A week ago, Donald Trump gave Turkey the green light to invade Kurdish territory in Syria. Tom Walkom writes:
By withdrawing American military forces who had been protecting the Kurds, Trump has left them to the not-so-tender mercies of Turkey, their sworn enemy.
It’s an appalling way to treat America’s most valued allies in the fight against Islamic State terrorists. Trump, as usual, is explaining it in a most appalling fashion.
His latest rationale for deep-sixing the Kurds is that they didn’t help the Allies storm the beaches of Normandy in 1944.
It's all typically Trumpian. While the House of Representatives moves to impeach Trump for endangering American national security, Trump provides a monstrous example of precisely that.
It didn't have to be this way:
Theoretically, it didn’t have to work out this way. Theoretically, the U.S, could have established a no-fly zone along Syria’s northern border and shot down any Turkish warplane that entered it.
But to have two NATO allies fighting one another would put the entire alliance at risk.
Theoretically, the U.S. could embrace the notion of an independent Kurdistan carved out of Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria. Rewarding valued allies for their role in the fight against ISIS might be the just thing to do.
But that would require Trump thinking things through -- something he's incapable of doing. So the messy Middle East keeps getting messier.
Image: Orange County Register
