What happened
Northern Syria was engulfed in
chaos this week as Turkey pressed a
weeklong offensive against Kurd-
ish forces once allied with the U.S.,
while Russian and Syrian government
troops seized territory and bases
hurriedly left behind by withdrawing
U.S. soldiers. The Kurdish-dominated
Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF)
suffered an estimated 360 casual-
ties amid intense fighting along the
Syrian border after President Trump
gave Turkish President Recep Tayyip
Erdogan the green light to invade
during a phone call and began
withdrawing 1,000 U.S. soldiers from the region. As bombs and
artillery shells fell, hundreds of ISIS-connected detainees escaped
from detention camps formerly guarded by Kurdish fighters, and
the U.S. military said it had to leave behind 60 “high-value” ISIS
prisoners. An estimated 300,000 civilians fled, and at least 71 were
killed or wounded. Meanwhile, Turkish-backed fighters executed
nine Kurdish civilians—including a prominent female politician,
Hevrin Khalaf. Shervan Darwish, an SDF-allied official, called the
U.S. pullout a “betrayal.” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who is
usually a defender of the president, called the situation in Syria “a
complete and utter national security disaster in the making.”
Left vulnerable by America’s hasty withdrawal, the SDF allied with
Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, who deployed thousands of troops
into northern Syria. Meanwhile, Russian troops allied with the
Assad regime began patrolling “along the line of contact between
the Syrian Arab Republic and Turkey,” the Russian Defense Min-
istry said. Kurdish commander Mazloum Abdi framed the decision
to ally with Assad as one “between compromises and the genocide
of our people.”
Amid mounting criticism from fellow Republicans, President
Trump dispatched Vice President Mike
Pence and Secretary of State Mike
Pompeo to Turkey to ask Erdogan for
a cease-fire. He also authorized sanc-
tions against Turkish officials and raised
tariffs on Turkish steel. U.S. officials also
weighed evacuating 50 tactical nuclear
weapons stored at Incirlik Air Base in
Turkey. Trump said the Kurds were “no
angels,” and that the fighting in Syria
“has nothing to do with us.”
What the editorials said
“What a fiasco,” said The Wall Street
Journal. By abandoning the Kurds,
Trump has signaled to “the world’s
rogues” that the U.S. has “little interest
in engaging on behalf of American allies
or interests.” Other allies will rightfully
question whether they can ever trust
America; adversaries such as Iran, Russia,
and Hezbollah will be emboldened by our
weakness. Sad to say, but “the world is
laughing at an American president.”
Republicans like Graham are
rightly outraged at Trump’s “over-
night betrayal of the Kurds,” said
The New York Times. But they
have only themselves to blame. For
almost three years they have stood
idly by while this reckless, impulsive
president has left “long-standing
alliances in tatters overseas” and
pursued an erratic and incoherent
foreign policy. Trump’s defenders
share his ownership of this “moral
and strategic disaster.”What the columnists said
“It’s probably impossible for
Americans to fully grasp the sense of betrayal felt by the Syrian
Kurds,” said David Ignatius in The Washington Post. They lost
11,000 fighters in helping us evict ISIS from its caliphate, and the
American soldiers and CIA officers who were their partners in that
struggle are deeply ashamed. “This will go down as a stain on the
American reputation for decades,” said one Army officer and Syria
veteran. A former CIA officer put it this way: “It’s a dagger to the
heart to walk away from people who shed blood for us.”Trump has proven that “his vision for military deployments is
defined by hypocrisy,” said Tom Rogan in WashingtonExaminer
.com. His justification for withdrawing U.S. forces from Syria was
his desire to get out of “endless wars.” Days later, he announced
the deployment of 1,800 U.S. troops to help defend Saudi Arabia
from Iran. The implication is clear. America only cares about allies
“if they sell a lot of oil and buy a lot of American weapons.”What’s now happening in northeastern Syria is “ethnic cleansing,”
said Wladimir van Wilgenburg and Amy Austin Holmes in The
Washington Post. Erdogan fears the Kurds’ ambition for their own
state, so he plans to resettle at least 1 million of the 3.6 million Syr-
ian refugees marooned inside Turkey into the contested, northern
area of Syria. Only 17 percent are
actually from there, with the majority
having fled Syrian regime–held areas.
The invasion is a brutal effort to purge
the Kurds from along its border.Once again, Trump has undermined
himself and our nation with a “glan-
dular, impulsive decision,” said Jonah
Goldberg in the Los Angeles Times. If
Trump were serious about withdraw-
ing from Syria, the decision would
have followed “intense planning” by
the Pentagon and State Department
and “tough negotiations” with the
Turks in order to strike the best deal
possible for the Kurds. The truth is
that “the self-proclaimed world’s
greatest negotiator” went off script in
a phone call with Erdogan and agreed
to pull out U.S. troops. By “winging
it,” he created a debacle that will go
down as “a singular moment in the
Trump presidency.” Get
tyMourners at a funeral for Kurds killed near the borderTHE WEEK October 25, 2019
4 NEWS The main stories...
Kurds fleeing while ISIS prisoners escape
Illustration by Fred Harper.
Cover photos from AP (3)What next?
The “risk of a wider war” is growing, said Bill
Neely and Saphora Smith in NBCNews.com.
After the besieged Kurdish forces struck an al-
liance of necessity with Syrian dictator Bashar
al-Assad, Russian-backed Syrian government
troops rushed to the border to face an invad-
ing Turkish army allied with “their old enemies,
the rebels of the Free Syrian Army.” Meanwhile,
the SDF-Assad alliance puts Russian President
Vladimir Putin in a “commanding position” to
broker a future deal between Syria and Turkey
and re-establish his nation as a major regional
player in the Middle East. U.S. Defense Secretary
Mark Esper has also warned of “a potential ISIS
resurgence,” said Eli Stokols and David Cloud
in the Los Angeles Times. With the Pentagon
redeploying all 1,000 U.S. troops remaining in
Syria to Iraq, Kuwait, and possibly Jordan over
the coming weeks, escaped jihadists are free to
reconstitute and wage war again.