President Bolton Overrules Feckless Trump Tweet on Syria Withdrawal
By Juan Cole, Informed Comment
07 January 19
The Last Two Neoconservatives in the Trump administration, National Security
Adviser John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, have swung into
action to repeal Trump's troop withdrawal from Syria.
Bolton visited Israel to reassure prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu that
the US will look after the interests of allies as it withdraws.
Israel doesn't actually have any security interest in the US presence in
northeastern Syria. It is dominated by leftist Kurds who are not interested
in Israel and who just militarily defeated ISIL (Daesh or the so-called
Islamic State group), which also never showed any particular interest in
confronting Israel. Israel borders the Baathist government of Bashar
al-Assad, which has reestablished a fragile control over some 70 percent of
the country. The only security issue for Israel is Hizbullah, which curbs
its ability to act unilaterally in neighboring countries, but the US never
did anything about Hizbullah because it is allied with Russia and Washington
doesn't want a confrontation with Moscow in Syria.
Despite the irrelevance of it all, Netanyahu took advantage of the US
withdrawal to beg for a bakhsheesh, for all the world like a Cairo street
urchin, asking that the US recognize Israel's illegal attempt to annex the
Golan Heights from Syria. There is not a good reason for the US to join in
this piece of international lawlessness.
Bolton also pledged that the US would not withdraw until it was assured that
the Turkish military would not crush America's Kurdish allies.
The US probably can't stop the Turks from trying to overthrow the YPG
leftist militia, and certainly not after it withdraws from Syria. If the
task were to protect the YPG from Erdogan, the US could never leave.
The Washington Establishment is deeply divided on Trump. They love his
hawkishness toward Iran and China and the Palestinians and Muslim extremism,
and his tax cuts for the super-wealthy and his early-Obama-sized Pentagon
budgets. But they are driven crazy by his isolationist tendencies, his
bromance with Russian president Vladimir Putin and his shooting from the
hip.
After Trump's December 16 Tweet on getting out of Syria tout de suite, a
feeling of dread thus gripped the inside-the-Beltway archipelago of
government bureaucracies and Think Tanks where careers are made in promoting
war and US military presence abroad and the expenditure of munitions
(requiring the buying of new munitions and new versions of weapons. Weaponry
in the time of war is the ultimate in planned obsolescence, thus making it
an ideal hybrid of socialism and consumer capitalism).
The Washington Blob has swung into action to try to slow-roll Trump on the
Syria withdrawal. Trump on the other hand is starting to think about 2020
and he needs to bring some accomplishment home to his base. Defeating ISIL
and getting out of at least some of the Middle East strikes him as likely to
appeal to his rally crowds. He had wanted to have Republicans run on it in
the midterms, but former secretary of defense James Mattis and others
managed to put the breaks on last summer and fall.
Staying in Syria may be Bolton's preference, but he is not president and if
he goes on countermanding Trump he may not even be in office much longer.
Email This Page
e-max.it: your social media marketing partner