On President Trump’s Decision to Pull United States Troops Out of Syrian Territory Disputed between Turkey and the Kurds

Tulsi and Trump

Very brief observations with a very long title:

The President has elected to stay out of a conflict between our NATO ally, Turkey, who we are legally obligated to support, and the Kurd ethnic group that seeks an independent state in parts of Syria, Iraq and Turkey, an ethnic group which the United States in successive administrations has used as military proxies in Syria in efforts to topple the Assad regime, something with which the United States should never have been involved. The President is pulling United States troops out of the area of conflict between Turkey and the Kurds, an area in a foreign country, Syria, in which we have no right being, a relic of the disastrous Clinton-Obama foreign policy that destroyed Libya, Honduras and much of the Ukraine as well as Syria, sending floods of refugees into Europe and the United States, a series of policies that caused real geopolitical destabilization worldwide.

The Deep State, in all its components (Democrats and Republicans and “mainstream” media, and purported intelligence and military experts on the payroll), is hysterically enraged, claiming that permitting one of the world’s major armies (Turkey’s) to assume control of the area involved, will help ISIS reemerge. The fact is that, as Mr. Carlson explains in a video clip available on Fox News (“You’d think withdrawing troops from Syria would be celebrated”), the President is right. I assume Tulsi Gabbard, the only sane Democrat presidential candidate agrees and that Republican maverick senator Rand Paul does as well. I also assume former politicians whom I deeply respect, former Congressman Dennis Kucinich and former Senator James Henry Webb Jr., agree as well.

The lives of United States’ servicemen and women are sacred and are not to be wasted to puff up the profits of neoliberal and neoconservative adventurers (usually from afar with their own families close besides them) and the taxes paid by United States taxpayers have much better uses for domestic purposes like medical care, education and domestic infrastructure, than to be wasted on never ending wars in which we have no direct interest. Obviously the foregoing is what the Deep State led impeachment effort against the president is all about.

Kudos Mr. President. I disagree with you on many things, but this is not one of them.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2019; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia although he has primarily lived in the United States of America (of which he is a citizen).  Until recently he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at http://www.guillermocalvo.com.

2 thoughts on “On President Trump’s Decision to Pull United States Troops Out of Syrian Territory Disputed between Turkey and the Kurds

  1. Guillermo, I appreciate your commentary on this recent move by President Trump. My jury is still out but my tendency is to agree with you that it is a good thing to do. Having said that, I suspect that Trump’s hardwired predilection to negotiating is at the root of his decision. He’s putting Erdogon? in a hot box. He wants something from Turkey and wants them to be forced into playing a part in the crushing of isis and applying new pressures on both Syria and Russia. The piece I don’t understand very well is the issue surrounding the Kurds. They have fought with us (as comrades, if not friends) and I admire their ferocity and commitment to their own people.

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    • Agreed The truth that applies to the Kurds applies to others as well, all over the world, think Catalonia, Palestine, etc. It is vibrant underground in many parts of Europe. It is, in part, what the right to self determination established immediately after WWI was about. But it is only applied when convenient.

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