By SJ Otto
I rarely support US troops being in a foreign
country and I have supported President Donald Trump any time he has pulled
troops out of a country (which is actually very rare). But taking the troops
out of Syria , and allowing Turkey to come
in and invade the Kurds is one time when I oppose the action. It is one of the
most irresponsible actions of Trump’s presidency. Next to destroying poor people’s
health care, by destroying Obama Care, Trump has sentenced a lot of Kurds to
death.What surprises me the most is how many other conservative
people agree with me. From NPR:
“Loyal allies such as Sen. Lindsey
Graham, R-S.C., blasted Trump's decision and said it "will be the biggest
mistake of his presidency" if not reversed.
At least one Republican went a step
further with his criticism of Trump.
Illinois Rep. John Shimkus, who is
retiring from Congress, called the president's decision to leave Syrian Kurds
to fend for themselves "terrible and despicable."
"In fact, I called my chief
of staff in D.C. I said pull my name off the 'I support Donald Trump list.' I
mean, we have just stabbed our allies in the back," he told local radio station KMOX.”
Again, I almost never agree with Republicans but this issue
is a lot different. I’m also surprised at the support this issue gets from Conservative Christian Evangelicals. According to the New York Times:
“Some of the president’s most ardent supporters worry
that troop withdrawal threatens religious minorities, especially Christians.
They are pushing back, to a point.
One called President
Trump’s decision “an egregious act of betrayal.” Another said the policy could
be “the biggest mistake of his presidency.” A third said Mr. Trump “is in
danger of losing the mandate of heaven.”
Conservative
Christians have ardently stood by Mr. Trump at most every turn, from
allegations of sexual misconduct to his policy of separating migrant families at
the border and the Russia
investigation.
But this week, some
of Mr. Trump’s top evangelical supporters broke rank to raise alarms over his
move to withdraw troops from Syria ,
which prompted Turkish forces to launch a ground and air assault against a
Kurdish-led militia that has been a crucial ally in the American fight against ISIS .
As Turkish warplanes
began to bomb Syrian towns on Wednesday, the prominent evangelist Franklin
Graham called for Mr. Trump to reconsider his decision, and worried that the
Kurds — and the Christian minorities in the region they have defended — could
be annihilated.”
From what I am hearing on NPR today Trump made a phone call
to Turkey ’s President Recep
Tayyip Erdoğan and after that he made the decision to pull all US
troops out of the Kurdish part of Syria . Either Trump knew damn well what Erdoğan planned to do or he is a complete moron.
Either way Trump is a very dangerous man. Even members of his on party
have jumped in to warn him how bad his
action has become.
There are several factions of Kurds. Some are Christians.
But some are member of the PKK,[1] or
The Kurdistan Workers' Party, or in Kurdish: Partiya Karkerên Kurdistanê. The latter is
a secular organization, which is also a semi-socialist group, with an ideology
based on anarchist like ideas of Murray
Bookchin. This may be one more of Trump's attacks on socialism. If so it is amazingly murderous.
Not all the Kurdish guerrillas are members of the PKK. As
stated above, many Conservative Christians Evangelicals are concerned about fellow Christians.
For those of us on the left, we are concerned about the PKK,
which unlike most of the other Kurdish groups as well as other Arab groups, the PKK
is a sectarian organization. They are not really Marxists anymore, but they are
probably one of the most left leaning groups in the Middle
East , or other parts of the world for that matter.
Erdoğan is one of the most murderous leaders since Adolf
Hitler. While conservatives are making accusations that anyone who supports President Nicolás Maduro, of Venezuela as being un-American because he is a
socialist dictator, Erdoğan has stripped their congress of power and set
himself up as a dictator. And yet Conservatives have said nothing about or
against him. Now he is committing ethnic genocide. Only now have conservatives come out against what Trump and Erdoğan are doing.
This is not just bad policy it is ethnic cleansing and
genocide and Trump is playing a big part in this.
[1] From Wikipedia,
The Kurdistan Workers' Party or PKK (Kurdish: Partiya Karkerên Kurdistanê) is
a Kurdish far-left militant and
political organization based in Turkey and Iraq. Since 1984 the PKK has been involved
in an armed conflict with the Turkish state (with
a two-year cease-fire during 2013–2015), with the initial aim of achieving an
independent Kurdish state, later changing it to a demand for equal rights and
Kurdish autonomy in Turkey . For more, click on Wikipedia.
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