Political punditry, if you don’t keep your eye on the prize, can easily get you confused; a piece of self-reproach as much as anything. This writer dislikes those who criticise everything Trump does. Equally, the propagandist notion of the US as a force for freedom is also irritating.
But then comes something like Trump’s sudden withdrawal of US special forces from Rojava (Kurdish Syria), and it’s the temporarily pro-Trump “left” who are wrong. Let’s deal with the alleged inconsistency of supporting US forces from the left in a moment. This is a ghastly act, conceived as either distraction from impeachment, or masking State Department realpolitik, or Trump being played by Turkey’s President Erdogan like a cheap hurdy-gurdy, or a mix of all three.
To take Trump being done over by Erdogan as part of consistent withdrawal from the US’ “forever wars” is to let this symbolic but consequential act substitute for genuine demobilisation. The small US contingent was there as a place marker, primarily: to make it impossible for Turkey, Russia or Iran to nip off territory. Yes, no one is fooled by US interest in the Kurds. Iraqi Kurdistan and Rojava were being gussied up to serve as a useful little US base should they achieve some sort of independence.
But there are more things no one is fooled by: Sunni Turkish denials of support for Sunni ISIS, when Ankara was allowing them to supply from Turkey; the fact that the Kurdish YPG is… erm… very close to the PKK, which mounts violent guerrilla attacks in Turkey; or repeated US claims that they did not directly support the PKK in northern Iraq, for years after 2003. It’s a mess, but for the fact that the Rojavan Kurds have built something worth defending out of two decades of horror. The dismantling of ISIS and the prospect that elements of it could reassemble — its Turkey-Syria supply and command lines restored — should surely give anyone pause.
Trump’s sudden withdrawal of the special forces obviously has nothing deliberate to do with honouring his never-consistent “end foreign wars” election rhetoric. Nothing in the series of White House confidential now pouring out suggests that he has much cunning at the foreign policy level; he assumes the shape of the last person who sat on him. When John Bolton was appointed, Trump was all ready to go to war with Venezuela. It was only Bolton’s hubris that finely riled Trump to sack him.
Having warned Erdogan that he could destroy Turkey’s economy if the Kurds were harmed, he has now parroted a Breitbart-esque article about the fleetingness of the US-Kurdish alliance and taken a rhetorical flourish as literal, bizarrely announcing that the Kurds “didn’t help in Normandy”.
(I know I should ration myself on these things, but if you want to see a real neocon farrago of a treatment, check out Greg Sheridan’s account of this in the Oz. From his sudden conversion to troop withdrawal, his adoption of the official, blatantly false PKK/YPG division, the fake Obama comparisons and, in a first draft that disappeared overnight, included something like: Trump’s actions are usually smart, however they appear; it is difficult to see how this is. Has the word gone out that this is too stupid even for News Corp to defend?)
But that is perhaps irrelevant to the question of the Kurds themselves. Some of the left support for the quasi-independent entity of Rojava — with its modernising revolution, sexual equality, self-managing “cantons” — has always relied on selective blindness. The Rojavans/YPG and PKK won the fight against ISIS, but only with US air support, YPG fighters directing the bombing of Kobani from the ground. Support for this seems politically unproblematic to me, an extension of the principle at play in Libya in 2011 — US involvement isn’t always the worst thing (arguing which I’m happy to pile on in the comments section).
There is probably still a fair bit of Marxism-Leninism beneath the Kurds new-found anarchism. But they destroyed ISIS — the group whose radical evil, we were told, affirmed the truth of Western civilisation blah blah, I didn’t see the Ramsay Centre forming a brigade — while building a modern but still-Islamic society at the same time. Which is of course one other reason why Erdogan wants to crush Rojava: it is a standing rebuke to his de-modernising, de-Ataturkising Islamism, by showing that religion and rights can co-exist.
With unerring aim, Trump has removed one of the few garrisons doing any good, while leaving the real “forever war” in Afghanistan to grind on. As we leave the Cold War fully behind, and as a multipolar world emerges, the reflex to demand the US get out will have exceptions — not perhaps that many — and simply keeping silent when that’s the case won’t be enough.
The American empire has not been stood down by this; this is a crappy brain-fart of an action. Or yes, I know, simply realpolitik, repeating the Ford-Kissinger betrayal of the Kurds in ’75, and with Trump’s clown act as cover for the State Department and mustering all the futility and funk that has become Trump’s signature in the world.
The Rojavan Kurds represented humanity for a time; as did those from elsewhere — including Australians — who saw something worth fighting for, joined them and died there. There are forever wars, and then there are those that have to be fought, and it’s important not to get confused.
US involvement may not always be “the worst thing” but it comes pretty close. This is especially the case when invasions, wars etc are founded on blatantly false premises. We have just marked the 18th anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan, and our media are still incapable of reporting some basic facts about that misadventure, including that the decision to invade was made months before (hence unrelated to “9/11”); that it was originally all about the oil route from the Caspian (hence cancelling Bridas’ contract was one of the first post invasion decisions); reactivating the heroin trade (now 93% of world supply with the US flying in the necessary chemicals and flying out the finished product); and gaining another foothold on China’s border among other real reasons.
We will never change our behaviour while the media continue to publish a BS version of what really happened and its reasons.
Ironically it is Russia and China that are driving the creation of a new Eurasia at exactly the time that Australia is tying itself ever close to the failing US empire and its fake democratisation of the world.
The subject at hand is Rojava. What the US was defending there were the people who live there, who asked for their help. The US has withdrawn and now the Turks are killing them. I’d say this is the Worst Thing by a pretty damn wide margin.
On Sept 16th, the BBC published an article entitled; “Afghanistan war: Tracking the killings in August 2019”.
They put people ‘on the ground’ throughout August, and came up with a figure of 74 per DAY were being killed in Afghanistan.
And, as is the way with the ‘Beeb’, their numbers were soft (just their acknowledged exclusions made that plain).
At Counterpunchdotorg, on Oct 7th, a very well credentialled journo, Nicholas J. Davies put that BBC exercise in its broader context, for example;
“….The war in Iraq is the only one of America’s recent wars for which more comprehensive epidemiological mortality studies have been conducted. As in wars in other countries, these studies found a scale of war deaths that is many times higher than widely published figures based on compilations of media reports, hospital records, human rights investigations and other “passive” sources.
Les Roberts, the lead author of the first Iraqi mortality study published in 2004, and of commonly referenced studies in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), told me that serious epidemiological studies usually find that passive sources have only revealed between 5% and 20% of actual war deaths in conflict zones.
But the U.S. and U.K. governments and the corporate media did their best to “rubbish” the epidemiological studies conducted in Iraq in 2004 and 2006. This left the public so confused that opinion surveys in both the U.S. and the U.K. found that average citizens believed only 10,000 Iraqis had been killed in the war, even after the Lancet medical journal published the epidemiologists’ estimate of 600,000 violent deaths……
The terrible reality that is hidden in plain sight is that America’s wars are far more deadly and destructive than widely published figures would suggest. It is therefore up to journalists, academics, activists and citizens to grasp this reality and to respond appropriately, by calling clearly and firmly for: an end to these wars; a genuine accounting of their human cost; criminal prosecutions of U.S. officials responsible for illegal attacks on foreign countries and other war crimes; and the payment of war reparations to the people and countries they have damaged or destroyed.”
Ah so Turkish imperialism is OK because Afghanistan. Fantastic. You people deserve nothing more than my shoe. I will go on.
Nice extrapolation!
And, stick your shoe where your puerile response came from..
Unless you’re saying that US wars create more deaths than, say, ISIS wars, this comment, while probably largely accurate, is irrelevant.
The whole point of the article is that in this rare case there is an argument to be made that the US leaving is worse than them staying.
I agree that 9/11 and the invasion of Afghanistan are a bit off-topic, but not unrelated insofar as BS reporting in the media goes. I still remember and will keep repeating that two months before the attacks Richard Armitage, US Assistant Secretary of State, was in Australia during which time in media interviews he essentially reminded this country of its obligation under ANZUS to come to the aid of the US in the event that it was attacked. I knew a war was coming from that time on.
That said, this piece is about Turkey/Syria/the Kurds to which I’ll leave a comment at the end of this thread.
Thanks for your acknowledgement of the Rojavan Kurds, via your erudite contribution and decency.
Picturing how Australian government intervention will go:
ScoMo: Oi fair dinkum m8 you are fair dinkum doing a fair dinkum war crime and we quiet australians won’t take-
Erdogan, that watermellon seller: ANZAC day is cancelled.
ScoMo: Sorry sir.
Wow, labelling the PKK as mere “terrorists” is pretty one-dimensional of you Guy. Keep that up & you could get a gig with News Corp. Oppress a people for long enough, & no surprise they’ll push back against that oppression-violently, if needs be. Even more liberal Turkish Governments have treated the Kurds like 3rd class citizens, & have even gone so far as to invade northern Iraq so as to persecute the Kurds. Matters are even worse with that fascist, Erdogan, who is hell-bent on re-creating the Ottoman Empire….and will happily murder any people that get in the way of that goal.
An appalling betrayal that should leave no ally in doubt. The world of transactional politics is alive and well and the Kurds are feeling the brunt now that the Turkish megalomaniac Erdogen has been unleashed. Sit back and watch as the ‘safe-haven’ zone boundaries need to go just that little bit further south and west as is Erdogen’s want. How bad could this get? Ask an Armenian of Turkish descent (if you can find one), they’ll tell you.
Any ally who had any residual doubt, Richard, qualifies as an imbecile.
If you go to theinterceptdotcom, you’ll find a piece from Oct 8 entitled; “THE U.S. IS NOW BETRAYING THE KURDS FOR THE EIGHTH TIME” (their caps, not mine).
The first time was nearly 100 years ago, over the treaties cobbled together after the end of the Ottoman Empire.
The first try, Sevres, catered for a ‘Kurdistan’, but the Turks kicked up, so the US canned it, leaving Britain and France to impose the Treaty of Lausanne, which made no mention of any ‘Kurdistan’.
Things were pretty quiet after that, up until the latish ’50’s, when the US fancied a bit of regime change in Iraq, and ran a coup to install a ‘friendly’.
They armed and urged the Kurds to get stuck in to destabilising the incumbent ‘unfriendly’.
It all worked a treat, until the ‘friendly’ made it to the top job, and set about napalming the Kurds who had been instrumental in him getting the gig.
You’d never guess who supplied the napalm……………………
I don’t think the PKK or YPG leadership had much doubt the US would sell them out – they were establishing territoriality while they could. The fact that there’s something called Rojava to defend on a global stage shows it was worth the sell-out. It’s ordinary Kurds clearly feeling betrayed.
I remain surprised, GR, that you and many others continue to plump the angle that the Kurds, acting with the support of the US Coalition, ‘defeated’ ISIS all by their lonesome(s).
What, the Syrian Arab Army did none of the lifting (with help, post 2015)?
And, let’s not forget Raqqa. The FUKUS coalition bombed Raqqa to smithereens, and the Kurds did the boots on the ground ‘mopping up’.
Amnesty then did an investigation, and found oodles of prima facie evidence of war crimes. The FUKUS coalition, under the ‘leadership’ of the US, ‘tweaked’ their rules of engagement for built up areas, thus breaching their own and international laws, and the casualty rate was off the charts.
Before being made aware of the Amnesty investigation findings, FM Bishop put her mitt in the air, bleating; ‘Wot about us – we bombed Raqqa to smithereens, too – where’s our medal?’
Then, Amnesty Oz wrote to FM Bishop – publicly, and implicitly wondered aloud if FM Bishop was putting up the nation’s hand for credit for committing war crimes.
Amnesty never received a response (and, neither did I, when I asked Amnesty if they’d received one from Bishop or the government).
The Australian contributors set out from their base in the UAE.
To this day, the bodies in Raqqa have never been recovered and treated as they should. Thousands of bodies lay where they expired.
Raqqa’s never been de-mined, let alone there being any sign of reconstruction. Just like Mosul.
Compare it to Aleppo, Palmyra and numerous other centres in Syria liberated from ISIS, and the variously rebadged AQ, by the Syrian Arab Army & Co.
Absolutely Richard
Erdogan was just waiting for an opportunity go after the Kurds. I just hope we don’t see a repeat of the treatment of the Armenians by the Turks at the start of the 20th century. Trump has handed him the Kurds in a silver platter. It’s all about protecting his financial interests in Turkey. Poor bloody Kurds!