministration get us into Syria on the side of Qaida’s kissing cousins. I can all but smell HRC, Samantha Powers, and other feminists of that unhappy interlude in American government looking at the problems left by the Bush administration in Afghanistan and Iraq and saying, “Anything you can do, I can do better!” The result was destabilization not only of Syria, but of Egypt and Libya as well–with America’s first black president creating a situation in which Subaharan migrants are bought and sold in the latter named.
As for betrayal, has anyone asked South Vietnamese, Hmong, Degar, and anti-Communist Cambdians what they recall of how steadfast we were with them? Or Taiwan?
smart guy says
Thomas Jefferson wrote the “Declaration of Independence” and it was he who sent the Marine Corps to attack Tripoli. Back then the coast of North Africa was known as the “Barbary Coast” consequently. Jefferson would not allow any Muslim to become a citizen, Barbarians such as Indians back then could not become citizens. Muslims are barbarians even today. All this nonsense about “We hold these truths self-evident that all men were created equal.” need to be taken with a grain of salt, (Salt means doubt) Thomas Jefferson may have wrote those words, but he probably meant only white people. Back in 1795 the first immigration law was signed into law by Washington. Only white people from western Europe could become citizens. America was the first country to pass race law. The idea that Muslims were at the founding of America is a lie. Jefferson was a slave owner.
Theo Prinse says
Caroline Glick, Andrew Bostom, Nooni Darwish, Robert Spencer are like Trump a tragic group of people.
It is best Trump is liquidated and Mike Pence can save the western world.
Trump betrayed the courageous Kurdish fighters after they suffered many thousands in elimiating ISIS.
All Trump had to say was the Kurds didnt help the allies on the beaches of Normandy although many Kurds fought the nazis in the middle east.
Trump himself was not even born then in 1944 and he never was in the army either. Trump said Bush never should have removed Saddam Hussein who gassed the Kurds in the north of Iraq because the US then lost the Iraqi oil.
But then Kuwait would have been under Hussein too. Trump then went on that America shouldn’t risk american lives for other nations.
But why enter two world wars in Europe ? Conservative America was not willing to enter both world wars. Whether that opinion was based on Monroe’s doctrine, Trumps withdrawal is factually based on a promise to his electorate based on the democratic sentiment after Vietnam which they started and which which is why the democrats are silent in the Syria decision while Rand Paul is delirious about it.
Everbody knows both John Bolton and Mike Pompeo are against Trumps withdrawal policy. Trump was secretly flown to the US base in Iraq in december 2018 to tell the Iraqi’s he wants to withdraw from Iraq as well.
There was also rumor that the troops in Afghanistan were to be cut in half.
Trumps withdrawal policy is well understood and strongly rejected by the Pentagon because it will bring back Al Qaeda and ISIS only because Trump needs to fullfill his electoral sentmental one liner opportunism.
Trump made himself totally dependent on Erdogan with Turkey as Nato bullwark against Russia in the middle east and the mediteranean. But Erdogan bought the S-400 with which Russia can discover how to bypass the F-35 stealth mode. Erdogan is of the few ‘friends’
Trump has in Erdogan the only one significantly enough within the worlds power theater to operate with.
Trump pulls a few hundred US military from the north in Syria and betrays the Kurds, causes ISIS to flee and restart the war while at the same time the US operates an airbase in the south of Syria and while the US army is moving 3.500 US soldiers and 85 tanks this week in my town the port of Flushing in the Netherlands heading for the Russian border.
SamB says
Somehow this article is ambivalent. The Kurds a are the same as other Muslims but they too are oppressed. Trump does not have an open book relationship with the public when it comes to Turkey. Erdogan mentioned this when he said that the two of them discuss issues over the phone. While much has been said about the Turkey’s involvement with the F-35 program, it is not clear whether Trump will withhold the sale of these planes to them. Thus far Trump has made noise about sanctions but the proof of the pudding is that this man, Erdogan, has gone of the rails and Trump is silent about his belligerence and bellicose noise. The Kurds while not a state or a NATO member is dependent on support against a men like Erdogan , Bashan or the Ayotollahs. Trump may have placated his followers at home but he is a failure when it comes to Islamic incision into the American polity or aggression elsewhere(for example Pakistan). While Trump may withstand Liberal misadventure his unreliable when comes to Islam…
MIchael S says
Even an enemy doesn’t like a barking dog nipping at their heels. the Kurds have been a pain to the Turks for hundreds of years. I see no solution to the problems of mideast politics. There are too many players with too many ideologies and too many Muslim factions. This is just another replay of thousands of years of Islamic inability to get along with each other. Why should the US be the goaltender? I feel no compassion for any of rhem.
Lorensacho says
Tell that to the Kurds who had their eyes gouged out by Turkish fighters.
Jramsix says
Nice article. Too much information to write about. Here is some more on how much of a criminal Obama was in supplying ISIS and other terrorists in the area with $$$ and weapons…Even Stinger Missiles.
https://www.blacklistednews.com/article/75009/wikileaks-of-covert-arms-investigation-reveals uk-shell-companies-served-as-us-weapons-rat-line.html
https://www.blacklistednews.com/RT_reports%3A_US_to_obscure_arms_exports_after_Pentagon_‘pipeline’_to_Syria_exposed/60958/0/38/38/Y/M.html
RT reports: US to obscure arms exports after Pentagon ‘pipeline’ to Syria exposed – blacklistednews.com
The day after US President Trump’s barnstorming speech to the UN General Assembly decrying ‘the scourge’ of rogue states and terrorism, it was reported that his administration is set to greatly loosen American arms exports.
http://www.blacklistednews.com
I know it’s an old story. This is another agent confirming. HRC and Obama violated US law and international law by smuggling weapons into Libya to overthrow the gov. When caught that Al Qaeda used Stinger Missiles to shoot down one of our helicopters, they were caught red handed. Obama came up with the missiles were stolen so not their fault. However, the International law was that it was illegal in the first place to have those missiles in the area at all….Obama, a proven war criminal
https://thenationalsentinel.com/2019/01/12/weapons-that-hillary-clintons-state-dept-ran-into-libya-very-likely-used-to-kill-amb-stevens-cia-operators/
Weapons that Hillary Clinton’s State Dept. ran into Libya very likely used to kill Amb. Stevens, CIA operators – thenationalsentinel.com
Fox News’ national security correspondent Catherine Herridge interviewed Turi in 2015, three years after the Benghazi attack, who told her that he had been licensed and regulated by the State Department for decades “to move weapons around the world,” working with the department, the CIA, and other agencies.. Marc Turi is from Phoenix AZ and was a neighbor of John McCain.
thenationalsentinel.com
https://truepublica.org.uk/united-states/obama-administration-funded-terror-financing-operation-of-bin-laden-al-qaeda/
Obama administration funded terror financing operation of Bin Laden/al Qaeda – TruePublica
More recently, in an exclusive magazine article in the National Review 25th July, it was reported that the Obama Administration had been in discussions with a group that was on a list of terrorist funders for a decade when it specifically approved funding for it. “The Middle East Forum has discovered that the Obama administration approved a grant of $200,000 of taxpayer money to an al-Qaeda …
truepublica.org.uk
This is just a few of the articles out there. Even independent EU investigators when they collected over 80,000 weapons from ISIS when they left Iraq, traced the serial #’s and found they had been purchased by the USA via shadow companies. I left out the article by Politico showing Obama directing the DOJ to stop a 2 year investigation of Hezbollah selling Heroin in the USA and telling the DOJ not to pursue it any further. Hezbollah was selling the drugs to finance their terrorist activities that are tied into Iran. Evil knows no bounds.
peter says
Russia has interceded on behalf of Kurds when Americans deserted .It is to Russia’s credit that they were able to contain ISIS and defeat it ! They have shown themselves to be more reliable than Americans as allies !