monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

No lectures in that department are necessary from across the pond. You are watching your own country destroyed. Thanks anyway.

Up is down and left is right.

You say you "began to value human life more" and that you oppose "a genocidal war".

You're saying this at the exact same time Turkey is hailing Trump's move by announcing that the Kurds of Rojava "will be buried in their ditches".

This move by Trump surrenders the Kurds to near-certain slaughter. And you cheer that on because it represents your wish to "end a genocidal war"? This won't end a genocidal war - it will unleash a new one.

You know, I can see a hard-line isolationist case for Trump's move.

The Kurds have long made the bloodiest sacrifices in the US-led fights against ISIS, and if they are abandoned now it will deter any sane actor in the region from building an alliance with the US for a long time, but that doesn't bother an isolationist.

It bothers realpolitik neo-conservatives who see only a loss for America's ability to wield influence abroad. It bothers multilateralist liberals who feel it's important to be good allies and reliable global actors. It bothers bleeding-heart leftists who see the Kurds of socialist Rojava -- arguably both the most vulnerable and most progressive group in the region -- abandoned to near-certain slaughter at Trump's whim. But it doesn't bother an isolationist.

An isolationist sees how the United States, in exchange for the Kurds providing the footsoldiers for the war against the head-choppers of ISIS, "essentially acting as human shields to assure that neither Turkey nor the Syrian regime invades or bombs", as Molly Crabapple wrote. But when she warns that "when they leave, those areas will fall, and another refugee wave will begin", the isolationist shrugs. He doesn't care about that. He's just upset that any American should serve as "human shields" for anyone.

An isolationist doesn't care about how certain the massacre would be without those Americans there, the way bleeding-heart lefties would. He doesn't care that the US troops only fulfill this role as quid pro quo for larger strategic gains, the way neo-conservatives would. He's just upset that any Americans would be out there -- and protecting commies, no less!

An isolationist doesn't actually care about "genocidal wars". He only cares about whether there's Americans involved in them. "None of our business, let them slaughter each other out there without us".

Fine. You join that side if you wish. Just don't wrap it up as some kind of righteous pursuit of world peace.

When Turkey's Islamist government moves into Syrian Kurdistan on one end, and Assad's fascistoid, genocidal regime eventually moves in on the other, and the residents of Rojava's socialist experiment end up slaughtered, you go ahead and pretend your approval of this was a demonstration of your new-found left-wing convictions.

Harsh? Yeah. I mean, I actually like you, personally, in communications elsewhere, and that won't change. But after every foul act Trump has committed before, this is perhaps the one that turns my stomach most so far, and there couldn't be a chasm vaster between our perspectives on it.

Rojava has its faults. Its own authoritarian tendencies. Its own strategic compromises, which victimised Syrian opposition groups elsewhere. But this criminal abandonment, at an impulsive whim, of America's unlikely socialist ally -- the most vulnerable group of the Middle East, the people who have most consistently suffered oppression, and suffered multiple genocidal assaults already before -- to mass slaughter of likely genocidal dimensions, it revolts me.

The vast majority of the Syrian genocide was perpetrated by Assad's dictatorship. There has been no lack of murderous groups on multiple sides; but his barrel bombs, militias and torture chambers have been responsible for the majority of victims.

This new deal? America abandoning the Kurds to an invading Turkish army and Assad's resurgent dictatorship?

It will make that genocide worse.

Read your own damn link.


Thanks to Trump's move, that same Syrian military will now be encouraged to create new Ghoutas, new Idlibs, new "hells on earth", in now-Kurdish territory.


Thanks to Trump's move, that same Turkey will now be encouraged to mount identical attacks on the rest of northern Syria, a much larger territory, where it will kill many more people.

Thanks to Trump's move, that same ISIS, whose surviving leads have been pressed back into a remaining sliver of land, will have a chance to rebound, start over.


Literally nothing of this is ameliorated by the US withdrawal. It will be worsened. Idlib and Ghouta were burnt by Assad's troops. They will now be bolstered. Afrin was burnt by Erdogan's troops. They will now be bolstered.

Read your own GD link.

The only way I see Syria's Kurds survive for any longer amount of time now is -- perhaps -- by making another pact with the devil, this time with Assad's genocidal regime. They already reached some extent of mutual non-interference, with Assad focused on slaughtering rebel populations elsewhere and Kurds focused on ISIS and the looming Turkish threat. But even such a pact with the devil will not protect many of them, or for long. For one, the Syrian state is too weak to ward off any invading Turks. And once Rojava is beaten up enough by Turkish army massacres in the north, Assad will happily carve out his part of Syrian Kurdistan in the south, and unless he is magically stopped somehow in the intervening time, Kurds opposing him will end up in mass graves and torture chambers just the same as his opponents elsewhere.

Alternatively, they can try and resist and fight and be defeated bit by bit, pressed into an ever smaller land of despair like the FSA rebels in Idlib, and with every salami slice the Turks or Assadists will likely carve off more of them die or disappear.

Rojava, for all its faults, complicities and compromises, offered a relatively peaceful haven, and an attempt to found some kind of socialist model inside it, for one of the world's most long-suffering populations. The US was always an unlikely and unreliable guarantor for it; but you deal with the cards you have, and Syria's Kurds never had any other to play. And as long as America's track record of betraying vulnerable allies and abandoning endangered populations is, even with Donald fuckin' Trump in power, few imagined that the betrayal would come so suddenly, overnight, in such a wholesale caving in to the dictators in Ankara and Moscow, without plan nor reason nor ways to save anyone on the way out.

I'm fuming. May Trump's callous brutality be sabotaged wherever, by whomever possible.

They started this war by murdering countless Americans. If they don't like that we defend ourselves from their aggression, that's their problem.

Neither does FOX.

Hold on here. Nimh is the one who is opposing genocide.

YOU are the one who is saying to let Assad commit genocide unopposed.

YOU are the one who is saying to let Turkey commit genocide unopposed.

Since we have dealt with Islam this way for quite a while it might be time to try something new. I see no need to help them kill each other. I do not think Trump does either. Let the people affected by Islam handle it. That way they just might get tired of it.

Trump has a security advisor that knows Islam and sees we are spinning our wheels and wasting our money. Concentrate on keeping terrorists out of this country. That we can do.

Letting the perpetrators finish killing all of their victims is certainly a novel way of bringing a genocide to an end.

All of them, apparently. That is what is going to happen when no one stops Assad and Turkey from perpetrating their genocides.

We’ll either continue to be partially guilty for the current genocides or, in absentia, the next ones. We’re culpable if we stay and culpable if we go. I think it’s time to stop the constant state of unaccountable ruin of other countries. It’s disgusting to me that you need to try to characterize me as someone else with ulterior motives.

I was thrilled when Bernie and others successfully formally called for an exit from Syria. You can call me whatever you like to call him.

I’m anti-war and nothing you say will make me anything else.

I’m sick to death of our service personnel being strung out all over the world fighting proxy wars decided by people I don’t trust.

We’ve screwed the Kurds before, screwed Saddam, screwed Iran, and were in bed with the murdering Saudis. We’ve swapped guns and sides with every major player and half the minors in that region. It’s a constant circle jerk cluster ****. I despise how we keep ******* it up even worse every time.

I don’t know why you’re happier for Syrian kids to die than Kurdish kids. I want my country to stop being guilty for the misery and deaths of anyone’s kids. We have to get out of the Middle East.

So just let the bad guys kill everyone?

What crime is he supposed to have committed?

Some of us oppose genocide.

Cool. I could back that.

Hardly criminal.

It’s been going on for seven years. What do you think the outcome will be? What will be different if we stay?