Many U.S. Soldiers Disgusted With Trump's Syria Withdrawal

(Photo of Turkish tanks poised to invade Syria is by Unit Bektas at ukdefencejournal.org.uk.)

It shouldn't surprise us that many soldiers are not happy with Trump's decision to betray our Kurdish allies. The following is by Steve Benen at The MaddowBlog:

In a recent piece for The Atlantic, Mark Bowden took a closer look at what it’s like for U.S. troops to serve under Donald Trump, interviewing “officers up and down the ranks, as well as several present and former civilian Pentagon employees.” The results were striking.

“In 20 years of writing about the military, I have never heard officers in high positions express such alarm about a president,” the article noted.

This, of course, was before the president ignored his national security team, withdrew U.S. forces from northern Syria, and effectively invited Turkey to launch a brutal offensive against our Kurdish allies. As the Washington Post reported yesterday, Trump’s decision isn’t sitting well with many U.S. service members.

U.S. veterans have supported Trump in part because of his often-repeated promises to extricate the U.S. military from a generation at war, numerous polls have found. But the calamity on the ground in Syria has wrought angry reactions from service members like few other recent foreign policy decisions.

Troops have reacted viscerally in interviews and on social media despite Defense Department restrictions on them expressing political opinions.

The Post spoke with many troops who “expressed disgust” with the president’s decision.

“I can’t even look at the atrocities,” one Army officer who served in Syria last year said. “The ISIS mission is going to stop, ISIS is going to have a resurgence, and we’re going to have to go back in five years and do it all again.”

A day earlier, David Ignatius wrote in his latest column about a conversation he’d had with a retired four-star general who described Trump’s retreat from Syria as an “unsound, morally indefensible act” and a “disgrace” to America and the soldiers who serve this country.

Ignatius also spoke to an Army officer who added, in reference to Trump’s decision, “It will go down in infamy…. This will go down as a stain on the American reputation for decades.”

The president seems to assume that he enjoys broad political support within the military, which he perceives as conservative, and there’s probably some truth to that. The Military Times reported a few months ago on a poll of U.S. military veterans and the results showed Trump with a 57% approval rating, while 41% disapprove. This is roughly the inverse of Trump’s support with the overall U.S. population.

But if the president believes those numbers can never and will never change, he may be disappointed.

Trump Abandons The Kurds For Personal Financial Gain

Our most faithful and effective allies in the fight against ISIS in Syria has been the Kurdish fighters. (known as the Syrian Democratic Forces). We owe them a huge debt of gratitude, but Donald Trump has decided to throw them under the bus instead. He has announced that he is pulling U.S. troops back from the part of Syria near the Turkish border, and has given Turkish strongman Recep Erdogan his blessing to move into that part of Syria.

This area is the homeland of the Kurds, who have wanted to create their own country there (and in a small part of Turkey bordering Syria). It looks like, thanks to Trump, that Kurdish dream of freedom and their own country will now die. The Turkish president regards the Kurdish fighters as terrorist, and undoubtably will be attacking them.

Why is Trump doing this? Is it because he has a hotel (and other investments) in Istanbul? Is Trump abandoning the Kurds to an awful fate so he can make more money in Turkey? What financial inducements has Erdogan promised Trump? It looks like our foreign policy is being influenced by Trump's own financial gain. This is why U.S. presidents should divest themselves of their businesses before taking office (which other presidents have done, but which Trump refused to do).

It was to prevent actions like this that our Founding Fathers put an Emoluments Clause in our Constitution -- to prevent foreign policy from being dictated by a president's personal financial gain. Trump has repeatedly violated that clause of the Constitution. It is just one more reason why he must be IMPEACHED!

Bush Opposes Genocide Declaration

We've known for quite a while now that the truth means very little to our inept president. Bush will lie at the drop of a hat, if he thinks it will get him something he wants. Now we learn that he has as little respect for history as he does for truth.

Our House of Representatives is considering taking up a measure that would declare the mass killings of Armenians during the early part of the twentieth century to be organized genocide. The matter goes before the Foreign Relations Committee next Wednesday, and could soon be taken up by the full House.

Most historians agree that this was indeed an organized genocide, and should be represented as such for historical accuracy. But the Bush White House is working to see that the measure doesn't pass. That's because the Turkish government opposes it.

Last year, the French passed a law making it a crime to deny the Armenian genocide. Turkey promptly cut its military ties with France. Turkey has promised that if the measure passes in the U.S., there will be consequences. That's why Bush opposes the measure -- he's running scared of the Turkish government.

Bush is willing to bury historical truth to avoid Turkey becoming angry with us. But the truth is important. The Turks must come to terms with their World War I era behavior, just as the Germans have with their World War II actions. You cannot get past your mistakes until you recognize their existence.

It is silly for Bush to let Turkey write history for us. If the Turks don't want to be our friend, so be it. I think they will probably find that they need us far more than we need them.