Alexander Aston
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Thank you all for the thoughtful comments. I would like to make it clear that there is a very large difference between supporting the Kurds, Yezzidis, and Assyrians in eastern Syria that face ethnic cleansing and support for the United States. I do not disagree with any of the comments here about the great fault of the US is in the contemporary Middle East. I also believe that the E.U. has a deep responsiblity to bear for its cowardice and appeasement of Erdogan. However, just because the United States is a malign actor, does not make the Assad regime or Syria the heroes of the story. That Assad is an ophthalmologist, Polpot was a primary school teacher and Pappa Doc Duvalier a physician does not mean that they are/were not brutal authoritarians. Furthermore, the terrible decisions and actions that to the United States being in Syria does not undo the history as it already stands. America was there as a result of a mess it had created and had a duty to disengage responsibly, which it did not. By a twist of fate the United States inadvertently ended up protecting one of the most important social experiments in the nearly a century. I say this as a person that professionally researches human social organisation, what happened in Northern Syria is special and worth defending. That is not a call I make to the US or any other state actor, but to common folk. I would be grateful for nothing less than the full dissolution of the US Military Industrial Complex, but what is happening is hardly that reality. Yes, there are a lot of people using this to advance their own political agendas, and plenty of folks that would have loved the US to stay indefinitely. My political agenda here is singular, to help preserve the Rojava revolution for I believe it is one of the most important political achievements in human history. Thank you for taking the time to read the article.
Kevin Bahm, a few respectful points. First, I am not in your country but the country I live in is now much more likely to experience more terror attacks because of this blunder. Second, up until this week Northern Syria was one of the most peaceful places in the entire country and it is now a charnel house, what is antiwar about that? Third, I am all for the withdrawal of US troops from Syria and everywhere else, but having an ally dismantle their defensive positions and then abandon them is an act of truly bad faith. The United States should have either allowed the SDF to negotiate with the Syrian government from a position of strength or handed them air defences and then withdrawn. There are a lot of intelligent ways to be antiwar and anti-imperial but this was not one of them. If Trump was a competent leader he could have done this brilliantly and I would have lauded him for it, instead he has unleashed terror. The fault does not solely rest with him but he is clearly well out of his depth.
