Syria: Another Forever War Beckons

Ted Galen CarpenterAn explosion of criticism had erupted in Congress and the news media in response to President Trump ’s decision to withdraw a small contingent of U.S. troops stationed in northern Syria. Those forces served as a (mostly symbolic) barrier to Turkey’s ambitions to conduct a military offensive against Syrian Kurdish forces there. Ankara has nowinitiated that offensive.Republican hawks and Trump ’sautomatic adversaries among congressional Democrats are united in excoriating his decision. Much of the criticism has focused on the allegedbetrayal of Washington ’s Kurdish allies. Opponents of the move argue that the Kurds have been brave, invaluable fighters against ISIS, suffering approximately 11,000 fatalities in the process. Most of the Kurds are allegedly Western-style democrats as well, making the abandonment even more odious. Trump’s callous dec ision to give an implicit green light to the autocratic government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to invade Kurdish territory, his detractors argue, also may lead to abloodbath at the hands of the Turks, an ISIS resurgence, and benefit theinterests of Russia and Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. The latter set of accusations is internally contradictory, since both Moscow and Damascus are staunch enemies of ISIS, but that difficulty does not seem toimpede Trump ’s critics.The president ’s decision is far from being the most honorable episode in America’s foreign policy. But as I discuss in a newNatio...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs