By Justin O. Smith
Posted October 22, 2019
President Trump wants to pull out of Syria for the very
valid reason of stopping involvement in “endless wars.” The difficulty
President Trump is facing is one of our staunchest allies against Islamic
terrorism has been a group of stateless Kurds that are located in multiple Muslim
nations that include Turkey, Iraq, Iran and of course Syria. The none of those nations
have ever had any sympathy for the Kurdish people to form an independent Kurdistan
with Turkey being the most vehement AGAINST an independent Kurdistan. Turks and
Kurds have ethnic commonality and the Turks have jealously protected their land
mass and cultural heritage left over after losing WWI. A Jealousy that during
and after WWI has led to genocides of non-Turks residing in former Ottoman
Turkey and present Republic of Turkey. Armenian and Greek Christians were the initial genocidal
victims. YET because Muslim Kurds did not desire to
assimilate to Turkish Islamic culture, Kurds also had and have become victims
to Turkish genocidal efforts.
To be realistic though, my guess is Arab and Iranian (history’s
Persians) efforts of committing genocide against Kurds has more to do with the
lack of power than the lack of will to terminate Kurdish-Cultural Muslims. So,
I do have sympathy for stateless Kurds. BUT the problem I have with 21st
century Kurds is their independence efforts have been led by Communists. In
case you missed the history-memo, Communism is a despotic political movement
favoring a State-dominated dictatorship ending political Liberty, Individual Liberty,
Religious Liberty (favoring atheism), Market Economies AND not least of all - ENDING
National Sovereignty.
The Turks are going to exterminate any people they feel is a
threat to Turkish-Muslim Culture. That includes Christians, Jews, Shi’ites
(primarily Iranian threats) and sadly stateless Communist-oriented Kurds fight
for independence which would include some Turkish territory.
Supporting today’s Kurds is a complicated proposition. Here
are some titles that might lead President Trump to say something like, “Forget about
it!”:
· Understanding the Kurdish Resistance in Syria;
Posted by Leading Light;
Leading Light Communist Organization;
7/23/16
· The Kurdish People: A Background and
History; By Matthew Hand and Mark Brockman (Posted by xzins); Free Republic (Originally in The Kurdish Partnership
now non-existent); 4/7/04 9:54:38 PM
· Kurds; World Culture
Encyclopedia; No publication date but for reference purposes
the 1st dated comment is 5/22/06 6:06 am – site copyright listed ©
2019 Advameg, Inc.
· In defense of the Trump administration's Turkey-Kurds
ceasefire; By Daniel DePetris; Washington Examiner; 10/18/19 03:33
PM
· Is It Even Possible To “Betray” The Kurds?
By Andrew KORYBKO; OrientalReview.org [Blog Editor: I sense Russian
influence on this website]; 1/2/18
Am I defending Turkish instituted genocide? GOD NO! If
Muslim-Turks thought they could get away with it, they’d exterminate Americans
too. If you doubt that, take a look at Ottoman Turk empire building history.
Justin Smith gives me choices of titles for his submissions.
The Kurdish issue is so complicated I couldn’t decide. So I chose a primary
title and italicized the rest.
JRH 10/22/19
Your generosity is always appreciated:
Blog Editor: Rather than
capitulate to Facebook censorship by abandoning the platform, I choose to post
and share until the Leftist censors ban me. Recently, the Facebook censorship
tactic I’ve experienced is a couple of Group shares then jailed under the false
accusation of posting too fast. So I ask those that read this, to combat
censorship by sharing blog and Facebook posts with your friends or Groups you
belong to.
***********************
America Withdraws From Syria:
Trump Lets the Fires of Chaos Consume Syria
Why Is America Still In Syria?
U.S Abandons Syria to Russia and Iran
By Justin O. Smith
Sent 10/20/2019 4:38 PM
President Trump's announcement that the U.S. would be
withdrawing from northeast Syria, after a phone call with Turkish President
Erdogan and a tweet, created a flurry of condemnation from former military
leaders, politicians and the media, who called it a betrayal of the Kurds,
"precipitous" and a move that would allow ISIS to renew itself. They
act as though our alliance with the Kurds was based on a treaty when it wasn't,
and they ignore the fact that this was a loose alliance of United States and
Kurdish interests coinciding on the ISIS terrorism issue; the fact remains that
both the United States and the Kurds understood that America wasn't staying in
Syria forever and this withdrawal day was coming one day.
No doubt, President Trump could have handled this situation a
bit more adroitly, by intensely planning our disengagement through the Pentagon
and the State Department, rather than announcing it on October 7th and starting
the withdrawal the next day, something that was strongly opposed by the
Pentagon. There should have been a plan in place to be implemented that would
have afforded the Kurds a safe position, minimizing the "betrayal",
since they have shed blood and lost 11,000 fighters in the fight
against ISIS, at the behest of the U.S.; and, Turkey's
concerns should have been met too, since the PKK [Kurdistan Workers’ Party] communists, a
designated terrorist organization, were the operational head of the Kurdish forces in the north
even though sixty-five percent of the population in that area are Christian
Arabs and Yazidis.
Obviously, the Kurds have been useful partners in the fight
against ISIS, but they have also destabilized surrounding governments, to the
best of their ability, and Leftist Democrats and "Conservative"
Republicans suggesting Trump is betraying consistent allies is essentially a
load of bull. The Kurds regularly taunted and attacked Turkey,
making the situation in Syria more tumultuous and they constantly used their ISIS prisoners as leverage against the U.S. by constantly
threatening to release ISIS prisoners and their
families.
Until a few weeks ago, a joint U.S-Turkish effort effected
border patrol, demilitarized the Syrian Democratic Forces along the
border and the U.S. was attempting to provide Turkey the security guarantees it
required. And as of yet, I have not heard why that was not enough for President
Erdogan, other than his demand of 6,000 square mile "buffer zone",
within Syria, that Erdogan would control. This shouldn't be a requirement for
repairing Washington's and Ankara's relations, but Turkey's miscalculations in
diplomacy with Russia and Iran pushed the issue, since three million Syrian
refugees in Turkey have become a political problem; some 115 million more now
appear ready to breach the Turkish border under the current Russian-Syrian-Iranian
drive to fill the power vacuum that is underway, and this is more than likely
why security mechanisms created four months ago were not enough to satisfy
Erdogan.
If the U.S. had attempted to construct a KRG model in Syria, we might not be
here, but we never attempted to build such a construct. It also greatly angered
Erdogan that we inverted our relationship through disjointed policy makers on
the ground, who forgot the mission was to simply eradicate ISIS, while they
started acting as agents for their PKK proxy -- only a splinter group of all
Kurdistan -- and representing the Kurds' cause to our Turkish ally as if the
PKK was representative of all Kurds and worthy of equal footing with the nation
state of Turkey.
Essentially, we elevated a small splinter terrorist
organization of a minority to equal stature of one of the strongest nations in
the entire Middle East and a NATO ally, albeit a flawed allied of late. This
was one-hundred percent untenable to the Turks.
The world is witnessing invading Turkish forces moving to
secure and control the area, while Russia and Syria move into areas abandoned
by the U.S., now aligned with the Kurds who signed an agreement with Syria on October 13th,
and whoever is trapped within the current blockade of the area is in a terrible
situation; Turkey's President Erdogan, an Islamist and aspiring caliph, will
not discriminate between PKK and the rest of the population, that was supposed
to have been given five days to evacuate the area, so Turkey can control a twenty
mile deep and three hundred mile long "buffer zone" within Syria,
even though some of the five million Kurds in the area have lived there for a
century or more.
Fighting was ongoing between various militia's and the Turks
on October 17th despite the "cease fire",
and air and artillery strikes continued to hit the Kurdish fighters, civilian
settlements and a hospital in the border town of Ras al-Ayn, in northeastern
Syria.
In recent days, Sinam Mohamad, U.S. Representative for the
Syrian Democratic Council, offered an impassioned statement and observation:
"The Syrian situation is not only with the PKK. What's going on in
Syria is not related to PKK. It's the Syrian people, Arabs, Kurds. In this
region, we have five million people living there. They are not all PKK -- they
are not (all) Kurds. They are Arabs. Do you think these Arabs are accepting to
be a puppet in the Kurds hands? ... So who is the alternative here? (The
Turkish soldiers) who came to the region killing (civilians) after arresting
them as it happened to (the secretary general of Future Syria Party) Hevrin Khalaf?
So this is the alternative?"
On October 12th 2019, Hevrin
Khalaf, the secretary general of Future Syria Party,
was murdered by the Turkish backed Ahar al-Sharqiya fighters near the
M4 Motorway in northern Syria, during the Turkish military operation against
Syrian Democratic Forces and its YPG militia in Rojava, largely led
by Kurds.
To be fair, President Trump had been telling his advisors
for months to get this withdrawal planned out and prepared for implementation,
since he was adamant about keeping his promise to "end forever wars",
and even Erdogan, as evil a man as he is, showed restraint over the past
months, as he continuously warned he wouldn't tolerate a PKK base of operations
in northern Syria, that had the capability of being used against Turkey, at a
later date, in a continuation of the Kurds century old fight to create a united
Kurdistan, of 30 million Kurds, taking regions of Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria.
However, modern day Turkey under Erdogan is no longer the
secular Turkey that it was, when it joined NATO. Erdogan has facilitated the return of Islamic fundamentalism,
even to the point of allowing ISIS to operate from Turkey, when the U.S. fought
ISIS in Iraq, and buying black-market oil from ISIS, essentially funding their
continued war in the region. He murders his opposition, he has gone around
embargoes and sanctions facilitating Iran's nuclear program, he has purchased
the S-400 from Russia, and his security people actually beat opposition
protesters during one visit to D.C.
This is not a good ally. This is not a regime the United
States should be aiding, and America damned sure shouldn't be facilitating the
extraterritorial aggression of Turkey either in Iraq or Syria.
Americans must always ask the important questions. Why are
we in Syria and what's the benefit and the U.S. interests in Syria? Please
recall, the only mandate there was to address ISIS, not to aid the Kurds in
their fight against Turkey or create a Kurdish state.
Many in U.S. leadership positions, such as Senate Majority
Leader Mitch McConnell, are uncomfortable leaving the fate of the area and the
continued fight against ISIS in the hands of Russia, Syria and Turkey, since
the Kurds have had to shift to focus from the prisons housing thousands of ISIS
fighters -- with approximately 1000 already having escaped -- to defending the
entire area against Turkish soldiers who will not hesitate to kill them on the
spot, as Erdogan has already made clear, by way of his statement that he would
"crush their [PKK] heads". Through a phone call and a tweet,
President Trump essentially set this all in motion and gave Erdogan the green
light to invade, so Trump is apparently comfortable leaving the region to
America's enemies, Russia and Syria.
On October 13th 2019, President Trump spoke in a
laissez-faire manner, stating: "The Kurds and Turkey
have been fighting for many years. Others may want to come in and fight for one
side or the other. Let them!"
The only winners here for the moment are ISIS and Russia
with a side benefit for Iran.
President Trump should have at least forced Erdogan to give
the U.S. something in return. The U.S. received no concessions. This is what
America gets when Her president operates by the seat of his pants on a wing and
a prayer.
On a humanitarian level, the world is looking at
approximately a third of Syria cast into chaos once more, while nearly half of
Syria's entire population is already internally or externally displaced, with
millions having migrated to Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan and elsewhere. And yes,
some affiliate themselves with pro-Syrian defense forces, even though their
ranks cut across all ethnic lines and walks of life, filled with Christians,
Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen and tribes that have followed their tribal leaders
into so very much a tribal geopolitical fight. These people are being
slaughtered, while living under already absolutely horrific circumstances;
missing is the up-close and intimate coverage of the substantial numbers of
women and children who are literally dying of malnutrition, and with the
approach of winter, many thousands will freeze to death; and, in more acts
against humanity, the YPG, Turkish proxies, remnants of ISIS, Al Nusra and
others still use these civilians, women and children in particular, as shields
and political victims for their fight: And this must be stopped regardless of
what the United States does.
With that said, there was a lack of any long term strategic
purpose and logical policy for keeping U.S. forces in Northern Syria. Surely no
one could seriously expect us to keep a thousand soldiers, or more with mission
creep, in country for the next fifty or seventy-five years -- Could
they?
Despite President Trump's assertion that this was a move to
keep his promise to "end forever wars", a U.S. presence is currently
still deployed in eastern Syria along the border with Jordan. Those 700
soldiers being removed from the north are simply being redeployed in western
Iraq and joining 2000 more in Saudi Arabia where they will act as a contingent
deterrence to Iran's continued expansion, across the Middle East. So, as
everyone can see, this isn't really a "withdrawal", as 300 Special
Forces troops will remain in the southern Syrian outpost of Al-Tanf, to fight
an ISIS resurgence, and America still isn't ending Her forever wars.
Had this been a true professionally conducted withdrawal,
rather than this fiasco, and President Trump not spoken out of both sides of his
mouth and spoken frankly to the American people, many might not now be faulting
him, even though pulling back for Erdogan's march into Syria was an unnecessary
move that removed one more tool to fight Iran's aggressive expansion, that now
has forced every group and nation that has an implied or an actual treaty
guarantee that the U.S. will fight on its behalf to take a second look at its
arrangements. The American public no longer has the will to fight the Long War
in Syria or anywhere else, at a time when Congress is moving to continue
operations in Syria as a firewall against Islamic terrorism, and in the
meantime, President Trump will rightly take criticism over his handling of
Syria and the shuffling of troops. And at a time he should have been reconciling
U.S. national security interests to proper strategies through the
constitutionally mandated process, Trump has instead decided to let this fire
consume what it will and burn itself out.
By Justin O. Smith
++++++++++++++++++++
Blog Editor: Rather than
capitulate to Facebook censorship by abandoning the platform, I choose to post
and share until the Leftist censors ban me. Recently, the Facebook censorship
tactic I’ve experienced is a couple of Group shares then jailed under the false
accusation of posting too fast. So I ask those that read this, to combat
censorship by sharing blog and Facebook posts with your friends or Groups you
belong to.
_____________________
Edited by John R. Houk
Source links and text
embraced by brackets are by the Editor. In full disclosure I could not source some
of the content in Justin Smith’s submission. Which frankly is part of the
reason for an untimely submission to post discrepancy. Also the issue of the
Kurds is very complicated leading for both sympathy and disdain for them from
this Blog Editor. On a personal level I hate such inner conflict.
© Justin O. Smith
