For much of the past week, our political and media elites alike have been unduly obsessed with the nuances — or, as is more often the case, the pompously asserted lack of any underlying nuance — of the present imbroglio involving President Donald Trump, Hamas-bankrolling Islamofascist nut job Turkish kingpin Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and the Kurds of Northern Syria. I, for one, am genuinely shocked to see the ubiquitous nature of the bipartisan outcry. Who knew that everyone apparently cared so much about the stateless Kurds?
There are a lot of very smart, astute commentators and politicians on the Right who are pulling their hair out in agony over Trump’s decision to withdraw fewer than 100 troops — yes, we are literally talking here about fewer than 100 U.S. troops — from their flank in northern Syria. Those with a longer memory may recall that, last December, Trump almost removed 2,000 U.S. troops from Syria before ultimately changing his mind. The present withdrawal is roughly 5% of last year’s publicly floated withdrawal. And while it is true that the presence of U.S. troops in the region does protect the Kurds, whose peshmergas proved indispensable tactical allies in the elimination of Islamic State’s physical “caliphate,” there are at least three additional compelling factors that make the political calculus here much trickier than it may appear.
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