This shameful act should enhance the U.S.'s three-year, whiplash reputation for America and Foreign Dictatorships First — allies last:
In a major shift in United States military policy in Syria, the White House said on Sunday that President Trump had given his endorsement for a Turkish military operation that would sweep away American-backed Kurdish forces near the border in Syria…. Kurdish fighters … have been the United States’ most reliable partner in fighting the Islamic State in a strategic corner of northern Syria….
Many Syria experts criticized the White House decision and cautioned that American abandonment of its Kurdish allies could widen the eight-year Syrian conflict and prompt the Kurds to ally with the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad to combat the much larger and more technologically advanced Turkish army.
Trump's typically ill-considered order and betrayal of the Syrian Democratic Forces, among whom Kurdish fighters are a major contingent, should serve as yet another and indeed final warning to every pro-democracy movement that the United States has checked out of the freedom business, and gone as roguish as Putin's Russia. Its word means much more than nothing, as many critics will contend. Its word is now a reliable precursor to global treachery — and no one at home can stop this sociopathic, touched-by-madness commander in chief:
"Trump’s decision goes against the recommendations of top officials in the Pentagon and the State Department who have sought to keep a small troop presence in northeast Syria to continue operations against the Islamic State, or ISIS, and to act as a critical counterweight to Iran and Russia" (emphasis mine).
Meanwhile, chalk up another win for Trump's villainous friends of the world. His villainy is but proof, as the NY Times puts it, of increasingly dictatorial Recep Erdogan's "influence with Mr. Trump on Syria policy."
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Incidentally, another betrayal in progress:
"In his phone call in June with Chinese President Xi Jinping — in addition to seeking his involvement in our election, which he then publicly repeated — Trump reportedly sold out the people of Hong Kong, who for months have been rallying in the streets for the democratic rights they are owed."