1. Who Are ‘the Kurds’? […]

2. Why Does Erdogan Hate the Kurds? […]

3. Don’t the Kurds Deserve Their Own State? […]

4. Does Trump’s Turn Against the PKK Make the U.S. an Unreliable Ally? […]

5. Didn’t Trump’s Withdrawal help Russia, Iran, and Assad? […]

6. Wasn’t Trump Taking Orders from Erdogan to Withdraw? […]

7. Is Erdogan Really a U.S. Ally? […]

8. Isn’t the Anti-ISIS Campaign the U.S.’s Vital Interest in the Middle East? […]

9. Why Did Obama Partner with the PKK? […]

10. How Could the U.S. Foreign Policy Establishment Get It So Wrong?

It’s not hard to see why Democrats and their allied media attacked Trump. The president pulled the plug on an Obama initiative to integrate American and Iranian interests. Why Republican lawmakers and the GOP’s institutional infrastructure also went after Trump is more distressing.

Trump’s decision highlights the incoherence of his critics, who appear to believe that backing a Marxist splinter group aligned with the anti-American, pro-Iranian axis in its war against a NATO ally is sound policy. Trump also deserves credit for taking on the Pentagon.

In the three years it took to extricate U.S. troops from the fiasco in northern Syria that Obama designed, Trump must have seen that the Swamp’s center of gravity is not the intelligence community that continues to plot against him, but the world’s most influential bureaucracy. […]

Trump simply saw U.S. support for the PKK for what it was: America fighting and paying to advance the interests of someone else, in this case U.S. adversaries, like Iran, Assad, and Russia. The complaint of Trump critics that the withdrawal will, conversely, benefit all warring sides—Iran and ISIS, Ankara and Moscow, etc.—is impossible to reconcile with the logic of conflict.

That Trump’s withdrawal showed more strategic clarity than the foreign policy establishment is hardly surprising. He ran against Washington’s post-9/11 foreign policies in the Middle East, in particular novelty items like Bush’s freedom agenda and Obama’s Iran deal.

From Trump’s perspective, those policies defined the divide between the Beltway bubble and the rest of the U.S. public that saw no wisdom in enriching an Iranian regime at war or spending American lives and money to promote democracy in places like Iraq, Lebanon, or the Palestinian territories where elections were certain to empower anti-American forces.

Partnering with a terrorist faction of a sub-state actor at war with a NATO member is in the same category of objectively foolhardy and self-defeating policies. That many Republicans appear to have learned nothing in the last 19 years and chose to join Democrats in protest against the withdrawal shows that the divide is much more profound than even Trump had imagined. It is not only the American public from which the Beltway establishment is separated, but reality.

On “influence” (2), the US using cash is as effective, or more so, than using the Army, and results in less US body bags. Even it results in a lot more deaths of others, Kurds, Turks, ISIS / ISIL, Muslims, fanatics, Syrians, Iraqis, Iranians, Persians. Most US voters don’t really care much about the body bags of such foreigners. So Trump’s pullout, ending US part of Endless War there, was always pretty OK on this, tho (real) neo-cons, who want the US Army to make the Middle East safe for democracy, want more US boots for more democracy.

On (1) genocide, or even huge attacks, it’s pretty clear the Turks aren’t going to do that, now, in Syria / Iraq. They still might inside of Turkey.

So this is going to become a good Trump policy that is mostly no longer talked much about in the news, unless other bad ME news can be blamed on it. Well, of course ALL bad ME news coming WILL be blamed on Trump. He did something, therefore it’s ALL his fault, all the bad stuff. None of the good stuff, like fewer US deaths.

And of course this can change, tho I doubt the Turks really want to be fighting the battle trained Kurds. Now I’m thinking of the Chinese in ’79 learning that it was not wise to fight the battle trained N. Vietnamese, so their little border war ended, and was not covered in much detail by US news that I remember.

Enteracting with a dumbie is dumb. Wise up.

Trump is right to end meddling in the ME. The best thing we can do is support Israel against their many enemies, and that includes most of Europe.

New York doesn’t allow pipelines to go through. I don’t know, there has to be some kind of a federal something that we can do there. But they won’t allow pipelines to go through New York; this is for a long time. And they won’t do any fracking in New York. And they won’t take all of that wealth underneath and reduce their taxes. Wouldn’t that be nice? They don’t do it in New York. Somebody, someday, will explain why.

They do it in Pennsylvania. They do it in Ohio. They do it in states right around New York. They don’t do it in New York. They’re sitting on a goldmine of energy.
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So we’re working on that. And we’re going to also work on getting a pipeline through New York. We have to do that. We can’t let them hold us up like this. (Applause.)

And as I said, the energy prices in New England, if they allowed that to happen, could be cut in half. Energy prices in New York and other areas — we have to have a pipeline go through. They won’t let it happen. But we’ll do our best. Right? Right, Andrew? Good luck. We’ll get it. We’ll get it. It never made sense, does it? Can you imagine? They hold it up, they stop it. They stop it. Never made sense. That’s one — never made sense. And they don’t drill. They don’t frack. They’re sitting on a fortune.

What they could do — they could pay off their debt. They could pay off a lot of things. They could have taxes cut in half, maybe better than that. So, someday, somebody in this room is going to sit down and explain me to what the hell are they doing in New York.
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But all of you here today have achieved something that everyone said was impossible: You’ve helped make America the number one producer of oil and natural gas on planet Earth, by far. (Applause.) Number one, by far. Number one, by far. And think what that means for jobs.

Think what that — I just left Louisiana recently. And we opened a $10 billion LNG plant. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a longer building. It’s like a sky scraper laid on its side. It is the most incredible thing you’ve ever seen. More pipes in that building that — nobody realized how complex it is. But it took years and years, and it was a dead project. And I had it approved almost immediately. You know what we’re talking about, fellas. And it just opened.

And I went, and we cut a ribbon, and it’s a tremendous success. And now, I think they’re going to double the size of that. We’re going to double it. It’s already about the biggest in the world, but they’re going to double it. It’s doing phenomenally well. It sold out for 25 years. You know what that means. It’s like an office building, except more money. (Laughter.) Can you imagine? I never understood that, when they said it’s sold out — they sold it out. Other countries have purchased the LNG. But now they’re going to double it up and they’re going to build another one.
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Since our tax cuts were passed, nearly $1 trillion have returned from other countries back home, where it belongs. Think of it: We’ve gotten $1 trillion — trillion, with a “T” — $1 trillion back from overseas, from other countries that, instead of spending the money over there.

MBunge: You started off so well, but here’s your conclusion and here’s your emphasis, so I would assume it’s your real message.

Who on this blog do you think you are talking to?

Eff’em. Germany has been useless, less than useless. If they want to send troops they can ask the Turks. And Manju, you would be far more convincing if you knew what you were talking about. My understanding is that about 100 ISIS/dependents escaped out of 10,000+ captives. Do you really think the Kurds, SDF, or Syria want to let iSIS prisoners go? Do you really think the media know what the hell is going on? They don’t have anyone on the ground, all they have is gossip. There is very little actual journalism to be found.