Donald Trump’s disastrous, incoherent withdrawal from Syria is, in all its disarray, entirely appropriate in one respect—it allows the conclusion of a disastrous misadventure to mirror its start, which was also disastrous and incoherent. (That’s enough “disastrous’s” for one sentence, don’t you think?) The plight of the Kurds, now left to the less than tender mercies of Turkish maximum leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has been a cause for particular concern, particularly among neocons like Max Boot. But this is scarcely the worst treatment we’ve handed out to the Kurds.
Back in March of 1988, Iraqi maximum leader Saddam Hussein launched a chemical weapons attack on the Kurdish town of Halabja, killing at least 3,000 and injuring thousands more, most of them civilians. Overall, Hussein’s campaigns against the Kurds resulted in perhaps 200,000 deaths, most of them civilian, and most of them outright murders rather than “battlefield casualties.” Despite this brutal record of both possession and use of chemical weapons and civilian slaughter, the U.S. remained on cordial terms with Saddam, seeing him as a necessary counterweight to Iran, the “evilest” of all Islamic nations, in the eyes of the neocons.
When Hussein began making noises about invading Kuwait (he claimed that after “defending” Arab nations against Persian aggression he deserved to be rewarded, and it appeared that Kuwait was dragging its heels), George H.W. Bush had his ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, speak with Hussein. In the interview, Glaspie listens to Hussein whine about how Kuwait isn’t being nice to him and that Iraq is running out of patience. Glaspie responds by assuring him that President Bush wants to “deepen and broaden” the United States’ relationship with Iraq, with the man whom he would be denouncing a few months later as “the worst since Hitler” and a man who, after crushing Iraq’s military in “Gulf I”, deliberately maintained him in power to continue his role as geopolitical counterweight, free to continue his oppression of the Kurds.
Skip ahead some twenty years, to Barack Obama’s congressionally unauthorized invasion of Syria and beyond, and try to figure out what we’re doing now. A year ago, I praised Donald Trump (really!) for suggesting that it was time to leave Syria, and went on to say the following:
It is “amusing” to read “moderate” hawks like Slate’s Fred Kaplan as they reveal the incoherence and inherent infeasibility of our policies even as they seek to defend them:
One complicating factor is that the United States government has never figured out what its interests in Syria are. The Obama administration pursued a few interests, some of them contradictory: Defeat ISIS, contain Iran, bolster Iraq, maintain the alliance with Turkey, protect the Kurds, and help negotiate a political settlement that involves the ouster of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Accomplishing one of two of those goals was extremely difficult; tackling them all, probably impossible.
Well, yes, that’s probably true, particularly since actual American involvement fell short of even the “very limited, very targeted, short-term effort” originally described—rather vaguely, to be sure—by then Secretary of State John Kerry. “That is exactly what we are talking about doing, unbelievably small, limited kind of effort,” the secretary explained, the incoherence of his speech reproducing with remarkable accuracy the incoherence of his thought, and, later, the incoherence of our policy.
Okay, back to 2019 Alan Vanneman. Over at War on the Rocks, Aaron Stein has an excellent article on Donald Trump’s Syrian withdrawal, “U.S. officials ignored Trump on Syria and we are all paying the price”, arguing cogently that Pentagon officials should have executed Trump’s proposed withdrawal when he first suggested it, instead of deliberately undermining their commander in chief. If they had done their duty, everyone would be a lot better off, even though Max Boot (and even Fred Kaplan) would surely say otherwise.
Afterwords
I (almost) hate to pick on Max and Fred, because domestically they come off as liberal centrists, and I suspect I agree with them on almost everything. But on foreign policy, they remain incorrigible, and, sure, the name of this blog is “Literature R Us”, but it could also be “Truth R Us”.
Alan Vanneman fave rave Daniel Larison has predictably wise words on the Syrian disaster.
I had more to say on the stunning amorality of George Bush I (and the United States) re Saddam Hussein here and here.
