Syria

The other evening, Fox News host Tucker Carlson appeared to be on the point of literally tearing out his hair as he railed against the relentless and near-universal negative reaction to President Donald Trump’s decision to relocate a few hundred US troops in northeastern Syria. At first glance, it is indeed baffling, even perhaps hinting at a kind of mass psychosis. On the ground in Syria, after all, the fallout thus far has been anything but catastrophic. The Kurds are now protected by the Syrian and Russian armed forces. These countries’ leaders, on the back of US sanctions against Ankara, are negotiating a ceasefire with Turkey.

This article is in The Spectator’s November 2019 US edition. Subscribe here. Whenever neoconservatives and liberals chant in unison about American policy in the Middle East — as when they championed the Iraq invasion, for example, or the overthrow of Colonel Gaddafi in Libya, or the thwarted attempt to topple the Assad regime in Syria — it means we are being told a pack of lies. Par for the course is the hysterical response to President Donald Trump’s ‘betrayal’ of the Kurds in the wake of Turkey’s invasion of northern Syria. Turkey’s goal was to repatriate at least two million of 3.6 million Syrian refugees inside Turkey in a border zone controlled, until the invasion began, by the US-allied, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces.

The White House’s decision to move aside and allow a Turkish assault in northeast Syria highlighted the morass that is the US’s foreign policy in the Middle East. Criticism of the decision, rebuked as ham-fisted and reckless, was bipartisan. This is the kiss of death for the Kurds (the US’s allies, who are left defenseless),  the largest ethnic minority in Syria, and one of the victims of Turkey’s human rights abuses that have spanned centuries. Lost in the turbulent tangles of the news is another one of Turkey’s victims, a population of Christians who are a distinct ethnic group that has been historically targeted by the Ottoman Empire.

Credibility used to be an important thing in US foreign policy, a guiding principle: hundreds of thousands of Americans in uniform died to maintain it. In 1969, with half a million American troops in Vietnam, Henry Kissinger wrote this in Foreign Affairs: '[W]hat is involved now is confidence in American promises. However fashionable it is to ridicule the terms “credibility” or “prestige,” they are not empty phrases; other nations can gear their actions to ours only if they can count on our steadiness. The collapse of the American effort in Viet Nam would not mollify many critics; most of them would simply add the charge of unreliability to the accusation of bad judgment. Those whose safety or national goals depend on American commitments could only be dismayed.

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard made a comment during Wednesday’s Democratic presidential debate that left many scratching their heads 'We were supposed to be going after al-Qaeda, but over years now, not only have we not gone after al-Qaeda,' she said, adding, 'our president is supporting al-Qaeda.' https://twitter.com/CNNPolitics/status/1156755828625555457 Donald Trump is supporting al-Qaeda? Gabbard doubled down on her statement during a post-debate appearance on Fox News, saying that the Trump administration’s ‘support and alliance with Saudi Arabia that is both providing direct and indirect support directly to al-Qaeda.’ ‘How can you say Saudi Arabia is a great partner in fighting terrorism when they are fueling and funding terrorist groups in Yemen?’ Gabbard added.

The Trump administration’s Iran policy is regime change in all but name. Rudy Giuliani, the president’s former attorney, once told me that while the administration emphasizes 'change in behavior', the Islamic Republic is so flawed that its regime is probably beyond reform. On this week’s Washington Shots podcast, pundit Tom Rogan told me that the list of demands Mike Pompeo laid out last year is so compendious as to demand the collapse of the Islamic Republic. Rogan, an Iran hawk, thinks the secretary of state has gone too far. So too does Trump — or so he did until the Thursday's flare-up, the apparent Iranian bombing of an oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman.

If any other president than Donald Trump had announced the withdrawal of American troops from Syria, he would be lauded for a strategic wisdom rare among American presidents, and for that even rarer achievement, fulfilling a campaign promise. Instead, he is attacked by Democrats and Republicans alike. That alone suggest that he is doing something right. The truth is, American foreign policy experts have been consistently wrong about the Middle East for decades. Who, apart from the culprits of George W. Bush’s wars, seriously believes that Iraq ever was a nation, rather than a cobbled-together state? Who, apart from the apologists of Obama’s appeasement, seriously believes that Iran has no ambitions as a nuclear-tipped empire?

President Donald J. Trump’s surprise announcement on Wednesday that he is withdrawing the US military from Syria has shaken the Washington, DC, foreign policy establishment like a thunderclap. While there have been nods of approval from skeptics about American interventionism in the Middle East, that’s a rare breed inside the Beltway. Instead, DC foreign policy mavens, most of whom espouse neo-flavored beliefs (whether neoliberal or neoconservative) reacted with derision and horror to Trump’s proposed withdrawal from Syria’s terrible fratricide, ongoing for almost eight years. These media and think-tank denizens, once derided as ‘the Blob’ by Obama’s White House, have spoken with one voice, and it’s sharply critical of the president.

It was fitting that Donald Trump’s blustery speech at the United Nations this week, in which he defiantly denounced ‘the ideology of globalism,’ came just one day after his top adviser John Bolton vowed limitless American military commitment to yet another global conflict. Bolton had essentially declared that US forces would be in Syria for perpetuity, or ‘as long as Iranian troops are outside Iranian borders.’ Though this deployment was never formally debated, voted on by Congress, or subjected to a modicum of public scrutiny, Bolton saw fit to announce that US troops would remain there for an open-ended mission with no termination date.