Do you remember when the Obama administration came into office in 2009 and they attempted to keep their campaign promise to close down the unconstitutional prison system at Guantanamo Bay and either put the prisoners there on legitimate trial or find countries that would accept them for resettlement?
Do you remember how the Republicans howled like maniacs that it was unsafe to bring those prisoners to the United States even if they were locked up in SuperMax prisons with our most notorious criminals, and that letting them resettle in places like Saudi Arabia or Yemen would put them right back on the battlefield where they’d kill our soldiers and plot new terrorist attacks?
Do you remember how Democratic Party leaders like Chuck Schumer collapsed on these issues like a house of cards and refused to back President Obama?
I know I remember this history. I don’t think I’ve ever been angrier in my entire life. I was angry at the Republicans for their cynicism and cowardice, and I was angry at the Democrats for their weakness and stupidity.
So, how do you think I feel when I wake up on a Sunday morning and read this in my New York Times?
Hundreds of relatives of Islamic State fighters fled a Kurdish-run detention camp on Sunday morning after Turkish airstrikes hit the surrounding area, an aid group said, deepening the crisis prompted by the Turkish-led invasion of northern Syria.
The escapes raised fears that the attempts to contain affiliates of the militant group were crumbling.
A Kurdish official also said that the flag of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, had been raised in the countryside between the camp in the Kurdish-held town of Ain Issa and the Turkish border, another indication of how the Kurdish authorities were losing control of a region they had freed from the extremists only months ago.
I’m not even saying that I automatically think it’s a terrible thing for the relatives of ISIS fighters to gain their freedom. I’m generally not in favor of punishing people for the sins of their relatives. But this isn’t a situation where each prisoner was carefully vetted, and some put on trial and others released. This wasn’t any kind of deliberative process. It was a decision by the United States to side with the people in the prison against the people who had defeated the ISIS fighters.
The more important point in the above excerpt is that the Kurds are losing control of their own territory and that extremists are re-assembling there and will soon rejoin the battlefield. This is obviously dangerous and not in the interests of the United States, but how many Republicans will go on television and scream that Donald Trump is a secret Muslim and a terrorist sympathizer who hates America and will get us all killed?
Sure, there are plenty of Republicans willing to criticize the abandonment of the Kurds and to argue that it will help ISIS regain their footing, but they don’t try to instill panic in the American people over it. They don’t demand Trump’s birth certificate. They don’t say he deserves to be impeached as a traitor.
Yet, all of those things would make more sense in this case than they made when Obama was simply trying to free the innocent and prosecute the guilty.
I hate Republicans.
I’m surprised you didn’t make the Benghazi comparison. To this day, I do not know what “Benghazi” was supposed to be a controversy about or why Republicans cared so much about their weird conspiracies around it. But I did hear a lot about “stand down orders” and leaving diplomats vulnerable to being attacked. Yet here Trump is, making deals with Turkey (of which we don’t know what they agreed about, and no one in Congress knows either), as Turkey is purposely firing on US troops to force them to move from their positions. Trump is essentially greenlighting another state’s army to attack his own troops. And Turkey agreed to a lot of this in advance with Russia. He’s a fucking a traitor.
Benghazi to me was evidence that the Rs had gone completely crazy. They were mad, mad as hell. But I could never figure out why. Independent of any facts, I never understood their theory about the case.
The same thing that has happened with their Ukraine conspiracies, originating in far right conspiracy fringes of the internet, and they percolate up through Info Wars, then to GatewayPundit/Breitbart, to Rush to Drudge, to Fox. And as it moves it picks up more shit along the way. It never made any sense.
Wasn’t the point of Benghazi! simply to gin up manufactured outrage against the presumptive Dem prez nominee and try to poison the well with some “independents” via the complicit corporate media? Same as this latest phony scandal involving Uncle Joe & Son.
The difference is that Benghazi! involved at least a marginal American interest with the (unusual) death of an ambassador abroad, whereas Biden’s Ukrainian Gas! really is about nothing of any real consequence. Not that this stops the Noise Machine.
This so feels like Reagan in Lebanon. The only difference being when it blew Reagan knew enough to walk away.
The past couple decades watching otherwise-decent friends, co-workers, and family excuse, justify, or explain away more and more evil has really given me an understanding of how something like Nazi Germany could happen.
For fascists, group identity is everything. They condition their followers to see everything not in terms of right/wrong or truth/lies, but as “Whose side are you on?” And this belief that the end justifies the means sends you into moral freefall.
I’m happy to concede that Obama was more sinned-against than sinning, in this case, but your portrayal of him as president with almost no agency–certainly with no power over elected officials in his party–reads oddly in the Days of Trump, which feel like a destruction test of the ‘Green Lantern Theory of the Presidency.’ What if a president has no political experience, no smarts, no organization, no charm, no competence, no lucidity, no ANYTHING except for a toxic level of narcissistic willpower… and a base that loves him. How far could he push his party into line?
Great article!! Definitely feel the same way!!
There’s a matter of willfulness here and pernicious behavior that needs to be reckoned. Obama likely made some mistakes in the ME like leaving Iraq and the founding of Isis. Perhaps his strategic sense was misplaced. And Obamacare could have been better. But he never meant to harm anyone thereby. Not so with the Orange Gibbon and his conservative friends. . The dishonor that one has sewn will live on for many years, even forever. And the GOP never misses a chance to harm those it hates. I have heard a lifetime of Hillary’s e mails and Benghazi. I read today in the NYT that the wealthy pay lower taxes than everyone else and it has been getting worse every year. That is no accident. On and on it goes.
I don’t know that Obama made a mistake leaving Iraq, but no one should be able to look at the Syria situation and think we did the right thing. Obama policy was to push Assad to the negotiating table without overthrowing him in order to preserve the regime but change the face. We should have done nothing, or actually worked to remove him rather than bleed the country to death. Obama thinks Libya was his biggest mistake, but Syria and his lack of any sort of plan was by far the biggest failure.
One “benefit” of Trumper’s Kurdish Betrayal is that Dems should be able to say they are never going to listen to “conservatives” yap about some Dem prez “cutting and running!” ever again. Repubs aren’t willing to do anything about Trumper’s Syrian rout, so they own the national humiliation and dishonor of the Imperial Sturmtruppen abandoning our military allies. If Repubs (like Endless War Lindsey) don’t like the Syrian rout, there’s gonna be a convenient little impeachment trial coming up and a senator can vote to convict for any significant reason they like. It’s right there in the Constitution!
One assumes Trumper’s defense to his Syrian cowardice is will be his usual “Blame Obama!” routine. It’s either that or the Endless War refrain, which unfortunately has more than a grain of truth to it. Presumably Der Trumper is simply carrying out Putin’s Plan for Syria, since our Manchurian Candidate pretty much openly said this was what he was going to do. I think we can also expect the same sort of precipitous Trumpian retreat from Afghanistan, our longest (and most endless) war. But if we’re going to have “conservatives” follow non-intervention foreign policies, are we also going to get a significant reduction in “defense” spending? (ahem, rhetorical).
Rallying Trumpite: “He’s keepin’ his promises!”
Satanic Lib’rul: “So now you’re against American military intervention in the War on Terror?”
Trumpite: “Um, no comment.”
HP is reporting the Kurds have invited the Syrians into the north to block Turkey. This may have been the Russian plan all along according to Moon of Alabama- to stir up trouble with Turkey and allow the Americans to exit so that Assad’s forces could enter. If so it has succeeded.
Moon of Alabama is a Nazi conspiracy website that pushes Russian propaganda (Putin is never wrong and always a genius, dontchyaknow). Don’t listen to it.
Interesting. Nonetheless they often seem to get it right. In this case they are saying the Kurds will be folded into Assad’s army. And the bit about Russia planning, it could be just propaganda or a deliberate strategy. it is working out to their and Assad’s advantage however you want to slice it.
So now it’s reported that the Turkish offensive is using “Pro-Turkish militias” (?) as its ground forces, and not Turkish Army units? Yeah, that’s the grand offensive that Der Trumper said entrenched Kurdish forces with US air support couldn’t possibly stand up to.
Leave aside being unable to persuade another NATO ally not to confront US forces in Syria (or not fire artillery at them to “hurry along in your retreat, boys”). Yes, indeed, a real Grand Master of the Art of Deal!