10/10-14/19: Trump’s claim of “no ammunition,” (see: 10/9/19) came with Trump facing a firestorm of criticism for his decision to abandon the Syrian Kurds. That decision came so suddenly that U.S. diplomats, allies and the Pentagon were caught flat-footed.
“No one in the U.S. government told us” about the U.S. decision
to reposition troops or possibly pull out of northern Syria, a Kurdish
intelligence official told Newsweek. “When we heard the news of American withdrawals, well,
it was over Twitter.” Knowing how Trump works, that figures. “We had no idea,
we were like, ‘What is this shit?’” the Kurdish official said.
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Kurdish fighters, including women, celebrate victory over ISIS. |
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“They trusted us and we broke that trust. It’s a stain on the American conscience.”
U.S. Army officer
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“This shit,” in the eyes of most Americans, was a cold-hearted betrayal of some of the best fighters the U.S. has allied with since the Korean War. The Kurds weren’t led by corrupt officers, as were South Vietnamese units. They weren’t actively hostile to U.S. forces, as were many Iraqis. They weren’t afraid of the Taliban, as Afghan military forces often are. The Kurds knew how to fight.
Now the president had dumped them as unceremoniously as he dumped his first wife for his second.
Fidelity is not the president’s strong suit.
Criticism came from all directions. You could almost imagine
Kellyanne Conway losing her grip at last and running across the South Lawn,
shouting, “The man has no soul! TRUMP HAS NO SOUL!”
Sen. Marco Rubio pointed out what everyone, save the president, seemed to grasp. “We degraded ISIS using Kurds as the ground force. Now we have abandoned them. They face annihilation…We must always have the backs of our allies [emphasis added throughout, unless otherwise noted], if we expect them to have our back.”
Former Secretary of State and four-star U.S. Army general, Colin Powell, summed up the situation. “Our foreign policy is in shambles right now.”
U.S. troops who had been fighting beside the Kurds were aghast. One officer put it this way. “They trusted us and we broke that trust. It’s a stain on the American conscience.” “I’m ashamed,” said a second. General John Allen, recently retired, was blunt. “There is blood on Trump’s hands,” he said, “for abandoning our Kurdish allies.”
“It’s a lot of sand.”
Faced with bipartisan opposition in Congress, the president began digging deep in his bag of duplicitous tricks. Why should we care about the Kurds, he wondered aloud? The fight in Syria didn’t affect us. We were 7,000 miles away. This was “not our problem,” he told reporters. Let the Turks and Syrians and Kurds fight it out, maybe with Russia’s help. “If Syria wants to fight for their land, that’s up to Turkey and Syria, as it has been for hundreds of years, they’ve been fighting,” Trump explained to the press. “And the Kurds have been fighting for hundreds of years. That whole mess, it’s been going along for a long time. Syria may have some help with Russia, and that’s fine. It’s a lot of sand,” he added dismissively. “They’ve got a lot of sand over there. So there’s a lot of sand there that they can play with.”
Got it.
Sand.
A journalist pointed out that the Kurds had suffered 11,000 casualties in the battle against ISIS. A lot of blood had been spilled while they “played” with that sand.
“And we’ve lost a lot of fighters, too,” Trump responded
cluelessly.
As is so often the case, Trump was talking out his ass. An estimate from the Department of Defense should have helped him put Kurdish losses in perspective. Yes, the U.S. supplied ammunition (we had plenty). Yes, we backed the Kurds with pinpoint artillery and air support. Otherwise, our allies did nearly all the bleeding. U.S. losses in the fight against ISIS, across Iraq and Syria, totaled 88, a tragedy for their families, but a toll that paled in comparison to sacrifices made by the Kurds.
Still, when it came to defeating ISIS, President Trump was
clear about who the hero was. “Everybody said that was going to be an impossible thing to
do,” Trump preened for the cameras. “I did it, and I did it quickly, because we
have a great military now.”
Trump did what he does best when faced with complex issues. He made up weird excuses. The Kurds didn’t help us in World War II, he said – which made absolutely no sense. He insisted he didn’t green-light a Turkish invasion. He talked to President Erdogan by phone, agreed to remove U.S. forces from positions in northern Syria, where they had served as a tripwire, and the Turks just happened to storm across the border. Who could have known!
Trump also decided to attack his former Secretary of Defense, James Mattis. The veteran Marine general wasn’t tough enough to take out ISIS, Trump claimed – and only he, Cadet Bone Spurs, was man enough to get the job done.
Mattis, he grumbled, was the most-overrated general in history. Trump? Cadet Bone Spurs was the best! (See: 10/17/19.)
As for the president, the more he thought about it, Trump wasn’t even sure he liked the Kurds. They’re “no angels,” he told reporters.
“The PKK, which is a part of the Kurds, as you know, is
probably worse at terror and more of a terrorist threat in many ways than
ISIS.”
Once again, Trump was banking on the fact that his biggest fans would never realize the Kurds in Syria were a different group from the PKK. And they’d never know the Syrian Kurds had been dying by our side for years. Finally, Trump said we’d given the Kurds a lot of money. In his mind, that more than made up for the fact they had suffered 11,000 dead and wounded.
Trump
didn’t understand – and can’t understand – because no one in his family ever
sheds any blood for any true cause.
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The hero in Trump's book is always Trump. |
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