Friends,
I am writing as a pacifist, who has been jailed for protesting U.S.
militarism. I am also somewhat of an amateur historian who is quite aware
of the sufferings of the Kurdish people in their quest for a homeland.
After
World War I, the UK promised a homeland for the Kurds. Of course, this
did not happen. I protested President George Herbert Walker Bush’s 1991
invasion of Iraq both here in Baltimore and in D.C. After the U.S.
offensive kicked Iraqi troops out of Kuwait, Bush urged the Iraqis to rise up
against Saddam. The Kurds and the Shiites did, and Saddam’s forces
slaughtered them.
When Bush’s son stumbled and bumbled in his invasion of Iraq in 2003, his
henchmen took over running the government in Iraq, This mismanagement
helped to create ISIS which eventually took over swaths of Iraq and
Syria. In Syria, the Kurds have been most responsible for taking on the
forces of ISIS. Of course, there have been terrible losses on the Kurdish
side, but these fighters have been largely successful in defeating these
terrorists.
One
day Trump gets up and tweets that ISIS has been defeated, and that U.S. forces
will pull out. Progressive voices have hailed the decision. I, however,
am very concerned that once again the Kurds will be sacrificed on the whim of
U.S. foreign policy.
The author of the article below is an excellent writer and a thoughtful peace
activist. His arguments are compelling. However, to betray the
Kurds once again would be unconscionable.
His solution to this issue is less than compelling. He suggests cutting a
deal with Erdogan or Assad, two dictators who do not tolerate dissent.
Then he states that the U.S. forces are too insignificant to prevent the
Turkish military from slaughtering the Kurds, yet he wants this group of 2,000
soldiers to pull out. I am confused.
Kagiso,
Max
Published on Portside (https://portside.org/)
Despite
Everything, U.S. Troops Should Leave Syria
Stephen
Zunes
January
3, 2019
Foreign
Policy in Focus
Donald Trump’s
sudden decision to remove U.S. forces from Syria appears to have been impetuous
and ill-considered — apparently a result of a conversation with
Turkey’s autocratic president Recep Erdoğan. That doesn’t mean, however, that
the United States should remain in that country.
It’s quite
reasonable to question how and why Trump made his choice. This doesn’t mean it
wasn’t the right one, however.
First of all, the
presence of U.S. forces in Syria is illegal. There was never any authorization
by Congress, as mandated by the U.S. constitution, to send troops there,
making the frantic bipartisan calls for congressional oversight
regarding the withdrawal particularly bizarre.
There’s also the
matter of international law. While the brutality of the Syrian regime and the
mass atrocities it has committed do raise questions regarding its legitimacy,
it is nevertheless illegal for a country to send troops to another country
without either the permission of that government or authorization by the United
Nations.
One can make a
case that the presence of foreign troops within a nation-state’s borders
against the will of that country’s recognized government, and without the
authorization of the UN Security Council, is nevertheless justifiable — if it
is to protect the population from mass killing. There’s little to indicate that
this is why U.S. forces are in Syria, however.
Lest one think
that protecting civilian lives is a high priority for the United States, let’s
remember that U.S. forces were responsible for many hundreds of civilian
deaths in the assault on the Syrian city of Raqqa.
According to
administration officials supporting the ongoing deployment of U.S. troops
inside Syria, the main reason for staying was to counter Iranian and Russian
influence. They had largely given up on pursuing the remnants of the so-called
“Islamic State,” or Daesh. There had been little mention from the
administration of protecting the Kurds.
So, basically
Washington was saying is that it has the right to send troops into a foreign
country and keep them there because we don’t like the fact that the country’s
government has close strategic ties with (and some armed forces in their
country from) two governments we don’t like.
This is a rather
startling justification for the deployment of U.S. combat troops. It would
establish a very dangerous precedent, particularly with no debate in Congress
as to whether the United States should engage in such a provocative policy.
Like other debates
over the years on the wisdom of withdrawing U.S. forces from foreign
entanglements, those who insist that U.S. forces remain are based on rather
dubious arguments.
First, some say
that a U.S. departure would lead to a revival of Daesh. Contrary to what Trumps
says, the group hasn’t been defeated in Syria. However, they have been
relegated to a small strip of territory near the Iraqi border, only a tiny
fraction of the vast “caliphate” they once ruled. The Kurdish-led
Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) should be strong enough to resist their
expansion, especially since the U.S. has pledged to use air power to fight them
in such an event.
Second, others
worry that the Syrian regime will quickly reclaim Kurdish territory in northern
Syria. But Syrian forces are probably stretched too thin at this point to seize
most of the vast areas of northern Syria currently controlled by the SDF.
Though falling
well short of the kind of egalitarian anarchist utopia that some Western
leftists have claimed, Syrian Kurds have nevertheless organized one of the most
democratic, popular, and well-functioning governing structures in the Middle
East. During the past couple of years, they were able to make accommodations
with the Syrian regime in several areas where government forces did move in —
without violence and without any U.S. support that would have enabled them to
keep control.
The most legitimate
concern is in regard to Turkey moving its forces into northern Syria to attack
the SDF and slaughtering many thousands of Kurdish civilians in the process.
During a number of
periods over the past few decades, Turkish forces have engaged in just this
kind of brutal repression in Kurdish areas of their own country in the battle
against the PKK militia, which has close ties to the Kurdish forces leading the
SDF. That is a real possibility, though it seems unlikely they would engage
in the same kind of savagery against the civilian population as they did within
Turkey, whom they saw as traitors for supporting the PKK and threating the
country’s national integrity.
More pertinently,
how are 2,000 U.S. troops in such a vast area an effective deterrent for
Turkish intervention? They did nothing to halt the Turkish offensive
that seized the SDF-controlled Afrin region back in March, for example. Given
the small number of U.S. troops in an area more three times the size of
Lebanon, it would be easy for Turkish forces to avoid confronting U.S. troops
while slaughtering Kurds, and it would be hard to imagine Trump moving U.S.
troops into position to stop it.
A more effective
deterrent than simply keeping U.S. troops in Syria would be for Washington to
make clear to the Turks that the United States will suspend all arms transfers
and strategic cooperation with Turkey if it moves any more troops into Syrian
territory.
The United States
has set up the Kurds only to abandon them on at least three occasions in recent
decades, and it is naive to think it would have come out differently this time. If the goal is
to keep U.S. forces in Syria until their legitimate rights are recognized and
there was no longer a threat from Syrian or Turkish forces, U.S. troops would
likely be there for decades to come. Without the support of Congress and a
broad consensus of the American public for such a policy, it makes more sense
to withdraw.
Regardless of all
the above, perhaps a case could be made for keeping U.S. forces in Syria if the
United States had a more competent commander-in-chief. However, given the risks
of confrontations with Russian or Iranian forces and the sheer complexity of
the situation in that country, it is frankly dangerous to have American troops
in such a volatile area under Trump.
Americans are
tired of endless overseas wars. Regardless of Trump’s questionable motivations
and lack of strategic forethought, now is not the time to demand further U.S.
troop deployments in the Middle East.
Stephen Zunes, a
Foreign Policy In Focus columnist and senior analyst, is a professor of
Politics and chair of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of San
Francisco. He is the author, along with Jacob Mundy, of Western Sahara:
War, Nationalism, and Conflict Irresolution (Syracuse University Press,
2010).
Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski2001 [at] comcast.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
