Did we betray the Kurds for Trump Towers? | Editorial
[F]ollowing another phone call between Trump and Turkey’s president, we are suddenly pulling back U.S. troops to make way for Turkey’s planned invasion to clear the Kurds out of the border zone in Syria.
It blindsided the Pentagon, and both houses of Congress: The Kurds were our strongest allies in taking back territory from ISIS. Yet Turkish dictator Recep Tayyip Erdogan considers them terrorists.
And astonishingly, Trump is now abandoning them to die.
[snip]
“I have a little conflict of interest ’cause I have a major, major building in Istanbul,” Trump told Breitbart radio during his campaign. “It’s a tremendously successful job. It’s called Trump Towers—two towers, instead of one, not the usual one, it’s two.”
We withheld hundreds of millions of dollars in aid from Ukraine, potentially because Trump wanted the country to dig up some dirt on his 2020 rival. Are we now allowing Turkey to come in and massacre the Kurds, because of his business interests?
The Kurds had their own bone to pick with ISIS and so we worked together while ISIS was our target, as well. Now ISIS holds no territory; Trump says they're history. Turkey keeps getting hit by Kurdish terrorists; they want a "buffer" zone to keep the Kurds off their borders.
I can see both sides of this and I also want us to get the hell out of the Middle East. Every single one of our military personnel that goes there risks their life for what? What has our intervention over there ever achieved in the long run? ISIS keeps reappearing like a highly resistant germ, of course, because you can't bomb an ideology.
There are two sides. I agree with your argument, too, that the Kurds were our allies and we should stand by them. But do we have a treaty to that effect, or were we just allies in time of war because the enemy of my enemy is my friend? What do you propose we do, continue to protect the Kurds indefinitely? (You know those Middle Easterners never stop fighting each other, right?) You can call me an asshole if you want, but it seems to me that both sides of this situation have good reasons.