On September 6, 2019, a date that will forever stain this nation’s reputation, President Donald Trump pulled U.S. troops off the northern Syrian border with Turkey. After a phone call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, our president in his “great and unmatched wisdom” abandoned Syrian Kurds, our staunchest and most successful allies in the fight against the Islamist state.
Since every sentient being knew that this betrayal and desertion would precipitate a Turkish invasion of Syria, we must take for granted that our “very stable genius” deliberately sacrificed our Kurdish allies. He has told us he is “The Second Coming.” He must be omniscient, right?
Before you could say “Trump Towers Istanbul,” the Turkish army invaded its neighbor, attacked our betrayed allies and set off a mass panic of Kurds fleeing troops long-practiced in brutalizing them.
We had 1,000 troops in northern Syria. But, that small U.S. contingent deterred Turkey from invading, not wanting to get into a shooting match with the country that sells it 60 percent of its weaponry.
The American retreat has led to the displacement of upwards of 300,000 people, assassinations and mass atrocities – a humanitarian catastrophe of Donald Trump’s personal creation, which, by the way, bankrupts U.S. trust on the world stage.
And Trump’s response?
Our “very stable genius” asserted, “That has nothing to do with us… They’ve got a lot of sand over there … There’s a lot of sand they can play with.”
A lot of sand to play with?
Entire communities – men, women and children – are on the run with the barest of supplies they could grab and: “They’ve got a lot of sand to play with.”
Well, they certainly can’t afford to stay in Trump Towers Istanbul – and would likely be shot if they crossed that border.
Then, with war crimes raging, terrorists escaping, babies being bombed and Erdogan promising to “crush the heads” of the Kurds, our Republican president first said the Turkish invasion was akin to a playground fight before flat-out endorsing ethnic cleansing along the Turkish-Syrian border.
When proclaiming his “great and unmatched wisdom,” Trump promised tough sanctions on Turkey if it invaded Syria. Ooh, a 50 percent tariff on Turkish steel, which supplies one percent of the U.S. steel market. And that business-genius bankruptee still doesn’t realize that tariffs are paid by the buyers, not the sellers.
Meanwhile, The Daily Beast observed, “After eight years of Syrian civil war, the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, and the displacement of half the Syrian population, U.S. President Donald J. Trump’s decisions have created conditions for Bashar al-Assad’s regime to re-assert control over nearly one-third of the country that had been outside its grip since 2012.
“Far from reining in U.S. adversaries, Trump’s presidency will likely be remembered as one through which Assad, this century’s greatest mass murderer, managed finally to claw his way back to a position of undisputed authority.”
And it gets better for America’s enemies:
” The news began Tuesday morning,” The Daily Beast reported, “with Russian pro-Kremlin journalist Oleg Blokhin streaming a live video from inside the recently abandoned American al-Sa’idi’, a base in Syria on the western outskirts of the Manbij countryside.
“’Good morning to everyone from Manbij,’ exclaimed Blokhin. ‘I’m at the American military base right now, where they were until yesterday morning. Already, we’re here.”
Yes, Trumpistas, the Russians ocupied an American base without firing a shot.
So, has Trump earned Trump Tower Moscow yet? Or will Putin dump this naïve, narcissistic numbskull as a no-longer useful puppet as soon as he leaves office?
(Gary Edmondson is chair of the Stephens County Democratic Party: scdpok.us or facebook.com/SCDPOK/.)