Trump Done Messed Up: He Just Lost Republican Support by Paige Sumowski

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Trump just abandoned our allies during an attack. And now Republicans are furious. 
Even Fox News stated, "President Trump's order to pull U.S. forces out of northern Syria has already been a disaster." 
Trump done messed up.  
On Sunday, October 6, 2019, Trump allowed Turkish President Recep Tayyip Ergodan to attack the Kurds (our allies) in Syria after a phone call with Ergodan, despite opposition from the military and intelligence agencies. Trump betrayed our allies, ignored our military leaders and intelligence agencies, and made this rash decision after one phone call. These very Kurdish fighters are part of the Syrian Defense forces and have lost 11,000 people fighting ISIS alongside the US, allowing the American soldiers to stay off the battlefield.  
For the first time in recent history, this created a "rare bipartisan unity" in Congress, as CNN explained,  and has established a huge concern for the Kurds safety, US National Security interests, regional stability, and our ongoing battle with ISIS. This may also heighten Syria's war, with two US-allied forces fighting each other. 
In other words, Trump done messed up real bad. 
According to CNN, Turkish forces "pounded" the Kurdish in a ground and air assault, leaving men, women, and children desperately trying to flee the scene.  With Turkey planning to invade Syria from the North, Russian planning to invade Syria from the South, and ISIS attacking Raqqa (a city in Syria), Trump has helped Turkey, Russia, and ISIS, Trump has helped universal threats. 
The Kurds are a part of Kurdistan, which makes up parts of Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Armenia (see map below).  Although Kurdistan is not an official state, the Kurds unite through race, culture, and language. 
The Syrian Kurdish people do not seek independence, but only want to be recognized and guaranteed basic rights. 
For generations, Turkish Kurds have been brutally abused by Turkish authorities. So, in 1978, a group called the PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party) was established and initially demanded an independent state in Turkey, later modifying their resolves for self-government. In July 2015, there was a temporary truce between the Turks and Kurds after a suicide bombing killed 33 of the Kurdish activists near the Syrian border. However, the PKK blamed and attacked the Turks, causing the Turkish government to initiate the "synchronized war on terror" against the PKK. Generalizing the Kurds, the Turkish see all Kurds as a threat, putting the Syrian Kurds at risk as well. 
Since August, US forces have urged the Syrian Kurds to move their troops away from a border that the Turkish were attempting to invade from, in the hopes of appeasing the Turks such that they would no longer want to invade. Though risky, the Kurds trusted the United States to protect them from the Turks and agreed to participate in the plan. 
After Trump abandoned the Kurds that trusted the United States, Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio explained through Twitter, "Damage to our reputation & national interest will be extraordinary & long lasting." 
Trump done messed up. 
Trump has attempted to justify this detrimental and largely ridiculed decision by stating the Kurds "didn't help us in the Second World War, they didn't help us with Normandy," and that their only interest was in "their land."  When confronted with the likelihood that ISIS fighters will escape from Kurdish prisons, Trump responded, "Well, they're going to be escaping to Europe, that's where they want to go," essentially saying that it's not his problem. Defensive, he also tweeted that Turkey is a part of NATO, and therefore he was in the right when withdrawing United States forces from Syria.  
What nation, what group is going to trust us now? We just destroyed our domestic and international trust. We just destroyed our credibility. 
But Trump doesn't care. According to Trump, "They [the Kurds] wanted to fight, and that's just the way it is." 




A map of Kurdistan, as provided by BBC. Read here to learn more about who the Kurds are. 

Trump explaining his reasoning behind abandoning the Kurds. (Note his defensive gestures and the shocked look of that guy in the back...)


Comments

  1. DanielleOctober 15, 2019 at 6:11 AM

    I love your use of repetition.

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousOctober 21, 2019 at 12:20 PM

    This is awful (and that word doesn't even begin to cover the half of it)... We cannot be paper allies, promising to stand by other countries on paper yet abandoning them in their most dire hour of need. My cousin serves in the army, and he was stationed in Syria before being pulled back to the United States... This, sadly, has been long in the making. As Turkey, as Russia, as ISIS push Syrian borders, this very well may evolve to become a genocide, and we are content to just sit back and watch our allies, our ALLIES, suffer. Hopefully Donald Trump can be persuaded to change his mind, but only time will tell.

    ReplyDelete

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