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President Trump made a horrible decision regarding Syria on Sunday. He announced that the U.S. will pull out of northern Syria and leave Turkey in charge.
“Today, President Donald J. Trump spoke with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey by telephone. Turkey will soon be moving forward with its long-planned operation into Northern Syria. The United States Armed Forces will not support or be involved in the operation, and United States forces, having defeated the ISIS territorial “Caliphate,” will no longer be in the immediate area.”
Jaws dropped all over the place with this announcement. Some with glee because they (the Democrats and media leftists) look at this as a ‘we knew he was an idiot!.’ Others with major trepidation given their understanding of foreign policy, ISIS, and the dangers that Turkey poses to all in Europe as well as Syria.
This article clearly points out how much of an ally Turkey is NOT to Europe nor to the United States. First of all, the Syrian refugee camps that Turkey has been running have not been open to civil monitoring since early 2016. Turkey brags that the refugee camps are housing well over 3 million refugees yet at the same time whines that the money provided by the EU ($3 billion) hasn’t been enough to help the refugees and Erdogan wants it to go to government coffers that he chooses instead of being directed to the Turkish version of FEMA. With that, his response has been to threaten to ‘open the floodgates’ and let Europe be overwhelmed with refugees.
“”We have container cities and tent cities [for refugees]. But there is no humane living there. On the one hand, [the West] talks about humane living; on the other hand, they call our offer of a safe zone ‘beautiful’… [But when we say], ‘Let’s start,’ they say ‘no.’…
“If they do not do [what we are demanding], we will have to open the gates… We have tolerated [housing so many refugees] to a certain extent. Are we the only ones to carry that burden?…
“I am saying this today: We have not got the required support from the world — particularly from the EU — to share the burden of the refugees we have been hosting, so we might have to [open the gates] to get the support.””
Erdogan is hoping that everyone will ignore the fact that Ankara has failed to live up to the commitments agreed upon with the EU in the EU-Turkey Statement & Action Plan.
With this dangerous boneheaded move by Trump, Erdogan is now emboldened to go after the Kurds, whom he abhors, and free all the ISIS terrorists currently being held captive by the Kurds.
Hillary Clinton tried to throw her two cents in. She has zero room to talk about foreign policy gaffes and needs to sit this one out.
Nikki Haley, who well understands that Turkey is not nor ever has been a true ally to the U.S., slammed the decision.
We must always have the backs of our allies, if we expect them to have our back. The Kurds were instrumental in our successful fight against ISIS in Syria. Leaving them to die is a big mistake. #TurkeyIsNotOurFriend
— Nikki Haley (@NikkiHaley) October 7, 2019
Lindsey Graham sent a series of tweets earlier this morning as well. He points out that this gives Iran (who just lost a major natural gas project with China) a much stronger foothold in Syria. Graham correctly points out that while we may be ‘tired’ of fighting ISIS, terrorists will never be tired of fighting against the U.S., and this move will make it even more difficult to recruit people/entities willing to stand their ground against ISIS and other terrorist groups.
Brett McGurk, Trump’s former ISIS envoy, called Trump out.
Donald Trump is not a Commander-in-Chief. He makes impulsive decisions with no knowledge or deliberation. He sends military personnel into harm’s way with no backing. He blusters and then leaves our allies exposed when adversaries call his bluff or he confronts a hard phone call.
— Brett McGurk (@brett_mcgurk) October 7, 2019
McGurk and others are correctly pointing out that the United States has never been holding ISIS detainees. The SDF has! Furthermore, McGurk points out that this emboldens Turkey to move its OWN border twenty miles into Syria, thus giving Turkey free rein to run roughshod over not only the Kurds, but Christians as well.
Bottom line: Trump tonight after one call with a foreign leader provided a gift to Russia, Iran, and ISIS. FWIW, I warned of this here in @ForeignAffairs — and recommended alternatives given the hard realities on the ground and in this White House. https://t.co/QHYzI7dgEi
— Brett McGurk (@brett_mcgurk) October 7, 2019
President Trump needs to take one hundred steps back and sit down. He needs to open a discussion with the advisors who are well-versed in Turkey, Syria, ISIS and then he needs to LISTEN. He needs to LEARN.
This was a horrible move by Trump. One that will have serious repercussions around the world unless he steps up and reverses his decision.
Feature Photo Credit: Pixabay, cropped and modified
CaptDMO says: Sure is a lot of faith here in the “opinions” of folks with “Former” in their titles, and who’s efforts have
sustained efforts in Political Science that leaves the US where it is today.
ALMOST as stupid as letting Henry Kissinger keep his key to the executive washroom.
Mike-in-Keller says: I agree, it was a horrible decision. I also happen to think that it was the right decision.
Were I King, we would have a new policy — We are not going to commit troops anywhere, unless there is a clearly defined objective, and the only objective is, “Win.” We are going to win. We are going to commit overwhelming force and we will not quit until we have taken every enemy fighter, every enemy leader, off of the table.
That is how we fought, and won, World War II. Every war since then, we have not fought that way and, one way or the other, we have lost every war since then.
No American soldier should be killed, wounded, or put at risk unless the defined goal is a commitment to honor their sacrifice by total victory.
Scott says: “That is how we fought, and won, World War II. Every war since then, we have not fought that way and, one way or the other, we have lost every war since then.”
Sadly, no.. FDR spent most of WWII giving away the farm to Stalin, and Truman pulled us up short, allowing the Russians to take Berlin, and start the cold war. Many of todays problems can be traced to these errors
GWB says: I’m going to agree more with Mike than you over this one, Scott. While compromises were made in the How and the Who, the end result was NOT “restoring Germany to its pre-1938 borders” or “only eliminate the NAZIs” or any other decision point short of VICTORY.
I concur that other choices might have saved us the Cold War. (But, you’re not honestly arguing we should have invaded Russia? I assume you learned that at the frozen feet of Napoleon and Guderian, like many of us?) But we still, absolutely won the war.
I concur with Mike on the rest of it. It’s not isolationism* to want to not be involved in the rest of the world’s stupidity. It’s self-preservation. And we still work to maintain the best military in the world, so when evil finally decides to take a bite at us, we can chop the snake’s head off, skin the b*stard, and make a nice pair of cowboy boots out of it, while leaving the rest of the world to opine “Holy crap! Don’t get them agitated!”
(* No, you didn’t say it was.)
Scott says: I think you and I agree more than disagree GWB.. While If Patton had been allowed to invade Russia, I think he would have won, short of that, I’d suggest that
1. We should have pushed forward as far and as fast as we could have, and let the line be drawn where we met the Russians, not stop early and let them have territory
and more importantly
2. NOT given Russia any support at all during the war.. Hitler had attacked them, they had no choice but to fight him, and Stalin would have sacrificed every last russian to maintain his power.. we should have let him… without out support in arms and equipment, Hitler may have not beaten Stalin, but they would have torn each other apart, and made both much weaker by the time we made it to Berlin.. Supporting a regime that was at least as bad as the nazis was just dumb, (though with the way FDR and Truman allowed the russians to infiltrate our govt, not surprising). We shuld have allowed them to have a death match all on their own.. If Hitler had been more successful, and extended himself farther into russia, it would have been even harder for him to pivot to meet the Normand invasion.. the idea that we NEEDED to help russia in order for D-Day to be successful is just ignoring the facts.
GWB says: Is it a bad decision? Yes.
Is it the best decision? Maybe.
The problem is that even involving us in that war was a NO GOOD VERY BAD decision by 0bama. We weren’t there to win. We were there so he could pretend he had balls. Syria is the epitome of why you don’t get involved in “police actions” and other such crap.
And, of course, once you make a NO GOOD VERY BAD decision to go into something like that, the final, necessary, decision to get out will also be a Very Bad decision – by definition.
However, we need to make sure that we don’t fall victim to the Sunk Cost Fallacy. Just because we’re there does NOT mean we have to stay because “blood invested”, “bad outcomes”, etc. And, YES, it IS a Sunk Cost Fallacy to argue those points.
Bill589 says: “If we were to bomb our enemies in Syria, we would be bombing all sides.” Rand Paul
We don’t get paid enough to be the world’s police.
Scott says: We seriously need to restart and accelerate the assembly lines fir MOAB’s…. Just saying..
17CatsInTN says: Nope. Disagree. I’m with the President. Almost EVERY war mongering decision made in the last century came at the expense of American lives and taxpayer dollars. Many of these mistakes we’ve been paying for, literally, for decades. Syria is one of them. The President is making the right decision extricating us from never ending military missions with no end in sight. No one has stepped up and ended this nonsense until this President. I believe in JUST engagements with a specific righteous purpose, committed intent to WIN, mop up in a timely manner, train the natives as necessary and get out immediately thereafter. You’re just falling for rhetoric INTENDED to make you feel guilty for leaving these po’ wittle (insert blighted people of the moment) to defend themselves. We–I mean US taxpayers–have funded trillions of dollars in these despotic efforts. And who has been enriched by them? Who has benefited from them? Who is paying the price for them? Respectfully, you figure out the answers to those questions re Syria and your blind eyes may open. JMHO.
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