Syria - President Trump One-Ups Security Experts Again

To further elaborate on the previous post, I’d like to first present a truth before discussing Syria’s conflict. It seems that almost everything the Democrats, Never-Trumpers, Neoliberals, and Neocons claim is a reliable indicator of falsehood and nonsense. Thus, judging the situation has become relatively simple: One can often get closer to the truth by simply opposing what figures like Pelosi, Schiff, Sanders, Graham, Romney, Bolton, and the majority of mainstream pundits claim. The legitimacy of opposing viewpoints then becomes a matter of personal perspective and emphasis.

This logic is useful when analyzing the US withdrawal from northeastern Syria and the alleged abandonment of the Kurds. By considering the opposite of the artificial outrage from the political swamp inside and outside the Beltway, the reality becomes clearer.

The argument that the US has betrayed the Kurds, who fought alongside us to defeat ISIS, is absurd. With the ISIS caliphate eliminated, Turkey sought to establish a safe zone to counter Kurdish forces in Syria, which it views as an anti-Turkish terror group. US intelligence observed preparations for a Turkish operation over several weeks and concluded that Turkey had serious intentions, which even last-minute calls between Presidents Trump and Erdogan couldn’t prevent. Clearly, the US administration neither approved nor could deter Turkey’s actions. Even if US forces had been reinforced, the few dozen special forces in northeastern Syria could not have stopped or repelled a Turkish incursion.

Therefore, the decision to withdraw US troops was the right one. It avoided conflict between NATO allies and allowed the Kurds to turn to the Syrian Army for protection. The Syrian Army is now moving to the border, assuming control of the region and safeguarding the Kurdish population.

The military leadership and the armchair generals in Congress (led by warmonger Senator Lindsey Graham) who accuse the US of abandoning its Kurdish allies fail to recognize (and likely never will) that the Syrian crisis began with the misguided US regime-change operation against Assad nearly seven years ago.

In my May 10, 2013 blog post (https://www.edwinseditorial.blogspot.com.edwinseditorial.com/2013/05/disastrous-foreign-policy-failures.html), I criticized the disastrous decision to politically and militarily support radical insurgents in Syria. This followed similar mistakes in Egypt and Libya, which already yielded terrible outcomes.

Since then, the chaos caused by the US’s failed regime-change effort has become evident. The US worked alongside the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a group composed of Kurds and Sunni Arabs, and the Kurdish PYD, which is aligned with the PKK, a group Turkey considers a terrorist organization.

When Russia intervened in 2015 to prop up Assad and restore Syrian territorial integrity, it was clear that the US intervention – illegal under international law and ethically questionable – was doomed to fail. In its Russophobic, regime-change mindset, Washington rejected Russia’s offer to fight ISIS together and instead continued supporting Kurdish-dominated forces with money, weapons, air support, and special forces.

In my September 27, 2017 post (https://www.edwinseditorial.blogspot.com.edwinseditorial.com/2017/09/why-my-north-korea-resolve-could-have.html), I predicted the inevitable failure of US foreign policy in Syria and its resulting embarrassment.

President Trump's decision to avoid engaging in a war with Turkey prevented yet another costly intervention. This decision, heavily mediated by Russia, allowed the Kurds to finally turn to Damascus for protection. It seems that Syria is now taking advantage of the ceasefire negotiated by US envoys Pence and Pompeo to regain control of its territory. Once sovereignty is restored and national security is assured by Syria’s armed forces, there will be no justification for further Turkish incursions.

Let’s be clear: The US’s former “Kurdish allies” were essentially mercenaries, bought with vast amounts of money and weapons, carrying out the US’s bidding. Their commitment to fighting ISIS was likely more about carving out territory for themselves, potentially creating an autonomous region in Syria or even parts of Turkey.

The outcry from the left and neoconservatives in the US is not only unwarranted, but downright foolish. Notable exceptions, such as GOP Senator Rand Paul and Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard, criticized the interventionist policies and supported President Trump’s shift in foreign policy. Meanwhile, the discredited Hillary Clinton, who pushed disastrous policies under President Obama, derides Gabbard as a Russian agent for her stance.

What’s also disturbing is the lack of loyalty within the Republican Party, as 129 of its members signed on to a House vote condemning the President’s troop withdrawal. The military-industrial complex's hold on Washington, combined with the Trump Derangement Syndrome, seems to stifle any reasonable debate on war, even among conservatives.

The disregard for the President’s prerogative to set foreign policy and the viciousness with which the Washington establishment opposes any correction to failed policies over the last two decades is alarming. It reflects a deep corruption of minds and morals in the capital, along with a concerning lack of professionalism and understanding of civic and human affairs.

It’s clear: as far as its political culture is concerned, the Republic is in serious trouble.

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Why My North Korea Resolve Could Have Made President Trump 'Famous' at the UN!

Had the advisors to President Trump read my blog essay on "How to Resolve the North Korea Crisis" of August 10, 2017 (https://www.edwinseditorial.com/2017/08/how-to-resolve-north-korea-crisis.html), could they have made him 'famous' at the United Nations? If Mr. Trump had presented my two-tier approach to resolving this crisis, which is not only politically sound but also morally legitimate, they would hail him as a statesman by now. Does this sound conceited or arrogant? It might seem at the beginning of this brief essay, but hopefully will no longer at the end.

 

Imagine Mr. Trump, heeding the advice I proposed in my blog essay, saying something like the following in his speech at the United Nations Assembly: "I assure the world public that the U.S. will never use nuclear force against North Korea first. I guarantee the North Korean regime that the U.S. and its allies will not forcefully implement regime change in North Korea. My political administration will pursue the establishment of a peace treaty to that effect. While this process is ongoing and until we achieve a satisfying result, the U.S. will observe the principle of 'deterrence by denial.' It will implement missile defense capabilities and civil defense measures to protect itself and its allies if North Korea decides to abandon this proposal for resolving the crisis between our nations peacefully. However, I assure the world community of nations that if North Korea should strike or attempt to hit the U.S. or its allies with weapons of mass destruction first, the United States will strike back with all its might at whatever cost this might entail for the North Korean people."

 

This statement would have not only been prudent to say in the sense of putting the U.S. on the moral high ground in this conflict. It would also acknowledge that the experts in Washington D. C. had finally understood what North Korea's aggressive posture and its constant missile and nuclear testing is all about: to generate some atomic capacity to deter the United States from regime-change intervention! As mentioned previously, only the nuclear capability can be the big "equalizer" and dissuade potential imperialist intentions even on a conventional military level.

 

Did the world not watch or forget about what happened not long ago, i.e., in Libya, in 2011, at the Obama/Clinton cabinet's hands, when U.S. and NATO forces launched an air campaign to support dubious insurgent groups against the Libyan military and government forces? Such was the reward Libya's leader Muammar Gadhafi, murdered in the streets, received for his retreat from pursuing nuclear weapons and his trust and handshake with Obama and incumbent European heads of state at the time. And have we not observed what the U.S. did to Syria in the misguided and failed regime-change attempt to oust President Assad, arming terrorists and insurgents, supporting al-Qaeda and ISIS and other groups in the region, causing unspeakable and unnecessary mayhem? Now the Russians had to restore stability and prop Assad, and at this point, it is not hard to predict that the Syrian intervention attempt will end up as a massive embarrassment for the United States. Aside from that: What about all the waste of human life and treasure on both sides? Were some military-industrial profit and the satisfaction of Mr. Obama's ideological arrogance indeed worth the chaos, the cost of lives, and the unleashing of refugees and displaced people onto the shores of Europe?

 

As unfortunate as the most likely acquisition of weapons of mass destruction by North Korea is, it comes for good reasons and a clear rationale that the North Korean regime hides behind its seemingly erratic behavior. The U.S.' policy failures nourished this rationale.

 

The U.S. and the international community should further pursue containment and denuclearization of the Korean peninsula; however, they should not make it a condition for peace. The probable possession of specific nuclear capabilities of North Korea does not and must not justify a preemptive strike.

 

Instead of further pursuing hypocritical foreign affairs policies that cause more trouble than resolving issues, it is high time to arrive at some collective realization of past follies in foreign affairs among Washington's elites and to change course.

 

This nation and its leader need to eliminate the war-mongering neoliberal and neoconservative nomenclature in the U.S. State Department and among the advisory bodies to the White House. Leaders of nations cannot know everything, but we expect them to have an excellent and pragmatic judgment that enables them to choose wisely among policy proposals. Without wise choice offered, they will most likely fail.

Disastrous Foreign Policy Failures Continue in Syria

The United Nations has estimated that the two years of civil war in Syria generated about 15,000 casualties among the military and security forces and 10,000 insurgent casualties. Civilian casualties numbered 45,000. 

 

In light of what had happened previously in Egypt and Libya, where weak and divided governments came to power, a prediction for Syria would have come easy. Any objective observer could have foreseen that the opposition to Bashar al-Assad's autocratic regime in Syria would soon be hijacked by Islamic extremism, leading to uncontrolled violence. While the demonstrations in Syria in 2011 might have been peaceful and moderate in their initial stages, extremist forces linked to Al-Qaida and the Muslim Brotherhood soon infiltrated the movement. They began to utilize it for their purposes. Lakdhar Brahimi, the Special Envoy to Syria for the UN and the Arab League, reports that the rebel forces comprise individuals of some 38 different nationalities, among them Muslims from the United Kingdom and continental Europe. 

 

The Supreme Military Council set up by the opposition shows overwhelmingly Islamist tendencies, and the opposition-controlled areas of Syria are already subject to Sharia Law. Meanwhile, the United Nations and the UK are confident that it was the jihadist rebels, not government forces, who fired a chemical weapons grenade into Khan-al-Assal. 

 

Against this backdrop, it appears absurd that the US and other Western governments are contemplating supplying arms and weaponry to the rebel forces. There is no way to discern pro-western opposition forces from Muslim extremists and channel armament accordingly. In their desperation over the chaos that evolved over the past two years, the US, France, the UK, and Turkey recognized the Syrian National Coalition as Syria's interim government, even though heavily dominated by members linked to the Muslim Brotherhood. 

  

In commenting on the Libyan situation (see respective essays from March 2011 https://www.edwinseditorial.com/2011/03/us-and-european-foreign-policy-blunder.html and October 2011 https://www.edwinseditorial.com/2011/10/lessons-from-muammar-gadhafis-demise. html), I warned about politically and militarily supporting dubious insurgent radicals in Egypt and Libya. In analogy, the warnings correspondingly apply to the Syrian case as well. 

I argued that transatlantic foreign policy, led and dominated by the United States, is politically short-sighted, unethical in principle, and ideologically driven. The sheer irrational belief in democracy as the panacea for all problems is devoid of deeper considerations of sound political philosophy. The West keeps waging an unjust and meaningless war in Afghanistan, continues to back insurgents in Egypt and Libya, and now lends support to Syria's unjust, violent campaign.  

 

Instead of supporting established political leaders in Egypt, Libya, and now Syria, dubious insurgent forces, pretending democratic goals while pursuing radical objectives, receive political, diplomatic, and even military support. We are facing the results of these failed policies in the whole region: Loss of human life and the amount of human suffering far outweigh the practicality of the conflict; affected nations are worse off than before; radical Muslim forces gain influence; Al-Qaeda is on the rise; Iran feels emboldened; Western power diminishes. 

 

Whether we can ever neutralize the past years' foreign policy failures is doubtful, yet remains to be seen. For now, it appears more likely that particularly the mishandling of the case of Syria will entail the most hurtful consequences as the country is a significant landmark where strategic interests of East and West collide.