Trump has literally brought shame and disgrace upon the U.S. military
Putting the blame for this disgrace where it belongs.
Dartagnan Sunday October 13, 2019 · 9:21 AM PDT
Donald Trump’s directive to American troops to abandon our Kurdish allies in the fight against ISIS, leaving them instead wholly at the mercy of invading Turkish forces, has already left an indelible scar on the reputation and credibility of the U.S. military— according to the troops themselves.
[W]ith the White House revoking protection for these Kurdish fighters, some of the Special Forces officers who battled alongside the Kurds say they feel deep remorse at orders to abandon their allies.
“They trusted us and we broke that trust,” one Army officer who has worked alongside the Kurds in northern Syria said last week in a telephone interview. “It’s a stain on the American conscience.”
As the scale of the American betrayal sets in, even Green Berets are voicing their sense of disgrace as they are forced to abandon fellow combatants with whom they had just only recently fought alongside, against a common enemy.
“I’m ashamed,” said another officer who had also served in northern Syria. Both officers spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid reprisals from their chains of command.
This week, American troops quietly walked away from defensive positions they had previously shared with Kurdish troops, confining themselves to outposts while the Kurds were left to face the Turkish onslaught alone. This follows years of high-level coordination between the U.S. and Kurdish forces, cooperation under joint command which often rendered their efforts indistinguishable from each other.
As one Kurdish analyst, quoted by The New York Times, put it, “The mutual trust was very high, the mutual confidence because this collaboration brought enormous results.”
So the ignominy of this callous betrayal, reversing four years of hard-fought gains against ISIS, is simply staggering.
American Special Forces and other troops had built close ties with their Kurdish allies, living on the same dusty compounds, sharing meals and common dangers. They fought side by side, and helped evacuate Kurdish dead and wounded from the battlefield.
According to the Times article, the extent of the American treachery (as the Kurds must view it) was made worse by earlier efforts to placate Turkish demands by removing fortifications and heavy weapons from several defensive positions. Those actions have now left the Kurds even more vulnerable to Turkish attacks.
And the response from the Kurds themselves was just as stark. “The worst thing in military logic and comrades in the trench is betrayal,” said Shervan Darwish, an official allied with the Kurdish- led Syrian Democratic Forces.
Trump regularly boasts of his relationship to the nation’s veterans. However, it is difficult to understand how any member of the armed forces who counts him or herself remotely knowledgeable of what is now occurring in Syria could justify supporting Trump in any way, after the damage he has just inflicted on the reputation of the U.S. military, the American nation, and the American people that support it.
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