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Does Trump’s Syria Pullout Betray Kurdish Allies, Jeopardize U.S. Interests Elsewhere?

President Donald Trump’s move to disengage American troops from Northern Syria met with near-universal condemnation, including from Kurdish allies in the path of a potential Turkish invasion who feel his decision would betray them after years of fighting I.S.I.S. terrorists as a U.S. partner. Did the Commander in Chief just jeopardize U.S. interests elsewhere, or does moral leadership sometimes demand abandoning longstanding allies?

Does Trump's Syria Pullout Betray Kurdish Allies, Jeopardize U.S. Interests Elsewhere?

President Donald Trump’s move to disengage American troops from Northern Syria met with near-universal condemnation, including from Kurdish allies in the path of a potential Turkish invasion who feel his decision would betray them after years of fighting I.S.I.S. terrorists as a U.S. partner. Did the Commander in Chief just jeopardize U.S. interests elsewhere, or does moral leadership sometimes demand abandoning longstanding allies?

22 replies on “Does Trump’s Syria Pullout Betray Kurdish Allies, Jeopardize U.S. Interests Elsewhere?”

I watched this moments after it was published on Youtube and was very very unhappy with the apparent knee jerk reaction of all of you guys. You had no real information about what was really happening, yet you prophesied as if you knew. My suggestion – do more research into your subject …

We now have confirmation that Trump reinforced the area with commando units, informed Turkey where they were and which Kurdish units they are embedded with and the Turks still hit them with artillery. No US casualties.
This is all about forcing three things.
1. The Kurd’s need to shut down their communist & Islamist factions. This forces their government to deal with that problem. After VE day there were battles in France and Italy between communist partisans and the allied supported governments. In Israel there was a major battle in Tel Aviv with Israeli communists. The Kurd’s need to deal with their communists and are avoiding that decision.
2. Turkey has been trapped into attacking US and NATO supported Kurdish forces and that has now happened. Turkey calls all Kurd’s terrorists.
3. The UN and NATO are now facing a decision of deciding who’s side Turkeys Erdoğan islamist government is on: islamist or western?

This was planned months ago while Bolton was in the room. It’s not why he left. He left because they now need him on fox and CNN.

Here is Something that Donald Trump wants to do
(or has he already done ?), that i am totally opposed to
Not only that it may end in many casualties, many of which have considered themselves to be truly US ally,
But what do you think will happen with all those ISIS prisoners?
well – so much for that talking point …
hopefully, sometime later on, we will be able to say that we have destroyed ISIS, twice …
hmmmm

Why is no one asking what Trump is trying to force the Kurds to do? Why can’t military experts see that this is about forcing the Kurds, and other middle eastern countries, to reform, Get rid of the communists and islamists in their midst and move from a committee of warlords to a proper government.
If, as I do, you believe that freedom, free market and liberty are impossible in a moslem majority country, then you need to force the middle eastern allies to bite the bullet and introduce true freedom of religion and enforce it by jailing [or killing] hard line islamists. In that context 90 % of the women and 60% of the men would leave Islam in a day. It worked in moslem Spain, Italy, Sicily, Greece, and India. Trump is doing the strategic long term political thing not the short sighted military thing of keeping the drunk supplied with grog. Pull the plug! Go cold turkey! Reform or die!

Trump has questioned alliances with Australia as a consequence of Australian politicians, diplomats and intelligence staff assisting the Obama deep state entities going after and attempting to frame Trump. He terminated treaties and questioned defence relationships. It forced a change of prime minister from the unpopular and left of the party Malcolm Turnbull to Scott Morrison a quiet conservative. Sometimes you need to push allies to get results.

Its also baiting Islamist Turkey into attacking another NATO ally and thus negating its NATO membership at a time when it has enemies on all 4 sides including US assets in the black sea.

This is a topic for which there are no good solutions, and certainly no easy ones.
It seems like we had minimal troops in the area, as little as 50. I guess on some level they were human shields to prevent Turkey or Russia doing something out of caution that they might kill US forces and force a retaliation.
But the other side is if we only had 50 troops, they had no tactical value. Why keep them there.
It is terrible imaging that Turkey rolled troops so quickly.
I look forward to the next episode.

Why would Kim Jong-Un feel compelled to keep his promise to us about disarmament when he sees the US not keep their promise they made to another country? It is a shame this came out to the public. Had it beenf a quite pull-out, our boys coming home, it would have been lauded, especially if Obama or Hillary had done it. But since everyone has to attack our president for every single thing he does, I fear this will not go well for him. A man’s (or woman’s) word is his/her bond and his/her honor. I suppose this goes for countries, as well. Who will believe us now?

Don’t worry about Kim he’s got Trumps back. LOL. Its all an act while reunification progresses. How do you defect and take your country with you? Watch and learn.

Kim learned far more from Gadaffi(sp) giving up his nukes and more or less playing ball w/ the US. Right up until it became politically expedient for the Europeans and very narrow US interests to depose him.

Which is why they are all faking a stall on the the nukes. If people are watching Kim’s rocket launches they are not watching or blocking the real reforms in both the north and the south. Look squirrel.

Nowhere in this discussion, or any other that I can remember, is the critical question asked:
What would/should the USA consider to be a good outcome in this area? For us? For the natives?
Forgetting the obvious pie-in-the-sky answers as everyone putting down their guns and singing songs of peace and love, what?
These people have been fighting each other for centuries. They are not stupid: if there is a solution they can find it.
There are plenty of other foreign actors in the neighborhood with goals of their own which are often totally incompatible with the natives’. Russia and Iran in particular.
We are not capable of being the ringmaster or on-site mediator.
Other than keeping our word (a good thing) why are we there?
If there was a solution I think that we should be part of it.
If there is no solution I think that we should get out of the briar patch.
In years past, with our domestic problems manageable and under reasonable control, we could afford the luxury of extensive, open-ended, and ambiguous foreign policy goals.
Now, with the horrors of parts of out government actively and illegally subverting our governance, we have far far greater concerns than the Syria mess.
If we cannot fix our own house we cannot fix anyone else’s house.
First things first.

Guys,
I was mildly disappointed with this episode. To assert (several times), with very little evidence, that the U.S. is simply reneging on a deal with Syria is, at best naive, and at worst, dangerous to our national security. Are all of you suggesting that the U.S. set no timelines to be met, or expectations to be held accountable to, by the Syrians? Or that these same timelines and expectations haven’t been renegotiated over and over again?Are you suggesting that a country with no fault divorce (U.S.) is supposed to stay married to a country that refuses to get their sh*t together since at least 1991…no matter what? I love almost everything I hear from you guys but this episode seemed more like a self-flagellating version of, “I just wish he’d be more presidential and stop tweeting blah, blah, blah…” that I’ve grown so tired of hearing from the spineless Mit Romney types. I do appreciate Bill stating that he wasn’t ready to call this a mistake at the beginning of the episode. What I didn’t appreciate was the enormous amount of speculation and criticism that followed about a decision that only our President and his advisers are privy to. I only agree with about 60%-70% of what our president is doing for our country. But, all of you would have to admit, he’s been campaigning to exit Syria since before he was elected in 2016. Now that he’s actually putting the rubber to the road, the armchair quarterbacks are having a feeding frenzy…..only to be corrected once more information is released in due time.
All that said, and off my chest, keep up the great work guys!
Best,
Mike

Thanks for the engaging commentary, Mike. I don’t recall us talking about the Syrian government, per se, but more about the U.S. partnership with the Kurds who have helped defeat ISIS, and who currently hold the keys as jailers of many of them. As we’ll discuss in our next episode, a large part of the reason why there’s so much speculation here is the element of surprise, and the inconsistent messaging, around the most recent situation. Glad you’re here.

Scott, what is the US national interest in protecting the YPG, an organization of marxist revolutionaries? I could entertain the idea of assisting the other Kurds when they’re attacked, but why protect marxists?

In a fight between arab thugs, muslim terrorists, and marxists … I root for casualties.

Any real discussion if Syria needs to deal with the real problem there. We are negotiating with Bashar al-Assad, a very nice eye doctor but not the real Head of state. Its clear that Maher al-Assad is running the country, the socialist Ba’ath party, the war and the alliance with Iran. Bashar al-Assad has all the body language of a clueless puppet. A mushroom kept in the dark and fed…

This is a tough one for me. I usually have an answer that I can live with when I think about a problem, but this time I am torn. I do think we have used the Kurds to our advantage and abandoned them way too often. And, I think we need to get out of the area, “OR”. The only action I can see is to go in as Steve said and use “Maximum Violence and Minimum Time.” The problem is we have not really wielded our power in that fashion for a long long time. It is what we should do but we, as a people, lack the conviction and the Congress lacks a soul.

In a previous show you mentioned the Qaddafi situation where he gave up his nuclear weapons and we failed to protect him as promised, that was on Obama. Also on Obama, that you did not mention, was that we made the same deal with Ukraine. They gave up their nukes and therefore their last real ability to defend against a power like Russia and we abandoned them when Russia invaded and took Crimea. That was a terrible mistake. If we don’t start standing up and living up to our promises we will loose what little credibility we have left.

Two maxims to live by: If we decide to get involved in a conflict, the first is Steve’s—-“Maximum Violence and Minimum Time.” We must understand that to use the army in any other fashion is folly. Rush Limbaugh says this: “The function of an army is to kill people and break things.” We need to remember both of these from now on.

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