President Trump’s order to withdraw American troops who created a buffer zone between Turkey and Kurdish-controlled areas of Iraq was a controversial movie seen as a betrayal of a long-time American ally. But there’s a long history of US forces making extravagant promises to local forces, then withdrawing and leaving them to the wolves.
Where’s Your Football, Lucy?
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The Final Countdown" talk show on Radio Sputnik. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
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I have been trying to find out what the deal between the Kurdish forces and the US government was. You can’t have a ‘betrayal’ without some kind of preexisting deal. It appears thus far that for each of the two parties, the relationship was merely an alliance of mutual convenience. Trump could have been more explicit about withdrawal, I suppose, but I did hear about it two or three weeks before it occurred, so somebody knew something, maybe even the Kurds. I think terms like ‘betrayal’, like Clinton’s accusations of treason, are considerably overwrought. But I could be wrong.
To Anarcisse:
There is an ongoing series of articles on the Syrian war at
consortiumnews(dot)com.
One by Fuller dated 16Oct addresses US media’s apparent
overwrought reaction to the current situation with the Syrian Kurds:
“The most vociferous voices in Washington for sticking by the Kurds in Syria come from several sources. First, from those who reflexively oppose any policy of Trump under any circumstances anywhere. Second, those interventionists who seek to maintain U.S. armed presence in the region at almost all costs — and the untiring U.S. global task in their eyes is never finished. Third, there are many who want to keep Israel strategically happy and empowered.”
Not at all if you consider this was an illegal and ill conceived intervention. Let’s toss in that it was never authorised by congress.
Any Vietnamese who could make it to the US got a Green Card. That was then. Bush, Sr gave visas to some of the Iraqis who helped the US in the first US-Iraq War, but just about all the Iraqis or Afghans who helped the US under Bush, Jr. got absolutely nothing, a ban on immigration from Iraq and Afghanistan, even for those who’d worked for the US and were (and maybe still are) being hunted down. And nothing for the Kurds from Clinton, the Bushes, Obama, or Trump.
(But the media say the US was the Greatest Force for Good under Trump’s predecessors, but is now a force for evil under Trump, even though Trump’s actions are remarkably similar to those of all his predecessors.)
I applaud Mr Trump’s decision – if, indeed, there is such a decision and it’s not merely once again a matter of tromp l’oeil – to withdraw US troops from their illegal occupation of parts of Syrian territory. Given the current US participation in at least seven predatory wars abroad, it there ever was a time to revive the slogan «Bring the boys [and girls] home by Christmas», it is now. Then there are the remainder of the 800+ US military bases abroad that are not located in active war zones to work on….
Henri