Anger

A dull rage has been simmering in me for the last several days. With the impeachment drama in the background, the Kurds are betrayed by America.

With numbers of 50-100 US troops removed from the area, Turkey starts a military operation, ostensibly to remove terrorists in “Operation Peace Spring”:

Check out this euphemism-laden turn of.phrase from one of his aides:

He urged Kurdish fighters to lay down their guns and refuse to listen to their commanders' orders to resist Turkey’s advance. If they refuse to join Turkey “we will have no choice but to stop them from disrupting our counter-Islamic State efforts,” he said.

Source: Kurds abandon fight against Isil as Turkey attacks with air power and artillery deep into Syria

Of course, this is bullshit. Erdoğan has long distrusted the Kurds in general and Turkey has declared the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) and People’s Protection Units (YPG) terrorist groups. PKK is designated a terrorist group by the US, NATO, and the EU. YPG is generally considered linked to PKK.

While Erdoğan’s aide points to countering ISIS as the priority, Erdoğan’s own tweet calls them out as a target. And, if countering ISIS was the primary goal, it’s hard to see how attacking the gaolers of several thousand ISIS members, and those that have liberated large swathes of Northern Syria from ISIS, is the best way to achieve that.

Consider also that this attack started with air strikes and shelling. How the fuck are you supposed to tell a bomb or artillery shell you want to “join Turkey”?

It is clear that the primary target of this attack is PKK/YPG forces in the north of Syria.

You may ask “so Turkey is attacking terrorists, what’s the big deal?” This is a fair question, if you strip it from context. The US has been an ally of the YPG, and helped create a parent group, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), that incorporated YPG, the affiliated Women’s Protection Units (YPJ), and a variety of other Syrian rebel forces, including primarily Arab groups. With US material and special-forces support, the SDF is responsible for defeating ISIS in the region.

Essentially, any time you hear about the US defeating ISIS, you might as well say that a goalie won a soccer game. The US absolutely played a vital role, but it wasn’t the whole team.

That’s why the White House’s statement that essentially green-lit the Turkish operation is so contemptuous. The first paragraph claims that the US has “defeated the ISIS territorial ‘Caliphate’” (in Syria, it was primarily the SDF that did so), and the second paragraph is mealy-mouthed in the extreme:

The United States Government has pressed France, Germany, and other European nations, from which many captured ISIS fighters came, to take them back, but they did not want them and refused. The United States will not hold them for what could be many years and great cost to the United States taxpayer. Turkey will now be responsible for all ISIS fighters in the area captured over the past two years in the wake of the defeat of the territorial “Caliphate” by the United States.

The US was not holding most (and possibly any) ISIS fighters in Syria. Again, this was primarily the SDF, which makes the second sentence misleading in the extreme.

Trump has thrown a US ally to the wolves.

The United States withdrew 50 to 100 troops from the border area in advance of the operation, and American military officials said that the United States was not providing assistance to either side. However, the United States was providing intelligence to Turkey until Monday that may have helped it target Kurdish forces.

Source: Turkey Launches Offensive Against U.S.-Backed Syrian Militia

Already ISIS fighters are escaping SDF jails. So what does Trump say about this?

Are you fucking kidding me? And here’s Stephen Miller communicating on how this maps onto keeping America safe:

This policy is both as characteristically heartless, and just plain fucking dumb, as saying “it’s okay that the world is burning, because we’ve made our house out of brick”.

Also I’m getting a bit fucking sick of the argument brought out right at the end here:

We do not want to get involved in a conflict that dates back over two hundred years between the Turks and the Kurds

In the (obviously extremely unlikely) scenario of a post-Brexit Britain blockading Irish ports and “solving the Irish border problem” by invading and annexing the Republic, it would be a bit fucking rich to hear the US say “We do not want to get involved in a conflict that dates back over eight hundred years between the British and the Irish”.

This is an argument that frames people as belonging to stereotypical tribes, drawing upon the idea of historic conflict rather than an actual reckoning with history. It reeks of over-simplification at best and racism at worst.

And, if taken to its obvious conclusion, it would also rule out any US support of Israel.

But it’s of course not meant to be a serious argument. It’s meant to hand-wave away a whole bunch of problems with the US’s role here, and to help build a permission structure for others to back this utter farce.