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Trump dismisses concerns about leaving Kurds at the mercy of Turkey


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As Turkey began its assault against America’s Kurdish allies on Wednesday, sending troops and warplanes across the border with Syria, President Trump dismissed concerns about what is widely characterized as a betrayal of the fighters who bore the brunt of the battle against ISIS.

“Alliances are very easy” to establish, Trump said in response to a question about whether pulling American troops out of the region — leaving the field clear for Turkey to attack its historic enemies — would make it harder to enlist allies in the future.

Trump spoke at a White House event where he signed an executive order on transparency in instituting new federal regulations.

After a phone call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday, Trump ordered the immediate withdrawal of the token American force that had been stationed in northern Syria, serving as a tripwire against Turkey’s long-standing desire to eliminate the Kurdish presence on its border. The Kurds, an ethnic group in a region that spans Turkey, northern Syria and Iraq, have fought alongside Americans in the war on ISIS for years. But their goal of carving out a national state in the region is strongly opposed by Turkey, which regards at least some of their forces as terrorists.

Within a day of the American redeployment, Turkey began mobilizing for the attack.

Echoing a point raised earlier in a blog post by a right-wing commentator, Trump dismissed the Kurdish alliance with an inexplicable reference to World War II, and suggested that the Kurds are pursuing their own interests in the Mideast, not necessarily America’s:

“Now, the Kurds are fighting for their land, just so you understand, they are fighting for their land. And as somebody wrote in a very, very powerful article today, they didn’t help us in the Second World War, they didn’t help us with Normandy as an example, they mentioned the names of different battles, but they’re there to help us with their land, and that’s a different thing.

 Photo: Evan Vucci/AP

“In addition to that, we have spent tremendous amounts of money in helping the Kurds,” Trump continued. “With all of that being said, we like the Kurds.”

He repeated his threat from Monday to “obliterate” the economy of Turkey with sanctions if — as some fear — it perpetrates a massacre of the Kurds.

The U.S. pullback, a sudden reversal of years of American policy, was met with unusually harsh and bipartisan criticism in Washington, including by Trump’s frequent defender Sen. Lindsey Graham, who said the Kurds had been “shamelessly abandoned by the Trump administration.”

Asked about the fate of thousands of captured ISIS fighters who have been held prisoner by the Kurds, Trump said it wouldn’t be America’s problem:

“Well, they’re going to be escaping to Europe, that’s where they want to go. They want to go back to their homes, but Europe didn’t want them from us, we could have given it to them, they could have had trials, they could have done whatever they wanted. But as usual, it’s not reciprocal. You know, my favorite word, ‘reciprocal.’ That’s all I want. I don’t want an edge, I just want reciprocal, it’s not a fair deal for the United States.”

Trump reminded reporters that scaling back America’s overseas commitments was one of his campaign promises.

“I campaigned on ending the endless wars. We’re all over the world fighting wars,” he said. “People are saying, ‘You’re doing the right thing.’”

He ended his comments by invoking the American casualties of the ongoing fighting in the Mideast, with an implied rebuke to Graham, who he said “would like to stay there for the next 200 years.”

“It’s easy to talk tough, tough guys, all these tough guys, ‘let’s keep fighting, let’s keep fighting.’ If they had to go to Walter Reed, where they do unbelievable work…” Trump said, before trailing off into an anecdote about an injured soldier who had surgery to rebuild his nose.

 

https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-withdrawal-explanation-syria-kurds-isis-europe-215740775.html

 

 

 

 

No but they did help us destroy ISIS, right Mr. President? They are completely destroyed, isn't that what you told us Americans? So you lied when you said ISIS was destroyed. You have forgotten the Kurds' commitment to freeing Iraq. Now you say they didn't help us in Normandy? Did you help in Normandy? Did you help us in Vietnam? How have you defended freedom? By getting drunk at frat parties and smooching Putin? You are a disgrace to America, it's warriors, it's founding fathers, and most of all to the people who voted for you. 

 

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Lindsey Graham says Trump's 'shameless' abandonment of Kurds will revive ISIS terrorists

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, who has been one of President Trump’s strongest allies in the Senate, on Wednesday said Kurdish fighters in Syria had been “shamelessly abandoned by the Trump Administration” in its sudden decision to pull U.S. troops from northern Syria, leaving America’s longtime allies in the fight against the Islamic State group exposed to an attack by Turkey.

“I hope he’s right — I don’t think so. I know that every military person has told him don’t do this,” Graham said in an appearance on “Fox & Friends.” “If he follows through with this, it’d be the biggest mistake of his presidency.”

Smoke rises at the site of Ras al-Ayn city of Syria as Turkish troops along with the Syrian National Army begin Operation Peace Spring in northern Syria against PKK/YPG, Daesh terrorists; and, Sen. Lindsey Graham. (Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: Kerem Kocalar/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images, J. Scott Applewhite/AP) Smoke rises at the Syrian city of Ras al-Ayn as Turkish troops begin an incursion; Sen. Lindsey Graham. (Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: Kerem Kocalar/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images, J. Scott Applewhite/AP)

Amid news that Turkish forces had launched a long-threatened military offensive into Kurdish-controlled parts of Syria, Trump on Wednesday continued to stand by his decision to pull out U.S. troops, tweeting Wednesday morning that Turkey should be responsible for guarding all ISIS fighters captured in the area and reiterating, in follow-up tweets, his belief that “going into the Middle East is the worst decision ever made in the history of our country!”

Graham, of South Carolina, reacted to Trump’s comments, characterizing them as “a pre-9/11 mentality that the Middle East is no concern to us” that “paved the way for 9/11.”

In an afternoon statement from the White House, Trump confirmed Turkey had invaded Syria Wednesday morning. He declared, “The United States does not endorse this attack and has made it clear to Turkey that this operation is a bad idea.

“There are no American soldiers in the area,” Trump added. “Turkey has committed to protecting civilians, protecting religious minorities, including Christians, and ensuring no humanitarian crisis takes place — and we will hold them to this commitment. In addition, Turkey is now responsible for ensuring all ISIS fighters being held captive remain in prison and that ISIS does not reconstitute in any way, shape, or form. We expect Turkey to abide by all of its commitments, and we continue to monitor the situation closely.”

“I hope President Trump’s right,” Graham told Fox News. “I hope we can turn the fight against ISIS over to Turkey. I hope that Turkey, when they go into Syria, they won’t slaughter the Kurds. And I would say this to the president: It would be hard to protect America without allies over there. ... The Kurds have been good allies. And when Turkey goes into Syria they’re not going to fight ISIS, they’re going in to kill the Kurds, because in their eyes they’re more of a threat to Turkey than ISIS.”

Graham added: “We can’t abandon the Kurds now. We can’t turn it over to Turkey. To think that would work is really delusional and dangerous.”

Graham, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is one of a number of Trump’s allies who have condemned the decision to withdraw the troops, who had been serving as a buffer between Kurdish fighters and Turkey.

The Kurdish fighters had fought alongside Americans to defeat the Islamist terror army of ISIS. But their long-held dream of establishing a Kurdish state in territory that overlaps Turkey and Iraq makes them historical enemies of both countries.

The White House issued a statement Sunday evening saying it “will not support or be involved in the operation” and “will no longer be in the immediate area” of northern Syria.

The move came after months of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s threats of a military operation across the border to clear out the Kurdish forces. The White House said the decision to withdraw troops from Syria came after a call on Sunday between Trump and Erdogan, who views the Kurds as a threat to his ruling party. There are roughly 1,000 U.S. troops currently operating in northeastern Syria.

Following reports that American soldiers were leaving their positions in Syria, Trump on Monday offered a rambling defense of his stunning reversal of long-standing American policy, saying, “We’ve been there for many years, long, many, many, many years beyond what we were supposed to be. Not fighting, just there.”

Graham said that a U.S. presence in the region has yielded results in fighting ISIS and argued that Trump should continue with U.S. border patrols along the “safe zone” in northern Syria, otherwise his administration will be responsible for the return of the Islamic State group.

“I would argue for him to go back to the status quo,” Graham said. “The safe zones were working. Patrolling with Turkey and international forces to protect the Kurds and Turkey is the way to go. If we pull out, the Kurds are in a world of hurt and ISIS comes back, and President Trump will own it.”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/lindsey-graham-says-trumps-shameless-abandonment-of-kurds-will-revive-isis-terrorists-171235597.html

 

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FROM THE NY POST

 

 

 Michael Doran

October 8, 2019 | 8:44pm

Susan Rice, former national security adviser under Obama, said Trump' decision to pull troops out of Syria is "bats- -t crazy,” but it's nonsense because Trump inherited a dysfunctional strategy for countering ISIS from his predecessor.
President Donald TrumpAFP via Getty Images

‘It’s bats- -t crazy,” Susan Rice said Monday on CBS’ “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.” The former national security adviser, who served under President Barack Obama, was referring to President Trump’s decision to pull US troops from northern Syria. She was particularly dismayed by what she depicted as a dangerous betrayal of The People’s Protection Units, also known as the YPG, the Kurdish force that helped the US-led coalition ­defeat Islamic State.

“These are the people who for the last four years have been fighting on our behalf, with our equipment, to defeat ISIS,” she said. “And they have done it with enormous efficacy, and they have sacrificed immensely, and we basically just said to them, ‘See ya,’ and let the Turks, who are like the hungry wolf trying to kill the lamb, go for it."

Over the last few days, a host of former Obama officials have been repeating this story, which is highly misleading, to say the least. Rice and her colleagues would have us believe that Team Obama created a highly effective plan for stabilizing the Middle East by working through groups like the YPG, and Trump, mercurial and impulsive, is throwing it all away by seeking a rapprochement with Ankara. That’s nonsense.

In fact, the close relationship with the YPG was a quick fix that bequeathed to Trump profound strategic dilemmas. Trump inherited from Obama a dysfunctional strategy for countering ISIS, one that ensured ever-greater turmoil in the region and placed American forces in an impossible position.

To be sure, the YPG are good fighters, and the American soldiers who have fought alongside them hold them in very high esteem. But the decision to make them the primary ally for defeating ISIS came at a hidden cost: the alienation of one of America’s closest allies. The YPG is the Syrian wing of the PKK, the Kurdish separatist group in Turkey.

Designated as a terrorist group by the State Department, the PKK has prosecuted a long war against the Turkish Republic, resulting in the death of some 40,000 people.

The Turks beseeched the Obama administration not to align with their sworn enemy, but the Obamaians told them, in effect, to sit down and shut up. Why? The American relationship with the YPG was a direct outgrowth of the greatest blunder of the Obama administration: the effort to reach a strategic accommodation with Iran.

It all began in 2014 with the siege of Kobani, a Kurdish town in Northeast Syria that was surrounded by ISIS fighters. Because the plight of the town was well-reported in the American media, Obama came under political pressure to intervene militarily to break the siege.

Until then, however, he had strenuously avoided involvement in the Syrian civil war. To be sure, he sought to avoid a quagmire, but he also was eager to avoid alienating the Iranians and the Russians.

By now, the negotiations that would lead to the Iran nuclear deal were underway. But Damascus was the close ally of both Russia and Iran, so any American intervention in Syria risked upsetting the new relationship that Obama was attempting to forge with Moscow and Tehran.

This factor is the hidden key to understanding why Team Obama gravitated to the YPG to solve its problems. The group had a long history of cordial ­relations with the Russians and the Iranians, and, best of all, it had no intention to topple the Assad regime. Every other group that Obama might have used to defeat ISIS had an anti-Assad agenda.

So, no, Trump is not betraying the YPG. He is seeking to restore balance to American foreign policy.

The YPG knew from the ­beginning that its relationship with Washington was temporary and transactional. It didn’t fight as a favor to the United States. America armed, trained, equipped and funded the YPG. We gave it strong military support, including aerial bombardment, which allowed it to vanquish all foes in its neighborhood. Thanks to this assistance, the power, influence and territorial reach of the group expanded beyond its wildest dreams. In the meantime, America also held Turkey at bay.

The YPG benefitted enormously from the effort, and the Turkish-American relationship suffered in equal measure. To paraphrase Susan Rice, this was a bats- -t crazy way to solve the ISIS challenge. If she and her Team Obama colleagues want to blame anyone for this mess, they might consider looking in the mirror.

 

 

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Quote

“Now, the Kurds are fighting for their land, just so you understand, they are fighting for their land. And as somebody wrote in a very, very powerful article today, they didn’t help us in the Second World War, they didn’t help us with Normandy as an example, they mentioned the names of different battles, but they’re there to help us with their land, and that’s a different thing.

End Quote

 

 

As I already wrote in my "Politics and Environs" thread in commenting an article on  this very  issue:

 

umb Quote

I deem it UNBELIEVABLE Pres.Trump said such a thing...

 

First of all the Kurds never ever had their own Nation as they are still nowadays scattered in Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran.......The big shots of those Countries have always fought them and never helped them in the process of trying to get their independence and some form of statehood ( which is what they want and have been asking for years or decades)....The contrary infact....So...I mean, seriously......What is he talking about?????????

End  umb Quote

 

Edited by umbertino
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Military Leaders Fear They've Seen This Before. It Ended in the Iraq War.

WASHINGTON — The last time the United States abandoned allies in the Middle East, military officials say, it helped lead to the Iraq War.

Now, almost 30 years later, President Donald Trump has pulled U.S. special forces and support troops away from Kurdish allies in northern Syria, easing the way for Turkey’s promised offensive, which began on Wednesday.

It is too soon to say with any certainty where Trump’s abandonment of the Kurdish fighters who did the heavy lifting in the fight against the Islamic State will lead. But already, anguished U.S. military and national security officials are sounding alarms that clearing the way for Turkey to bomb the Kurds could have long-term repercussions, just as the desertion of allies did then.

“In the course of American history, when we have stuck with our allies in troubling circumstances, from the U.K. and Australia under attack in WWII to South Korea in the Korean War, things tend to work out to our benefit,” said James G. Stavridis, a retired admiral and former supreme allied commander for Europe. “When we walk away from loyal allies, as we did in Vietnam and are now threatening to do in Afghanistan and Syria, the wheels come off.”

At the end of the Persian Gulf War, the United States’ refusal to aid a rebellion it encouraged in Iraq allowed Saddam Hussein to brutally crush the insurgents, leaving him in power and U.S. allies on the ground alienated and slaughtered by the thousands.

Now, with the Kurds potentially facing a similar fate, a Pentagon official said anger within the military was deeper than at any other point in Trump’s tenure as commander in chief.

That is in part because U.S. military officials personally know the Kurds they have been fighting alongside. They consider them friends and even, in some cases, brothers in arms. While the Kurds may not have been with the Americans in Normandy, as Trump curiously noted on Wednesday, neither were the U.S. service members who are now in Iraq and Syria. What those service members know, military officials say, is that the Kurds have been with them in Manbij, and Raqqa, and the Middle Euphrates River Valley.

“What happens if we leave?” the normally reticent Gen. Joseph L. Votel, who until March was the commander of U.S. Central Command overseeing the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, wrote in an op-ed article in The Atlantic on Tuesday, two days after the White House announced it was leaving the Kurds. In the piece, Votel spoke fondly of the top Kurdish general, Mazloum Abdi, whom he called “impressive and thoughtful.”

Votel, now retired, wrote that Turkish attacks on the Kurdish fighters, “coupled with a hasty U.S. departure, now threaten to rapidly destabilize an already fragile security situation in Syria’s northeast, where ISIS’ physical caliphate was only recently defeated.”

Paul D. Eaton, a retired major general and veteran of the Iraq War, was more blunt. “It takes time to build trust,” he said. “And any time you erode trust, like this, it’s that much harder to bring it back.”

Pentagon officials fear that Turkey’s incursion could lead to the release of tens of thousands of Islamic State fighters and their families who are being held in detention facilities under Kurdish control, and a return, quickly, of the self-proclaimed caliphate that the United States and its partners have spent the last five years destroying.

But even more, they fear that the next time the United States is looking for help from fighters on the ground in the region, the Americans will not be able to find it.

This has happened before. In February 1991, as the Desert Storm campaign was unfolding in Iraq, President George H.W. Bush, during a rally in Andover, Massachusetts, suggested that the Iraqi people “take matters into their own hands and force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step aside.”

Two weeks later, Bush made another call to arms, saying that putting Hussein “aside” would “facilitate the resolution of all these problems that exist and certainly would facilitate the acceptance of Iraq back into the family of peace-loving nations.”

Iraq’s feared Republican Guard did not heed Bush. But the Shiites and the Kurds did. On March 1, the day after Bush halted the Desert Storm war effort, Iraqi Shiites in the south and Kurds in the north began a rebellion against Hussein.

At first, things went swiftly and well for the Shiites and the Kurds, as a succession of Iraqi cities and towns — although not Baghdad — came under their control.

But the United States never stepped in to assist, and Hussein’s military soon regrouped and began a counteroffensive. In fact, the cease-fire negotiated by Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf to end Desert Storm helped Hussein quell the uprising. The deal prohibited the Iraqi military from using fixed-wing aircraft over the country but allowed helicopters, which Hussein then deployed to bombard the Shiites, who had few surface-to-air missiles or heavy weapons. They were largely defenseless against the helicopters strafing the ground.

In the north, Iraqi divisions crushed the Kurdish rebellion.

Shiite and Kurdish leaders turned to the Americans, begging for help. It did not come. U.S. warplanes in the south did not engage as the Republican Guard wiped out the rebellious Shiites by the thousands.

Human Rights Watch reported that “in their attempts to retake cities, and after consolidating control, loyalist forces killed thousands of unarmed civilians by firing indiscriminately into residential areas” and “executing young people on the streets, in homes and in hospitals.” The Iraqi military, Human Rights Watch said, was shooting people “en masse.”

Paul D. Wolfowitz, then the undersecretary of defense for policy, was “dismayed,” he would say later, by the president’s unwillingness to support the Shiite uprising, and particularly by the order that American pilots not shoot down Iraqi military helicopters that were strafing the rebels.

More than a decade later, President George W. Bush was surrounded by many of the same national security advisers his father had. One in particular, Wolfowitz, was forcefully making the case that it was time for the United States to do what it did not in 1991: Go after Hussein.

When the United States finally did enter Iraq in 2003, the Shiites, while welcoming the toppling of Hussein, did not greet the Americans as liberators.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/military-leaders-fear-theyve-seen-185048509.html

 

Smarter than his generals? Has he ever read a history book?

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George Will has a warning for Republican lawmakers: If you don’t stand up to President Donald Trump, you deserve to lose everything next year. 

Will, a longtime conservative voice who quit the party in 2016 when it was clear Trump would be nominated, slammed the president’s decision to “betray” America’s Kurdish allies in Syria. He said the move could complete “the destruction of the GOP’s advantage regarding foreign policy.”

But much of Will’s column in The Washington Post railed against the Republican lawmakers who continue to stand beside Trump. He wrote: 

“Trump’s gross and comprehensive incompetence now increasingly impinges upon the core presidential responsibility. This should, but will not, cause congressional Republicans to value their own and their institution’s dignity and exercise its powers more vigorously than they profess fealty to Trump.” 

Will added that Trump’s refusal to cooperate with the House impeachment inquiry into his dealings with Ukraine was in itself an impeachable offense. 

“In 13 months, all congressional Republicans who have not defended Congress by exercising ‘the constitutional rights of the place’ should be defeated,” he wrote. 

Read the full column here. 

 

Conservatives are heading for the door.

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2 minutes ago, ladyGrace'sDaddy said:

You're right, :o

More than 20,000 headed for the door just last night to see President Trump :lmao:

 

 

 

So If'n Democrats are so certain Trump is toast why such the effort to silence him?

 

It appears he is silencing himself... He refuses to end it with his evidence... Or is it another lie?

Yup the conservatives are heading for the doors. FOX NEWS, Graham, McConnell, and many others...

 

The crowd of people you are touting are certainly not conservatives. Conservatives don't applaud increasing the debt, they don't applaud turning and running from our allies, they don't applaud bailouts. So conservatives are demonstrating they have had enough of this fraud.

 

B/A

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3 minutes ago, ladyGrace'sDaddy said:

EXACTLY!!!!! :bravo:Now you're getting it.

 

So the conservative party is dropping him, and a few danglers are hanging on, like the last ones on the Titanic. This week my dad who is in his 80s and a die hard Trump supporter with a MAGA hat, said he has had enough. He is not going to vote for Trump, he thinks he is causing too much damage to America's good reputation. His words.

 

Now he is just one guy in a neighborhood of retirees and Trump supporters. He is making a switch to any republican who runs. If his buddies start to say the same thing, that would be a trend.

 

B/A

Edited by bostonangler
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9 minutes ago, bostonangler said:

 

So the conservative party is dropping him, and a few danglers are hanging on, like the last ones on the Titanic. This week my dad who is in his 80s and a die hard Trump supporter with a MAGA hat, said he has had enough. He is not going to vote for Trump, he thinks he is causing too much damage to America's good reputation. His words.

 

Now he is just one guy in a neighborhood of retirees and Trump supporters. He is making a switch to any republican who runs. If his buddies start to say the same thing, that would be a trend.

 

B/A

It's truly sad how blinded you've become 

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 10/11/2019 at 2:22 PM, bostonangler said:

 

So the conservative party is dropping him, and a few danglers are hanging on, like the last ones on the Titanic. This week my dad who is in his 80s and a die hard Trump supporter with a MAGA hat, said he has had enough. He is not going to vote for Trump, he thinks he is causing too much damage to America's good reputation. His words.

 

Now he is just one guy in a neighborhood of retirees and Trump supporters. He is making a switch to any republican who runs. If his buddies start to say the same thing, that would be a trend.

 

B/A

 

 

Thanks for sharing, B/A....Sorry...Still out of pluses

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