Trump’s SyrIa withdrawal is actually a stroke of genius

In the maelstrom of Trump-hatred, the pundits have focused on the 2% negative and ignored the 98% positive effects of Trump’s withdrawal.

By Mark Langfan, INN

All the Trump-Haters, and not a few Trump supporters, have gone completely hysterical over President Trump’s decision to have  American forces retreat from Northern Syria.  In reality, Pres. Trump’s Syria withdrawal, and its likely concomitant redeployment to western Iraq, is a genius-level strategic move that will, in the short to medium term, stabilize Syria, and present Iran with great difficulties.

In the maelstrom of Trump-hatred, the pundits have focused on the 2% negative and ignored the 98% positive effects of Trump’s withdrawal. In the big picture of Syria, however, one has to take three steps back and realize that in Syria we are only in Act 2 of a 5 act play and there is no question that Trump’s move has achieved a major win for America in the entire Syrian drama.

The mother of all the Syrian myths is that Trump has allowed “Assad to win.”  It was President Obama who almost ensured an Assad “win” in the medium term when he reneged on his “red line” and openly invited Putin and Russia into Syria.  Once America had sanctioned Russia’s protection of Assad, how was America going to then get rid of Assad without starting a war with Russia? And once Putin became the protector of Assad, Putin became the protector of the genocidal murderer of hundreds of thousands of Sunni Arabs.

The second myth is that Trump “handed Russia a win.”  As I have repeatedly said, Syria will ultimately be Vladimir Putin’s “Afghanistan,” and will result in Russia having a weakened global strategic footprint.  There are several reasons for this. Russia’s support for Assad’s hold on Syria is still tenuous. Assad only has the support of about 5 million Syrians out of about 24 million people, and the populations and country itself are in terrible shape and need billions of dollars immediately.  Putin has absolutely no money to support any Syrian reconstruction, so even if Putin seems to win, he has only “won” a booby-trapped prize that will blow up in his face. Any monetary support obtained from either China or Iran will come with strings attached that will, in the end, steal Putin’s victory.

And exactly who else does America want to see the “winner” in Syria other than Russia? Iran? America had no real business remaining in Syria because Congress hadn’t authorized (and was never going to authorize) a Syrian “use of force” war power resolution, and Assad demanded that the US get out.  Trump had a choice of either handing over American-occupied areas to Russia or to Iran. While that’s a no-brainer, it only goes to show that Putin’s Syria “prize” is an albatross of another type as well –  in that now Putin is left to contend alone with Iran’s malignant activities in Syria.

When is comes to the Kurds, America was never going to sanction and protect a newly formed Kurdish Nation out of Northern Syria, but having the Kurds move away from the Turkish border is a stroke of genius that might work  All that happened as a result of Trump’s retreat is that Assad has assumed the Kurdish protector role. If not for the Russia-phobia hysteria that has consumed Washington, Trump could have solved the American hand-over to the Russian/Syrian forces easily, quickly – and bloodlessly. The fact that Trump had to unilaterally up-and-leave, and any deaths as a result of that  abruptness, is the fault of the Democrats.  The Democrats, and only the Democrats, have Kurdish blood on their hands, not Trump.

The third Syrian withdrawal myth is the “Trump gave Iran a victory.”  Trump left Russia the Syrian oil wells that Iran wants, and now Russia and Iran can fight each other and possibly Turkey over Syria.  Trump forcing Iran, all by itself, into the Syrian boxing ring with Vladimir Putin is not a victory.

The pundits who mindlessly parrot anti-Trump talking points should give this idea its proper burial.  In fact, Iran is already suffering from another Pyrrhic victory, enslaving the 25 million Iraqi Shiite Arabs in Iraq. It’s not going to take long for the Sunni and Shiite Arabs of Mesopotamia to see that Iran is its one and only colonializing Safavidic Persian enemy, stealing their oil wealth and bleeding them dry.

Despite the noise, we can expect great results form President Trump’s brilliant unilateral gambit to extract America from a war it has no business being in from the start.

October 28, 2019 | 10 Comments »

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  3. Bear Klein Said:

    So far 300,000 people have lost their homes is that the positive or negative part, Ted?

    The ones who are dead what part is that negative or positive?

    From day one, I felt that there had to be a better way. I still think so. Nothing I have read so far justifies it.

    One more thing. I have posted many articles which support the decision. To begin with, I didn’t want to condemn the decision without knowing the facts. Now that events have unfolded somewhat, I don’t like the decision. Whatever the US got, the cost was too high both in terms of the harm to the Kurds and the weakening of America’s position.

  4. @Ted, what are the positives of Trump’s ditching the Kurds for the Turks? Your words say 98% positive and 2% negative. So far 300,000 people have lost their homes is that the positive or negative part, Ted?

    The ones who are dead what part is that negative or positive?

  5. Kurds again prove invaluable to US. Likely successor to Baghdadi also killed

    Islamic State Spokesman Killed in Separate U.S. Raid – Ben Hubbard (New York Times)
    A day after an American raid killed Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, a separate U.S. airstrike killed Islamic State spokesman Abu Hassan al-Muhajir, who was considered al-Baghdadi’s possible successor.

    Mazlum Abdi, head of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces that fought the Islamic State, wrote on Twitter that al-Muhajir had been killed on Sunday in an operation coordinated between his forces and the U.S.

  6. Genius to abandon allies to placate Islamist Turkey. Even Trump had to acknowledge that the Kurds were invaluable in being able to locate Bagdadi and then US Special Forces did a great finishing job of him and some of his compatriots.

    The killing of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is great news for the civilized world. The raid deep into northwestern Syria speaks once again to the incredible professionalism of the U.S. Special Forces and the intelligence analysts who help target their operations. The details of this operation speak as well to larger truths about Syria — and to what we have forfeited with the sudden U.S. retreat across its northeast this month.

    Turkey also has some explaining to do. Baghdadi was found not in his traditional areas of eastern Syria or western Iraq, but rather in northwestern Syria — just a few miles from Turkey’s border, and in Idlib province, which has been protected by a dozen Turkish military outposts since early 2018. It is telling that the U.S. military reportedly chose to launch this operation from hundreds of miles away in Iraq, as opposed to facilities in Turkey, a NATO ally, just across the border. The United States also reportedly did not notify Turkey of the raid except when our forces came close to its borders, the same notification we would have provided to adversaries such as Russia and Syria.

    Idlib has become the world’s largest terrorist haven. Most of the nearly 40,000 foreign fighters that flooded Syria during its civil war came through Turkey into northwestern Syria. Today, it is largely controlled by al-Qaeda’s formal affiliate in Syria, which itself is sustained by cross-border trade and enjoys symbiotic relationships with Turkey-backed opposition groups. Now we know the area was hospitable enough for the world’s most-wanted terrorist to camp out with his extended family.

    This reality remains a serious threat to U.S. national security; unfortunately, our ability to gain information in these areas will depend not on Turkey but on the other allies we have established in Syria, particularly the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). It was not a surprise to hear President Trump confirm that credible information leading to Baghdadi came from the SDF. This has been the case for nearly all similar operations targeting ISIS leaders in Syria.

    The United States helped develop the SDF — a force that grew to 60,000 fighters, including Arabs, Kurds and Christians — as the infantry to defeat the Islamic State caliphate because there were no available alternatives. The United States had sought to build a counter-Islamic State force with the support of Turkey, but two administrations found Turkish-backed forces too riddled with extremists to partner with. The SDF over time suffered 11,000 casualties, and with broad support from the local population, enabled U.S. forces to operate in Syria at small numbers, limited risk and low cost.

    All that makes clear why the decision to evacuate established positions and permit Turkey to attack the SDF with extremist forces it supports was so strategically backward. It unraveled what had been a stable part of the country, injected new actors into the former Islamic State caliphate that harbor and enable Islamic State and al-Qaeda, and sent hundreds of thousands of mostly Syrian Kurds fleeing for their lives, many toward an already fragile Iraqi Kurdistan region.

    The subsequent decision to reconstitute U.S. forces in a remote area with a small oil field under a legally dubious mission to protect it from a reconstituted Islamic State also makes little sense. The mission had been and should have remained to ensure Islamic State cannot reconstitute, not to protect an oil field once it does.

    Baghdadi’s death at the end of a dark tunnel may diminish the global appeal of the Islamic State brand. The United States can work with its partners around the world to reinforce this success with law-enforcement raids against Islamic State cells in other countries. On the ground in Syria, however — where the Islamic State is plotting its future — it is now more difficult to consolidate this achievement. U.S. forces have already abandoned populated areas, and the SDF has been forced to turn to Russia as its new partner in cities where only one month ago the United States enjoyed local support, access and intelligence.

    Trump deserves full credit for approving the operation that led to Baghdadi’s demise. It’s a shame the information that led to the raid apparently did not come to him before the tragic decision to abruptly pull U.S. Special Forces from much of northeastern Syria. Because everything we already know about the raid reinforces just how valuable, unique and hard-fought the small and sustainable American presence there had been.

  7. Langfan’s article completely ignores the effect on Israel of Trump’s withdrawal from Syria as a potent triad of Syria, Russia and Iran are drawn to the doorstep of the Jewish State. As far as Israel is concerned, Trump can no longer be trusted.
    The lesson to be learned is that Israel must never ever “rely on the kindness of strangers”, but must for its continued survival always alone wield the qualitative balance of military power in the region.

    .

  8. @ Bear Klein: I doubt that Putin Syria and Iran are really all that happy about the Turks being part of this mix. No stroke of genius by any means, but part of a well-planned , long-in-the works strategy of “let’s you and him fight.” I don’t agree with it, but it makes a certain sense if you are a cynical power -player in the tradition of Metternich.

  9. Ethnic Cleansing and betrayal of an ally the Kurds is a stroke of genius. How cold and 100% Bullshit not genius except for the deluded.

    If one is pro Putin, Syria and Iran plus think appeasing the Islamic Turks is brilliant then it was a stroke of genius.

  10. Langfan’s analysis ignores the role of Turkey in this whole mess. Also assumes a Russia-Iran rivalry of which there is no evidence. Russia, Turkey and Iran all seem to be on the same page–but Assad may not be happy about this. The Turkish occupation is thus at least a minor setback for Assad’s plan to regain control of all of Syria. This, I am sure, was intended by Trump and his Pentagon advisors.