Trump abandons the Kurds

[David]

[pietillidie]

^We don't need a complete view to develop consistent enough principles here. Beyond the abandonment of the Kurds, which I think is disgraceful, I'm also appalled at the vacuous political bifurcation which continues to underwrite these kinds of decisions.

I have always argued against the careless and premature withdrawal from Afghanistan on the basis of owned responsibility despite opposing the invasion. Not knowing enough about the situation now, I have no end date on that deployment. Maybe withdrawal is overdue, maybe not; I wouldn't know. But I suspect that's something that could be known.

I had/have no view on Libya and Syria as I never knew enough about them to judge. My impression was that it was too complex to warrant reasonable intervention, but that there was also a responsibility element flowing from the destabilisation caused by Iraq. I think my support of Merkel's stance contra the refugee panic says I was sure enough about the responsibility element, if not the intervention itself.

Perhaps there was a clear enough answer on intervention I hadn't picked up, perhaps there wasn't; if there wasn't count me as an opponent. And that's doubly the case if corrupt benefactors were beating the drums of war around it (equivalents of, say, Cheney-Halliburton or the private security industry where Iraq was concerned). Obama is clearly a sane and sensible person, but he was still an institutional American politician in an institutional American party, with all that implies.

I still have no broader view on Syria. But this particular decision is as simple a case as we've had as they've already taken responsibility, rightly or wrongly, have been advised of the immediate consequences, and could unleash much greater chaos by withdrawing. Even worse, the flippant Twitter game with Erdogan is only begging far wider chaos with Turkey at such a dangerous domestic juncture.

There's nothing ostensibly tricky about this; if there is, no one has put forward a case showing as much, instead deferring to some vague notion of "endless war" and clichéd isolationism as if that magically overrides the simple knowns of the case.

The Saudi Arabia deployment is integral to all of this because of the theme of not getting involved in other people's complex historical disputes and hatreds to start with. Talk of "endless wars" in a broader context of reflection on the Vietnams and Iraqs is justifiable. But it makes no sense as you deploy troops elsewhere as expedient, taking people for fools. (The only real principled argument I can see here runs the complete opposite way to Trump's cronyist support of Saudi Arabia, namely supporting intervention on behalf of suffering Yemenis, Iran notwithstanding).

But no, sensible is too much to ask. Instead, we've got all-or-nothing isolationism setting itself against an imaginary colonialist neoconservatism, as if they're the only two options in existence, for the sole purposes of defending that clueless head case Trump and his base pandering — as I say, as if no one has learned anything.

That aside, as I think we agree the ultimate principle is one of less arbitrary side taking and more distributed decision making through the UN. And that does include less American intervention and greater contribution from others, but in the serious sense of the idea.

[David]

Seems like the right response, but should have happened days ago. You can count every minute of delay in deaths, unfortunately.

https://www.sbs.com.au/news/donald-trump-demands-turkey-stands-down-and-calls-off-syria-assault

[think positive]

If he jumps to quickly he’s criticised, or should I say the US is, too late and every one is still critical, bloody hard to get the balance right. The blood is on the hands holding the guns though, not the US.

Just don’t get it in the day and age, will man ever learn?

[Wokko]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/10/15/russia-assumes-mantle-supreme-power-broker-middle-east-us-retreats/

[Skids]

Oh Look, more stuff to upset the Trump haters agenda...

NEW: Syria ceasefire a ‘great day for civilization’

Last night, President Donald J. Trump sent a delegation of senior American officials—including Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien—to Ankara to meet with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan face-to-face.

And just hours ago, the Administration was able to deliver a major announcement.

“Earlier this week, President Trump took decisive action to call on Turkish forces to stand down, and to end the violence, and to agree to negotiations,” Vice President Pence said during a press conference from Turkey.


“Today, I'm proud to report—thanks to the strong leadership of President Donald Trump and the strong relationship between President Erdogan and Turkey and the United States of America—that today the United States and Turkey have agreed to a cease fire in Syria.”

President Trump’s priorities are clear: American soldiers can no longer be sacrificed in endless wars across the Middle East. That’s one of the most important promises he made to the American people as a candidate, and he will always honor it.

Instead of American lives, the President is using “tough love” to bring other countries to the table and achieve positive outcomes. “Obviously the sanctions and tariffs [on Turkey] were going to be very biting. I’m glad we don't have to do it,” he said.

The results of today’s negotiations are important for our partners in Syria:
Turkey will pause Operation Peace Spring to allow for the withdrawal of mostly Kurdish YPG forces from the 20-mile safe zone for 120 hours

All military operations under Operation Peace Spring will be paused, and Operation Peace Spring will be halted entirely on completion of the withdrawal

Turkey agrees to taking no military action against the town of Kobani

Turkey and the United States mutually commit to stifling any ISIS activities in northeast Syria, which includes coordination on ISIS detention facilities
“It's a great day for the United States. It's a great day for Turkey. It's a great day for our partners,” President Trump said. “It's really a great day for civilization.”

The White House • October 17, 2019

[watt price tully]

[David]

That’s the thing. I’ll give Trump credit where it’s due – and this is, in some ways, a much better outcome than it could have been, and he has gotten the US forces out, which is no small thing – but the fact remains that dozens of civilians have been needlessly killed and thousands displaced because of the failure to hash all this out before the withdrawal. If that’s the 4D chess victory that Trump and his supporters want to claim, they can’t just ignore the human collateral damage that’s occurred here. Not many people would point to a situation that resulted in 73 civilian deaths (last time I checked) as a victory for diplomacy.

Trump’s bull-in-a-china-shop approach has its benefits at times, and even has some advantages over a more cautious strategy. But the stuff in the china shop that gets broken along the way is actual human lives, and, unless we’re actually psychopaths, I don’t think we can actually applaud that.

[Woods]

Some Realpolitik for those interested in understanding the historical invention of the Kurdish homeland of Rojava.

All That is Hidden From You About the Turkish operation ‘Source of Peace’,
in three parts by Thierry Meyssan of the Voltaire Network (translated from the original French), https://www.voltairenet.org/en )

Part 1: The Genealogy of the Kurdish Question
The unanimous international community multiplies its condemnation of the military offensive in Rojava and watches helplessly as tens of thousands of Kurds flee, pursued by the Turkish army. However, no one intervenes, considering that a massacre may be the only possible way to restore peace, given the inextricable situation created by France and the crimes against humanity committed by Kurdish combatants and civilians.
https://www.voltairenet.org/article207992.html

Part 2: Kurdistan, Imagined by French Colonialism
Contrary to popular belief, Rojava is not a state for the Kurdish people, but a French fantasy of the interwar period. The aim was to create a rump state with Kurds equivalent to Greater Israel, which was being considered with Jews. This colonial objective was reactivated by Presidents Sarkozy, Hollande and Macron including the ethnic cleansing of the region intended to host it.
https://www.voltairenet.org/article207995.html

Part 3: The Turkish Invasion of Rojava
While the international community publicly fears the brutality of the Turkish intervention in northern Syria, it unofficially welcomes this intervention as the one and only solution to bring peace to the region. The war against Syria ends with one more crime. The fate of Idleb’s foreign mercenaries, the rabid jihadists during eight years of a particularly savage and cruel war, has yet to be determined.
https://www.voltairenet.org/article208010.html

[David]

Worth noting that the author is a Putinist and 9/11 conspiracy theorist who writes for an Assad-approved newspaper in Syria. Not saying that his account should be automatically discredited – and I'll be the first to accept that dominant Western imperial narratives about the Kurds are also unreliable – but tread warily, as this way propaganda lies.

[Woods]

Take heed folks! Run for the hills with guns and whisky lest the big bad Putinist get you.

[David]

Look, I know I'm between a rock and a hard place on this: I too cringe whenever idiotic "Resistance" types in the US press go on about Russiagate and call anyone who disagrees even slightly with the US imperial narrative a "Russian asset". But the flipside is that there really are Putinist propagandists and Assad apologists out there (on RT and similar platforms), and they're no less annoying. There are few people one can really trust on these issues, but I think journalists like Glenn Greenwald (see below) and Matt Taibbi are a good starting point, along with the broader socialist press.

https://theintercept.com/2014/08/26/fun-empire-fighting-sides-war/

[watt price tully]

[David]

[pietillidie]

An internal view on the disaster:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/07/world/middleeast/us-envoy-william-roebuck-syria.html