The excuses US President Donald Trump and his loyal fans have provided for his disastrous decision to give Turkey a green light to invade Syria are as foolish as they are disingenuous.
The same is true of efforts to argue that the Kurds aren't worth our sympathy because they weren't with us "at Normandy," as the president preposterously claimed last week. Trashing brave people because they're not "all angels" or because they are politically divided is unworthy of a superpower who not long ago was arming and training the same people to do the dirty work in a war against an enemy of America that Americans didn't want to fight anymore.
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But these terrible arguments were just a smokescreen for something that has little to do with the Kurds, whom most Americans couldn't care less about, or the admittedly complicated politics of Syria and the Middle East. Americans are tired of foreign conflicts.
That's why, no matter how absurd Trump's self-justifications for his policy blunder might be or how comically inept his letter to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was as he vainly sought to mitigate the damage he had already done, there have been no signs his moves have done him any political damage.
Trump's instinctive neo-isolationism and talk of opposing endless wars may be wrongheaded, but they are not unpopular – and there are good reasons for that.
Americans paid a high price in dealing with the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. The war in Afghanistan was an unavoidable response to al-Qaida's assault on America, yet after 18 years of inconclusive fighting, the reason why that was necessary has been largely forgotten. The decision to invade Iraq turned out to be a mistake, not least because it had the unintended effect of strengthening neighboring Iran.
As Trump's predecessor learned, escaping that conflict wound up being a lot more complicated than ordering troop pullouts and a president claiming he had "ended" the war. When President Barack Obama did exactly that in Iraq, the American people cheered. Many of the same people are now cheering Trump's decision to get out of Syria and leave the Kurds to fend for themselves.
It's easy to see why his comments about avoiding spilling another drop of American blood in the Middle East resonates with the public.
Many Israel supporters have even backed him on this decision despite the consensus in the Jewish state that the American retreat from Syria and its encouragement of Turkish depredations are a blow to Israel's and regional security and spell humanitarian disaster for the Kurds.
Part of this is a matter of blind partisanship. In our current bifurcated political culture, most of the public takes their cue on how to think about the issues from the president and his opponents, rather than contemplating current events for themselves.
Regardless if Democrats would have lauded a particular policy had it come from a Democratic president, if Trump is for it, most Democrats will still oppose it, as Trump's stand on Jerusalem illustrated.
The same was true with respect to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. Pro-Israel Democrats would have called it appeasement and a disgrace had a Republican president made such a deal. But since it was Obama doing the appeasing, they fell into line and supported it without batting an eye. The same people who applauded Obama's bug out from Iraq are now condemning Trump for similar conduct.
Still, there is more to this problem than partisan hypocrisy.
As Obama discovered after his withdrawal from Iraq and humiliating "red line" fiasco in Syria, the price of dishonor can be quite high.
Having washed his hands of those countries and punted their fate to Iran and Russia, it wasn't long before a new threat arose. The establishment of IS and its so-called caliphate in large portions of Syria and Iraq was the logical consequence of Obama's policies. As that terror group expanded the territory under its control, and videos of the hideous atrocities it committed went viral, Obama had little choice but to reverse course and commit to fighting IS.
Trump made an issue of the failure of Obama's half-hearted campaign against the Islamic State and vowed to defeat the group. And that's exactly what he did after winning the 2016 election. But with IS largely, but not completely defeated, he has now reverted to his instinctual isolationism, vowing to avoid any more involvement in Syria and leaving the Kurds to their own devices after years of promises from Washington that they would not be abandoned.
Some Americans outside the Beltway, including some supporters of Israel, have no problem with what he's done in Syria because they are blind supporters of the president. Others share his ignorance of a complex conflict and see no reason why Americans should be part of it.
As Obama found out after the atrocities perpetrated by the Islamic State aroused the anger of the public, Trump or his successor will have to respond to Turkish atrocities or those of the next Islamist terror group that will fill the vacuum he is creating by withdrawing US forces.
Islamist terror is an international problem, and not just something the Israelis and the Arabs have to worry about. Israel can defend itself, but actions that make its neighborhood even more dangerous undermine its security. Beyond that, allowing Turkey and Iran to do as they like in the region ultimately harms everyone, including Americans who have yet to absorb the fact that their safety is no longer ensured by the oceans that separate them from other continents. Unfortunately, Republicans and Democrats who still imagine Americans can simply go home and avoid further involvement in the Middle East's wars are engaging in magical thinking rather than supporting a coherent strategy.
Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.
