No sellout, no outrage…US Syria withdrawal long overdue

The Trib, like virtually the entire US political, military and media class, has gotten the US pullout out in Syria wrong (October 15, editorial 'Trump’s sellout of the Syrian Kurds is an outrage' ). It was not nearly as precipitous or outrageous as claimed. It’s been a year in the making since Islamic State in Syria has been rolled back. Our support of the Kurds has always been one way…to have them die fighting ISIS instead of US troops. And 11,000 did just that with US supplied weaponry and air support. They were willing to do that for two reasons. First to stave off the existential threat of ISIS in their neighborhood. Second, to gain US support for maintenance and expansion of their independent Kurdish area in northeast Syria free from Turkish interference.

We never intended or agreed to their second objective, so much so Syrian Kurds have been conducting back channel talks with Assad’s now ascendant government for a year to take over their security after the expected US pullout. Our biggest mistake with Syrian Kurds was not telling them months ago to strike their best deal with Syria and Russia because we are leaving. ISIS is gone and so are we. The agreement for Syria, along with Russian backing, to substitute for US protection was hammered out within a few days of Turkey's invasion. Syrian and Russian forces have already rolled in to the region to replace token US forces who were simply targets for an inevitable Turkish incursion against the Syrian Kurds they fear are aligned Turkish Kurds fighting for independence from Turkey.

It's too early to determine if the Syrian, Russian involvement, along with US and NATO efforts to restrain Turkey will prevent this limited military action from spiraling into a regional conflict. But it's not too early to note the decline of US influence in Syria and the wider region. The US had no business for its illegal and immoral Syrian involvement five years ago. We flooded Syria with weaponry, much of which wound up with extremists who funneled it to Islamic State, expanding the Syrian civil war far longer, with far greater casualties, than had we not intervened.

It's time for the US to get completely out of Syria, as well as Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Libya and other nations we destabilize with our blank check to promote American exceptionalism. It doesn't work...never has, never will.