DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Palus Politicus White House says Turkey will soon launch Syria operation

Everyone with a brain knew what would happen and they were warned by many. The Kurds lack the weaponry to actually put up a legitimate war with Turkey and everyone knew that as well.

They lost over 11,000 troops helping us defeat the ISIS caliphate and abandoning them is how Trump thanked them. Let that be a lesson to anyone who believes Trump can be trusted. The world is watching....

When it comes to Allies, you forget that Turkey is a member of NATO. Yes, Allies.

You and the others will cry about anything Trump does so at least I know our troops are out of that quagmire while you rant.

Here are the facts without our Biased Media and unhinged Left's input...

The Kurds lost over 11,000 men fighting ISIS and we removed troops allowing them to be slaughtered.

Saudi Arabia lost how many troops fighting ISIS? And he is now deplying troops there.

Even the staunchest of your own party disagree with you and your boy.

The US will be hitting Turkey with severer sanctions if they go too far as we work to contain the humanitarian concerns while this plays out.

At least our troops are safe in the meantime.

Last I looked, we are still at war with North Korea.

On 27 April 2018 the Panmunjom Declaration for Peace, Prosperity and Unification on the Korean Peninsula was signed by South Korean President Moon Jae-in and the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un which commits the two countries to denuclearization and talks to bring a formal end to conflict.

Yeah, now the same amount of troop, 2000, are being deployed to Saudi Arabia.
And those sanctions won't bring back dead Kurds.

j/c

Senate Republicans Recoil From Trump’s Decision to Abandon Kurds

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/...o-abandon-kurds

You posted this as if somehow it vindicated Trump's decision ???

Not sure what your point was but the video highlights that the Kurds were allies in helping to fight ISIS and they have been betrayed by Trump.

Also as far as your insinuation that NATO is somehow on board with what Turkey is doing .... nothing could be further from the truth. Europe is totally against what Turkey has been allowed to do because of Trump's move.

If you want to know who this move actually pleases? . . . yeah - Putin. That's not a left thing or a right thing ... that's simply a fact.

This is pathetic. Nobody was hurting Turkey there and that Kurdish region was one of the only safe zones for our troops in the area. I watched soldiers talk about not having to wear flak jackets there because they were well treated and well thought of by the kurds. Kurdish families even have US flags in their windows saying thanks to the US.

Your sack of crap blotus is deplorable.

Newsweek among others are reporting that Turkey just bombed US Special Forces-the artillery shelling of our special forces in Kobani at this point was apparently a mistake

Oops! We attacked your troops!

Thanks Trump.

Good that no US soldiers died for yet another Trump blunder. Kurds aren't so lucky.

Isis militants break out of prison in Syria after bombing by Turkey

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world...VvAjpDSig_jGO5o

I'll take America first policy over Kurd first policy any day of the week. Sorry if this sounds insensitive but I'll stand by that statement.

Personally I think we need to stop being the world's policeman. I do like it though that the people who get upset when we withdrawal from certain places are also the ones who complain about military spending.

Thanks, Obama.
Those ISIS fighters would have never been there to escape, if it wasn't for the troops following orders on your watch.

#trump2020

j/c:

As a person who does not have much knowledge of this particular situation, it's wonderful to come on this board and read all the unbiased takes from both sides that are designed to educate rather than dictate.

Only you would come in here expecting vanilla coverage of the news... come on Vers. And this particular disgrace is a pick-your-side topic for sure.

I like how Trumpians are cool with allies being left to be slaughtered. You cool with all those ISIS fighters escaping too? smh. Dem bash all you want, this is traitorous.

Either choose endless wars, or letting our troops die in them. You can't have it both ways. And here I thought you were all against our troops dying for oil.

Cept they’re not bringing our troops home like trump said. They are moving them to Saudi Arabia to protect their oil fields. You know? The same country that we just sold billions of dollars of weapons to so they can protect themselves. The same country that kills reporters and who treat women like second class citizens.

And the same damn country that most of the 9/1/1 terrorist came from!

Your right, I don't want our soldiers dying for oil. But I also don't want our military disgraced like this, our allies thinking they can't count on us or that we will stab them in the back. In this situation between the Kurds who allied with us against ISIS and our NATO ally Turkey, we needed to be the buffer that kept the two from fighting.

The underhanded cowardice of this spineless Trump action is mind boggling to anyone with even a shred of honor. Spin it any way you want to try and justify it, it's traitorous. And you can bet your ass that this is exactly what Putin wanted too. Trump would sell you out for a cheaper bag of potato chips and never bat an eye.

‘Some of the Most Noble People I’d Ever Met’

U.S. military officers who fought in Syria say they are devastated and ashamed by Trump’s decision to abandon Kurdish-led forces.

On Dec. 20, 2018, the day after U.S. President Donald Trump abruptly announced via Twitter that the United States would withdraw all U.S. forces from Syria, a group of U.S. soldiers set out on a routine patrol through Manbij, a Kurdish-held town in northern Syria.

A member of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) approached the American troops, according to a U.S. Army officer on patrol that day, who spoke to Foreign Policy on the condition of anonymity. The man broke down in tears, thanking the U.S. service members for their support.

“He took off his unit patch and gave it to me. It was the most emotional moment I’ve ever experienced,” said the officer, who fought alongside the SDF in the yearslong battle to defeat the Islamic State and is one of many retired and current service members who say they are devastated by Trump’s latest decision to withdraw troops from the border, paving the way for Turkey to launch a major attack on northeastern Syria.

Seeing the group’s reaction to Trump’s tweet on the front lines in Manbij “was when I truly found out that the SDF were probably some of the most noble people I’d ever met.”

In the end, Trump partially reversed his pledge, drawing down U.S. presence in Syria by roughly half in the months since the tweet. But nearly one year later, the United States has once again disappointed its Syrian allies. The SDF, the militia largely responsible for liberating Syria from the Islamic State, is now under a brutal assault by Turkish forces, after Trump appeared to give the green light for Ankara to move into northeastern Syria. The total number of fighters and civilians killed in the operation so far was not clear as of Wednesday night, but a conflict monitoring group said more than 60,000 civilians had been displaced.

Current and retired U.S. military officers interviewed by Foreign Policy about their direct experience with the SDF, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss sensitive operations, described a group of passionate, fearless fighters, both male and female, who share American values and remain loyal partners even after repeated disappointments. The people interviewed held up the Kurdish fighters as a model of a successful partnership in a tumultuous region, with one retired military officer saying the group was one of the few indigenous units the United States has worked with since 9/11 that have earned its trust.

“Both their competence in battle and their commitment to the mission have been proven over and over,” the retired officer said.

All the people interviewed unanimously said they were devastated by the news that the United States is standing aside to let the Turks massacre the Kurdish troops, and more than one expressed a deep sense of shame.

“I feel physically ill with worry and concern and deeply ashamed that my own country would permit this fate to befall our close allies who did all our fighting for us, when we had the power to prevent it,” said a U.S. Marine who served in Syria in 2017-2018.

Ankara considers the SDF an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has waged a three-decade insurgency in Turkey. Both the United States and Turkey have labeled the PKK a terrorist group. But the retired and current U.S. military officers who spoke with Foreign Policy pushed back on Turkey’s characterization of the SDF as a terrorist threat.

“It is unacceptable to turn our back on them to a tyrant like [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan, who views all Kurds as terrorists,” the retired officer said. “There will be a whole generation of U.S. military that will never forget this betrayal nor stop apologizing for it.”

The Army officer who patrolled Manbij described growing close to SDF forces during their time together in Syria, sharing living space and conducting joint patrols. After Trump’s December 2018 tweet, SDF forces were “obviously frustrated” but “insanely understanding” of the U.S. military’s position, the officer said.

During the turbulent weeks after the tweet, American and SDF soldiers stood side by side in Manbij. U.S. troops kept hearing that an order to fully withdraw from Syria was imminent, but week after week commanders said the order had not yet come down, the officer said. Twice during that time period, Turkish proxy forces—which the officer described as a ragtag group of “Islamic gangs”—threatened to cross the border, the officer said.

U.S. and SDF forces experienced a devastating loss on Jan. 16, when a suicide bomber targeted a busy market street in Manbij known to be frequented by U.S. soldiers. The attack killed 19 people, including 15 SDF fighters and four Americans.

“Immediately, the SDF was there. They were helping us in the street even though all this [tension] had happened,” the officer said.

A second Army officer who has worked with many partners since 2001 and spent time on the ground in Syria said the SDF stood out. In the four years since the group was created out of People’s Protection Units (YPG) militia and other regional groups, including Arabs, the SDF has built up an inclusive force of more than 100,000 members, the officer said. It has also established a network of local councils to govern the regions liberated from the Islamic State, building governments that “reflect the populace around them.”

The Kurds provide an “organizational skill that I have never seen before in the Middle East,” the officer said.

The SDF and its political arm, the Syrian Democratic Council, believe in equal rights for women, freedom of speech and religion, and local governance, the officer noted. The group also values education and has a judicial system that is “fair and transparent.”

“This was the first opportunity I have seen to actually achieve our end-state objectives because we had a partner that very closely shares our American values,” the officer said, noting that with the Oct. 6 announcement: “We snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.”

The officer noted the challenges the U.S. military has had in building the Afghan security forces, particularly the high number of “green on blue” attacks that have killed many U.S. service members. By contrast, “I can count on less than two hands” the number of coalition forces who have been killed in Syria over a five-year campaign.

The fighters themselves are “absolutely fearless,” the officer added, describing a force equipped with light machine guns and AK-47 assault rifles—and no body armor. They are “incredibly fair in their heart. … They would rather take casualties themselves than harm a civilian.”

After leaving Syria this year, the first Army officer described holding out hope that the United States would not fully abandon the SDF. But now that hope has been dashed. Hearing the Oct. 6 news that Trump had announced U.S. troops would withdraw from the border, allowing Turkey to move in, the officer said: “I was absolutely crushed.”

The second Army officer reacted with “disbelief” to the White House’s Oct. 6 statement.

“As Turkey attacked, I couldn’t help but feel ashamed, number one, to have been part of it and, number two, that we, America, I believe are violating our values,” the officer said. “America in my mind is still the shining beacon on the hill, but we are not living up to that right now.”

As for the SDF forces the first Army officer got to know in Manbij: “I haven’t been able to get a hold of any of them.”

https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/10/10/kurds-syrian-democratic-forces-us-donald-trump/

I heard about that and my first response was "Why the hell are they going to Saudia Arabia?"

Sick of our troops going to dumb places not worth saving.

I know you think this is about Trump but its really not. The US has been like this for many generations. Its part of the military industrial globalist complex and has been happening for a long time.

Eisenhower warned us about it but we didn't listen.

Leaving your allies to die at the hands of their enemy after they stood beside you isn't something to advocate.

Here is where the actual problem is even if you do think that's what America stands for.

We fought and worked hard to take back the ISIS caliphate. Destabilizing the region as we have done is a huge gamble that ISIS will come back strong to that region.

The only people to gain from this is Turkey, Russia and Iran. It plays into the hands of our strongest enemies.

"The only people to gain from this is Turkey, Russia and Iran. It plays into the hands of our strongest enemies."

No and yes.
Somebody owns a hotel complex in Istanbul.
I've been taken advantage of many times,but I'm not dense enough to not believe that that hotel did not play into this decision.
Money,money,money,and the poor Kurds have none.

I meant from a global strategic perspective. But from a financial standpoint it wouldn't be a stretch to consider that Trump Towers Istanbul played a part.

j/c

Abandoned by U.S. in Syria, Kurds Find New Ally in American Foe

Under fire by Turkish forces, the militia that battled ISIS threw in its lot with Syria’s Russian-backed government.

DOHUK, Iraq — Kurdish forces long allied with the United States in Syria announced a new deal on Sunday with the government in Damascus, a sworn enemy of Washington that is backed by Russia, as Turkish troops moved deeper into their territory and President Trump ordered the withdrawal of the American military from northern Syria.

The sudden shift marked a major turning point in Syria’s long war.

For five years, United States policy relied on collaborating with the Kurdish-led forces both to fight the Islamic State and to limit the influence of Iran and Russia, which support the Syrian government, with a goal of maintaining some leverage over any future settlement of the conflict.

On Sunday, after Mr. Trump abruptly abandoned that approach, American leverage appeared all but gone. That threatened to give President Bashar al-Assad and his Iranian and Russian backers a free hand. It also jeopardized hard-won gains against the Islamic State — and potentially opened the door for its return.

The Kurds’ deal with Damascus paved the way for government forces to return to the country’s northeast for the first time in years to try to repel a Turkish invasion launched after the Trump administration pulled American troops out of the way. The pullout has already unleashed chaos and bloodletting.

The announcement of the deal Sunday evening capped a day of whipsaw developments marked by rapid advances by Turkish-backed forces and the escape of hundreds of women and children linked to the Islamic State from a detention camp. As American troops were redeployed, two American officials said the United States had failed to transfer five dozen “high value” Islamic State detainees out of the country.

Turkish-backed forces advanced so quickly that they seized a key road, complicating the American withdrawal, officials said.

The invasion ordered by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, which came after a green light from President Trump, is aimed at uprooting the Syrian Democratic Forces, a Kurdish-led militia that has been a key partner in the fight against the Islamic State. Turkey sees the group as a security threat because of its links to a Kurdish separatist movement that the country has battled for decades.

The Turkish incursion has killed scores of people, and left Kurdish fighters accusing the United States of betrayal for leaving them at the Turks’ mercy. That is what led them to strike the deal with Damascus, which said on Sunday that its forces were heading north to take control of two towns and to fight the “Turkish aggression.”

Turkey’s invasion upended a fragile peace in northeastern Syria and risks enabling a resurgence of the Islamic State, which no longer controls territory in Syria but still has sleeper cells and supporters.

Since the Turkish incursion began on Wednesday, ISIS has claimed responsibility for at least two attacks in Syria: One car bomb in the northern city of Qamishli and another on an international military base outside Hasaka, a regional capital further to the south.

Mr. Trump has said repeatedly that the United States has taken the worst ISIS detainees out of Syria to ensure they would not escape. But in fact the American military took custody of only two British detainees, half of a cell dubbed the Beatles that tortured and killed Western hostages, American officials said.

As the Turkish incursion progresses and Kurdish casualties mount, members of the Syrian Democratic Forces have grown increasingly angry at the United States. Some have cast Mr. Trump’s move as a betrayal.

The Kurds refused, the American officials said, to let the American military take any more detainees from their ad hoc detention sites for captive ISIS fighters, which range from former schoolhouses to a former Syrian government prison. Together, these facilities hold about 11,000 men, about 9,000 of them Syrians or Iraqis. About 2,000 come from 50 other nations whose governments have refused to repatriate them.

The fighting has raised concerns that jihadists detained in the battle to defeat ISIS could escape, facilitating the reconstitution of the Islamic State. Five captives escaped during a Turkish bombardment on a Kurdish-run prison in Qamishli on Friday, Kurdish officials said.

The Kurdish authorities also operate camps for families displaced by the conflict that hold tens of thousands of people, many of them wives and children of Islamic State fighters.

After a Turkish airstrike, female detainees connected to the Islamic State rioted in a camp in Ain Issa, lighting their tents on fire and tearing down fences, according to a camp administrator, Jalal al-Iyaf.

In the mayhem, more than 500 of them escaped, Mr. al-Iyaf said.

Most of the camp’s other 13,000 residents are Syrian, but there are also refugees from Iraq who sought safety in Syria because of violence at home. By nightfall, some of those people had left the unguarded camp, too, fearing that it was no longer safe, Mr. al-Iyaf said.

“Everyone thought that the camp was internationally protected, but in the end there was nothing,” Mr. al-Iyaf said. “It was not protected at all.”

Determining the exact state of play on the ground proved difficult on Sunday, as the advances by Turkish-backed Arab fighters scattered Kurdish officials who had previously been able to provide information.

The likelihood of an ISIS resurgence remains hard to gauge, since the Syrian Kurdish leadership may have exaggerated some incidents to catch the West’s attention.

The camp escape came hours before the United States military said it would relocate its remaining troops in northern Syria to other areas of the country in the coming weeks.

Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper said in an interview with CBS’s “Face the Nation” that the United States found itself “likely caught between two opposing advancing armies” in northern Syria.

Syrian government troops were expected to enter the city of Kobani overnight.

The Kurdish-led militia said the Syrian government had a “duty to protect the country’s borders and preserve Syrian sovereignty,” and would deploy along the Syrian-Turkish border.

Previously, Trump administration officials argued that keeping Mr. Assad’s forces out of the territory was key to stemming Iranian and Russian influence and keeping pressure on Mr. Assad.

Mr. Trump says his decision to pull American troops out of the way of the Turkish advance was part of his effort to extricate the United States from “endless wars” in the Middle East and elsewhere.

“The Kurds and Turkey have been fighting for many years,” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter on Sunday.

Mr. Trump also tried to assuage his critics, including Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican who broke with him over the Syria decision and is promising bipartisan legislation to slap economic sanctions on Turkey.

“Dealing with @LindseyGrahamSC and many members of Congress, including Democrats, about imposing powerful Sanctions on Turkey,” Mr. Trump wrote. “Treasury is ready to go, additional legislation may be sought.”

But his decision has had devastating consequences for Syria’s Kurds.

They lost thousands of fighters in battles against the Islamic State and sought to establish a form of autonomous rule in the lands captured from the jihadists. Now that project has collapsed, and it remains unclear what rights they will retain, if any, should they fall back under Mr. Assad’s government.

On Sunday, Turkish troops and their Arab proxies made major progress on the ground, seizing the strategic border town of Tel Abyad and prompting celebrations across the border in Turkey.

In Akcakale, a Turkish border town, residents raced around in cars, flying Turkish flags and honking their horns. Exiled Syrians, many of them from Tel Abyad, climbed onto rooftops to watch the end of the battle as gunfire sounded.

Three wounded Syrian Arab fighters were recuperating in a private apartment near the border in Akcakale after returning from the front line, where they had been shot in an ambush by Kurdish troops.

The men were from an area controlled by Kurdish forces who they said had prevented them from returning home.

“We will not stop,” said Abu Qasr al-Sharqiya, 34, who was shot three times in the leg. “We need our houses back, our children’s homes.”

On Sunday afternoon, Mr. Erdogan announced that his forces controlled nearly 70 square miles of territory in northern Syria.

They have also taken control of an important highway connecting the two flanks of Kurdish-held territory, the Turkish defense ministry said. This allows Turkish troops and their proxies to block supply lines between Kurdish forces — and cut an exit route to Iraq.

It also makes it harder for American troops to leave Syria by road.

Since the Syrian civil war began eight years ago, northern Syria has changed hands several times as rebels, Islamists, extremists and Kurdish factions have vied with the government for control.

After joining American troops to drive out the Islamic State, the Kurdish-led militia emerged as the dominant force across the area, taking control of former ISIS territory and guarding former ISIS fighters on behalf of the United States and other international allies.

With Turkey making increasing noise in recent months about forcing the Kurdish militia away from its border, the American military made contingency plans to get about five dozen of the highest-priority detainees out of Syria.

The planning began last December, when Mr. Trump first announced that he would withdraw troops from the country before his administration slowed down that plan, one official said.

American special forces moved first to get the two British detainees, El Shafee Elsheikh and Alexanda Kotey, on Oct. 9, in part because there was a clear plan for them already in place: The Justice Department wants to bring them to Virginia for prosecution. They are now being held in Iraq.

But as the military then sought to take custody of additional detainees, the Kurds balked, the two American officials said. The Kurds’ animosity might harden now that they have aligned themselves with Mr. Assad, an American foe.

That, combined with the Pentagon’s withdrawal American forces, makes it even less likely the United States will be able to take any more detainees out.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/13/world/middleeast/syria-turkey-invasion-isis.html

So you so want it both ways, just with a dem in charge.

Nobody is fighting for oil in Syria. We withdrew 2000 troops from Syria, defending our only allies in our fight against ISIS, only to turn around and deploy them to help Saudi Arabia protect their oil.

Things aren't always equal. Just like the war in Afghanistan was totally justified, the war in Iraq was completely stupid.

Here is something you probably won't be able to comprehend; I don't care if the President is a republican as long as they are honest, presidential, and doing their best for the American people. I can live with the differences in political views just like if a centrist dem were to be elected. What I can't abide is a crooked ass lying self serving POS in the white house doing nothing but tearing the country apart.

I was hardcore republican when Clinton was being impeached and I never thought that impeachment was the right thing to do. But I thought him doing that while in office was absolutely disgraceful. Trump is a million times more disgraceful and blatantly crooked.

It's not just protecting their oil. It's protecting just about every ally we have in Europe too. Without that oil, their economies crash. I guess you would prefer to cede that area of the world to Iran's control.

Erdogan is now holding 50 US nukes "hostage"


https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/trump-followed-his-gut-on-syria-calamity-came-fast/ar-AAILbg6

lol wth are they trying to do in that picture, shake hands?

You cant cross over and shake, side by side, your hand is always facing the wrong way.

The article from above so those who won't click through can read it:

Trump Followed His Gut on Syria. Calamity Came Fast.

All the warnings were there. But President Trump’s reliance on his instincts, and his relationships, led him to ignore the consequences of a move that has emboldened Russia, Iran and the Islamic State.

President Trump’s acquiescence to Turkey’s move to send troops deep inside Syrian territory has in only one week’s time turned into a bloody carnage, forced the abandonment of a successful five-year-long American project to keep the peace on a volatile border, and given an unanticipated victory to four American adversaries: Russia, Iran, the Syrian government and the Islamic State.

Rarely has a presidential decision resulted so immediately in what his own party leaders have described as disastrous consequences for American allies and interests. How this decision happened — springing from an “off-script moment” with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, in the generous description of a senior American diplomat — probably will be debated for years by historians, Middle East experts and conspiracy theorists.

But this much already is clear: Mr. Trump ignored months of warnings from his advisers about what calamities likely would ensue if he followed his instincts to pull back from Syria and abandon America’s longtime allies, the Kurds. He had no Plan B, other than to leave. The only surprise is how swiftly it all collapsed around the president and his depleted, inexperienced foreign policy team.

Day after day, they have been caught off-guard, offering up differing explanations of what Mr. Trump said to Mr. Erdogan, how the United States and its allies might respond, and even whether Turkey remains an American ally. For a while Mr. Trump said he acted because the Islamic State was already defeated, and because he was committed to terminating “endless wars” by pulling American troops out of the Middle East. By the end of the week he added 2,000 — to Saudi Arabia.

One day he was inviting Mr. Erdogan to visit the White House; the next he was threatening to “totally destroy and obliterate” Turkey’s economy if it crossed a line that he never defined.

Mr. Erdogan just kept going.

Mr. Trump’s error, some aides concede in off-the-record conversations, was entering the Oct. 6 call underprepared, and then failing to spell out for Mr. Erdogan the potential consequences — from economic sanctions to a contraction of Turkey’s alliance with the United States and its standing in NATO. He has since threatened both, retroactively, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said later Monday that the president had signed an executive order authorizing sanctions on individuals or associates of Turkey’s government who “endanger civilians or lead to the further deterioration of peace, security and stability in northeast Syria.” But it is not clear whether Mr. Erdogan believes that poses a real risk.

The drama is nowhere near over. Out of necessity, the Kurds switched sides on Sunday, turning their backs on Washington and signing up with President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, a man the United States has called a war criminal for gassing his own people. At the Pentagon, officials struggled with the right response if Turkish forces — NATO allies — again opened fire on any of the 1,000 or so Americans now preparing to retreat from their positions inside Syria. Those troops are trapped for now, since Turkey has cut off the roads; removing them may require an airlift.

And over the weekend, State and Energy Department officials were quietly reviewing plans for evacuating roughly 50 tactical nuclear weapons that the United States had long stored, under American control, at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey, about 250 miles from the Syrian border, according to two American officials.

Those weapons, one senior official said, were now essentially Erdogan’s hostages. To fly them out of Incirlik would be to mark the de facto end of the Turkish-American alliance. To keep them there, though, is to perpetuate a nuclear vulnerability that should have been eliminated years ago.

“I think this is a first — a country with U.S. nuclear weapons stationed in it literally firing artillery at US forces,” Jeffrey Lewis of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies wrote last week.

For his part, Mr. Erdogan claims nuclear ambitions of his own: Only a month ago, speaking to supporters, he said he “cannot accept” rules that keep Turkey from possessing nuclear weapons of its own.

“There is no developed nation in the world that doesn’t have them,” he said. (In fact, most do not.)

“This president keeps blindsiding our military and diplomatic leaders and partners with impulsive moves like this that benefit Russia and authoritarian regimes,” said Senator Jack Reed, the Rhode Island Democrat and longtime member of the Armed Services Committee.

“If this president were serious about ending wars and winning peace, he’d actually articulate a strategy that would protect against a re-emergence of ISIS and provide for the safety of our Syrian partners,” Mr. Reed added. “But he has repeatedly failed to do that. Instead, this is another example of Donald Trump creating chaos, undermining U.S. interests, and benefiting Russia and the Assad regime.”

The other major beneficiary is Iran, perhaps Mr. Trump’s most talked-about geopolitical foe, which has long supported the Syrian regime and sought freer rein across the country.

Mr. Trump tried another defense on Monday, via Twitter. Clearly sensitive about the critique that he was abandoning a longtime ally, he wrote that “anyone who wants to assist Syria in protecting the Kurds is good with me, whether it is Russia, China, or Napoleon Bonaparte. I hope they all do great, we are 7,000 miles away!”

It was another example of Mr. Trump’s taking a 1930s view of how to defend the nation, ignoring the power vacuums filled by adversaries and making the case that distance is the ultimate protection. The lessons of economic interdependency, the Sept. 11 attacks and the era of cyberconflict suggest otherwise.

As the situation continued to devolve, senior administration officials stepped forward to try to reverse the damage.

In an unscheduled appearance in the White House driveway, Vice President Mike Pence told reporters that Mr. Trump had asked Mr. Erdogan for an immediate cease-fire — part of the executive order that Mr. Pompeo announced — adding that the president had not given a “green light” for Turkish forces to invade Syria.

“The United States of America wants Turkey to stop the invasion,” Mr. Pence said, “to implement an immediate cease-fire and to begin to negotiate with Kurdish forces in Syria to bring an end to the violence.”

He said the president had directed him to lead a delegation to Turkey alongside Robert O’Brien, the president’s new national security adviser, to negotiate directly with Mr. Erdogan.

The horrors that have played out with lightning speed were clearly not anticipated by Mr. Trump, who has no fondness for briefing books and meetings in the Situation Room intended to game out events two or three moves ahead. Instead, he often talks about trusting his instincts.

“My gut tells me more sometimes than anybody else’s brain can ever tell me," he said late last year. He was discussing the Federal Reserve, but could just as easily have been talking foreign policy; in 2017 he told a reporter, right after his first meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, that it was his “gut feel” for how to deal with foreign leaders, honed over years in the real estate world, that guided him. “Foreign policy is what I’ll be remembered for,” he said.

But in this case the failure to look around corners has blown up on him at a speed that is rare in foreign policy and national security. The closest analogue may date to 1950, during Harry Truman’s administration, when Secretary of State Dean Acheson described America’s new “defense perimeter” in a speech, saying it ran from southern Japan through the Philippines. That left out the Korean Peninsula, and two weeks later Joseph Stalin, the Soviet leader, appeared to have given Kim Il-sung, grandfather of the current North Korean leader, permission to launch his invasion of the South. The bloody stalemate that followed lives with the United States today.

At the time, the United States kept a token force in South Korea, akin to the one parked along the Turkish-Syrian border. And it is impossible to know whether the North Korean attack would have been launched even without Mr. Acheson’s failure to warn about American action if a vulnerable ally was attacked — just as it is impossible to know if Mr. Erdogan would have sent his troops over the border if that phone call, and Mr. Trump’s failure to object, had never happened.

It was Mr. Trump himself who, during a presidential debate with Hillary Clinton in 2016, blamed President Barack Obama for a similar error. “President Obama and Secretary Clinton created a vacuum the way they got out of Iraq,” he said, referring to the 2011 withdrawal. “They shouldn’t have been in, but once they got in, the way they got out was a disaster. And ISIS was formed.”

Even his allies see the parallel. “If I didn’t see Donald Trump’s name on the tweet I thought it would be Obama’s rationale for getting out of Iraq,” Senator Lindsey Graham, one of Mr. Trump’s most vociferous defenders in recent years, but among his harshest Republican critics for the Syria decision, said last week.

As James F. Jeffrey, who worked for Mr. Obama as ambassador to Turkey, then to Iraq, and now serves as Mr. Trump’s special envoy for Syria, noted several years ago, it is debatable whether events would have played out differently if the United States had stayed in Iraq.

“Could a residual force have prevented ISIS’s victories?” he asked in a Wall Street Journal essay five years ago. “With troops we would have had better intelligence on Al Qaeda in Iraq and later ISIS, a more attentive Washington, and no doubt a better-trained Iraqi army. But the common argument that U.S. troops could have produced different Iraqi political outcomes is hogwash. The Iraqi sectarian divides, which ISIS exploited, run deep and were not susceptible to permanent remedy by our troops at their height, let alone by 5,000 trainers under Iraqi restraints.”

Mr. Trump may now be left to make the same argument about Syria: That nothing could have stopped Mr. Erdogan, that the Russians would benefit in any case, that there are other ways to push back at Iran. Perhaps history will side with him.

For now, however, he has given up most of what little leverage he had.

ORIGINAL SOURCE

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/14/world/middleeast/trump-turkey-syria.html

So pretty much everyone not named Trump has openly said this is a disastrous debacle of epic proportions. I can't imagine how anyone is comfortably with this fool having control of our military and nukes. This is easily the most shameful and dumbfounding military/foreign policy move I can remember in my lifetime.

trump couldn’t figure it out either... even though everyone else obviously had.
#hesamoron