Quote (ofthevoid @ 16 Oct 2019 15:19)
They absolutely do and Kurds are in the right here. In an ideal world Turkey would be willing to grant them their sovereignty in the east and we can all sing kumbaya. But we don't live in the world, we live in a world where Turkey has an army of 600,000 soldiers. We live in a world where they are in one of the most strategic places in the world. We live in a world where we have nukes against Russia in Turkey. We live in a world that if we fucked with Turkey they could weaponize immigration and really fuck Europe. We live in a world where if we lose Turkey as a geopolitical friend to Iran or Russia that we would be much weaker in the region.
So while i feel for the Kurds you can't simply ignore all of those realities and ramifications. The world is really complex, you can't have absolutist positions on right and wrong.
not a single one of those things justifies the way trump went about this whole affair. if anything, it makes the blunder worse since the mixed signaling (privately and officially, on the ground and politically) put turkey in a spot where their dictator basically has no option but to follow through with this offensive (assuming russia won't oppose them in a significant manner) to prevent losing his domestic support, while at the same time facing massive international backlash and concrete economic sanctions.
so if you want to pivot to the
'it was a difficult decision, but it had to be made' narrative, you're just putting a spotlight on the complete incompetence with which this was handled, screwing over BOTH sides in the process. playing the realpolitik angle would maybe make some sense if he simply said
'well fuck the kurds, they didn't help us in normandy, turkey is just too important to lose. so go ahead, daddy erdogan, do what you want with our only reliable ally in the region that helped us defeat ISIS despite massive casualties', but to first invite him to slaughter them, and then punish him for doing so, exposes how badly thought out and executed this was. your average fifth grader is better at diplomacy than that...
and again, it's a ridiculously flawed premise to begin with, there was not actually any urgency to withdraw the troops immediately (no, getting yelled at by a dictator over the phone doesn't count) before negotiating a political solution for the kurdish question, something trump hasn't made any effort at, or even seriously considered at any point.