In 1898, Smedley Butler lied about his age so he could serve in the Marines as they occupied the recently captured Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. From there, he was sent to the recently captured Philippines to put down an insurrection. Then it was on to China to deal with the Boxer Rebellion. After that he fought for the United States in Honduras and Nicaragua and Panama and Haiti, and in World War One.
By 1935, he had seen enough combat and he wrote the antiwar polemic War is a Racket in which he detailed the reasons he felt his military service had been more for the benefit of imperialistic capitalist interests than the well-being of ordinary citizens. The book might have had more lasting impact if we hadn’t fought “the Good War” so soon after its publication. I’ve often thought the problem Butler described persisted after the World War Two, and helps explain why the U.S. has become bogged down in one quagmire after another.
So, I’m generally sympathetic to the general feeling that we ought to be less involved militarily on the world stage. I definitely feel like our military should be used foremost to protect the interests of regular Joes and Janes, and that commercial reasons that primarily benefit a narrow elite should never be the primary purpose for deploying our forces.
Our involvement in the Middle East has never fit that latter description exactly, as we had genuine military reasons for wanting to secure an energy supply and make sure that the Soviet Union did not deny it to us. Any after-study of the war on the Eastern Front from 1941-1945 would have made the need for this obvious.
But, whatever the more noble or necessary reasons, we’ve made a mess of the region. I can see the appeal of just pulling our troops out and letting other people deal with the aftermath. We have enough energy independence now to consider this possibility, and Putin’s Russia is a serious threat but not the menace to Europe and the free world that Stalin’s Soviet Union represented.
If a leader came along with a serious plan to accomplish a pullout from the region, I would definitely give them a listen. But it’s not something that can be done without consultation with allies, serious contingency planning, and a total rethink of America’s bilateral relations and military alliances.
In the absence of that kind of preparation, we get horrifying spectacles like the Turkish destruction of our Kurdish allies. The president justified this by arguing that he’s tired of “stupid endless wars” and that the Kurds did not help us in World War Two. That is an odd standard. The Arab leaders at the time were either neutral or more sympathetic to the Nazis. The Turks sat the war out until February 1945 when it became completely obvious that the Soviets were about to overrun Germany. In addition, there’s no reason to bring up World War Two in this context. The Kurds have been in an alliance with us for decades, starting with the Persian Gulf War. That ought to count for something, but it counts for nothing with our president.
You don’t have to be a fan of America’s presence or performance in the Middle East to take deep offense at this. The military takes the most offense of all.
At the Pentagon, where more than five years of fighting alongside Kurdish troops in Iraq and Syria has now given way to standing aside as those same allies are attacked, some officials said there was more anger than they had seen at any point in Mr. Trump’s presidency.
Smedley Butler died in 1940, so he never witnessed the Kurds’ absence at D-Day. If he were alive, he might agree with Trump that we ought to stay out of “stupid endless wars” in Middle East, but I doubt very much he’d support the president’s decision to betray our Kurdish allies.
Trump now tells us the Kurds didn’t help us at Normandy. Right. Neither did Turkey or Germany or Iraq or…. But we asked the Kurds to help us here and they did and lost ten thousand of their people. And now we abandoned them to a genocide. Trump should be impeached for this betrayal. It is a high crime and misdemeanor on us and the Kurds.
Used to be that the military was a very powerful player in Washington. And that used to be a big problem. Now where are they when we need them? Well let’s see … and if that power is anything like what it was, a lot of this will be going on behind closed doors.
Everybody’s been talking about how terrible is “the laughter of our Kurdish allies.” And it is. But this was caused by the recklessness, venality, cowardice, whatever, of one single man —Trump, acting alone or with the support of at best a few boot lickers and yes-men. It’s amazing to me that nobody seems to be able to do anything about it. I think there will be a pushback, both from Congress (bi-partisan on this issue at least).
The Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper, is now on the spot. The issue is a huge one, because it shakes the confidence in us of ALL our allies around the globe. And he has to deal not only with the president, but with the US military.
Right now there is a huge disconnect between the national implications and the impeachment issue. You have only to look at Lindsey Graham. This has to play itself out, and I predict that within a short time, more Senate Repugs will be open to impeachment, although they will not say so publicly.
“…I predict that within a short time, more Senate Repugs will be open to impeachment, although they will not say so publicly.”
Whether they are or not, “we” have to continue to hold their feet to the fire, and not make it easy for them to slink away from their responsibility to do what’s right. If they want to continue to put the interests of America and our allies secondary to this lunatic crook, make them own exactly that.
Well, don’t forget, “I know more about ISIS than the generals do, believe me,”
4.5
Der Trumper used the Obama plan to degrade ISIS and now betrays the Kurdish troops who did the ground grinding for us. That should be the end of the Pentagon’s little game of using ethnic factions to do the dirty work in our War on Terror and in managing the irreversible Iraq fiasco. Having an absurd unqualified Boobus Ignoramus as Commanderer-in-Chief was certain to be a failure and now the floodgates should open.
Is Der Trumper, in his “great and unmatched wisdom”, the best CinC since Lincoln, Grant and Ike? Or could it be that: when danger reared its ugly head, Trump bravely turned his tail and fled!
Sir Trumper: “I never!”
“Brave Sir Trumper ran away!”
“You liar! Nasty!”
The Dem response should focus on Trumper’s caving to an actual strong leader (i.e. his consistent weakness in the face of “strength”), his gross stupidity, the dishonor he has brought to the Pentagon and our heroic soldiery, and his massive error in losing control of the captured ISIS prisoners—all these would have brought Red American militarists into the streets with their assault weapon arsenals if a Dem prez had had half these charges made against him. Will the braindead cultlike following of Dear Trumper cancel out the old militarist reflexes of our “conservatives”? The answer is apparently: Sieg Heil!
As for idiot sycophant Lindsey G of the Endless Bloated Pentagon, the upcoming impeachment trial will allow him to remove this clear and present danger to the nation (and empire) should he wish to. What’s a militarist opportunist to do?
This reminds me of the mujaheddin in Afghanistan we allied ourselves against Russia in the 1980s. They were our allies until they got sick of us giving them the short shrift. it took 20 some years, but the blow back came in the form of 9-11. We’ve been using the Kurds and then abandoning them to death for decades now. We allowed Saddam Hussein to gas thousands of them to death in Iraq. Now we abandon them after them fighting ISIS for us, to genocide at the hands of the Turks. And all because Trump has “two towers” in Istanbul?
It may take a while, but I don’t doubt the blow back is coming.
And the Kurds provided absolutely nothing during the Mexican-American war.
OR the American Revolution either.
I think Germany and Japan are our allies. Did they help us in World War II?
Likely excuse, they were otherwise engaged.