Kenneth Timmerman’s article below is eminently reasonable, and he is right: the political and media elites that are howling over Trump’s “betrayal” of the Kurds will keep howling no matter what evidence is presented in defense of the withdrawal, because “none of them truly care about the Kurds.” All they want is a stick they can use to beat Trump.
“Trump didn’t sell out the Kurds by pulling out of Syria,” by Kenneth R. Timmerman, New York Post, October 19, 2019:
The national media blasted President Trump’s withdrawal of 50 US military advisors from the Syrian border with Turkey as a “sellout,” a “betrayal” and a “huge strategic blunder.”
Let’s be clear: None of them truly care about the Kurds. Otherwise, they would have been sending correspondents and camera crews to Rojava, as the Kurds call northern Syria, on a regular basis.
Let’s also be clear about the goals of Turkish president Tayyip Recep [sic] Erdogan. While he attempted to stylize his military invasion of Rojava as a counterterrorism operation, few international observers bought into it. Why? Because there have been no terror attacks against Turkey from Syrian territory since the Syrian Kurds established their self-governing entity in 2012. None.
Erdogan is not even remotely interested in fighting ISIS, or in taking responsibility for the estimated 12,000 ISIS fighters currently in Kurdish custody at the al-Hol refugee camp. What actually happens to those ISIS prisoners, and the fate of Christian and Yazidi minorities, will be key measures of the agreement hammered out by Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo with Erdogan on Thursday.
The humanitarian disaster that unfolded this past week helped to paint Erdogan as notorious a mass murderer as Saddam Hussein. And it was to Erdogan’s legacy that the president appealed in his private, and now public, letter to the Turkish president as the crisis unfolded.
Erdogan’s real goal with this invasion was to smash Kurdish self-government, and those 50 US advisors were the last thing in his way.
But let’s be clear about US goals, too. Our advisors were not in northern Syria to defend a Kurdish government but to fight ISIS. The fight to smash the ISIS caliphate is over, and we won….
I have met with Kurdish political and military leaders in the region, including the PYD, the political arm of the Kurdish YPG militia. And while they were thrilled to have US backing in the fight against ISIS, none of them had any illusions about the US coming to their aid should Turkey attack.
Did the president’s critics really believe he should have considered those 50 US soldiers as a “tripwire” that would trigger a massive US military invasion of Syria to fight against Turkey — our NATO ally?…
The Kurds are paying a heavy price in this battle — not because of a US betrayal — but because they remain stateless and thus powerless. By targeting Erdogan financially, legally and undermining his legitimacy, President Trump has done more to help the Kurds than his critics with their crocodile tears. And for now, he is winning.