Donald Trump has opened up a major revolt in the Republican Party by his decision to abandon the Kurds, who helped defeat ISIS, and allowing the Turkish dictatorship to mount an assault, with the purpose of “ethnic cleansing” of a nationality, which has long wanted its own nationhood, but is considered by the Turks to be a terrorist group. However, thousands of Kurds died fighting ISIS alongside the international coalition led by the United States.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Senator Lindsey Graham, House Republican Conference Chair Liz Cheney, Senator Marco Rubio, Senator Ben Sasse, Senator Rob Portman, Senator Patrick Toomey, former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, Christian Broadcasting Network evangelical Pat Robertson, and innumerable others denounced Trump. They said he was undermining national security, and creating the likelihood of revived ISIS terrorism in the future.
Trump is proving how he has no concept of how to deal with foreign policy, and is most interested in pleasing dictators as with Turkey, a nation which should not be favored in assessments of the Middle East.
Whether this anger and growing split on the Kurds will cause any real opposition to Trump on other issues, and on the impending impeachment, seems highly unlikely, but Trump clearly is undermining Republican fear of antagonizing him.
Dumb Dumb Trump has caused our foreign policy to be in shambles.
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2019/10/07/colin-powell-is-right-our-foreign-policy-is-in-shambles/
Based on what I have seen of Trump and Graham statements on the matter, as well as the notable drop in the Turkish Lira when this first hit the newswires, I believe the deterrent to Turkey is being set up along the lines of “if you invade I will crash your currency with a tweet”.
We will find out if the Turks hate the Kurds more than they like their economy. The bet being made is that they do not.
Turkey has launched their attack on our allies.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/09/politics/syria-turkey-invasion-intl-hnk/index.html
With the new info from Graham the policy is becoming more specific.
Graham and Van Hollen will be ushering through sanctions. Democrats will have to be on board because they’re ostentatiously crying about Kurds. So the sanctions bill will pass both House and Senate and land on Trump’s desk in short order.
If you look at the sanctions, they target everything having to do with Turkish military and leadership. In particular, Turkey will have a very hard time keeping its military full of US-made weapons, especially aircraft, operating under these conditions.
This also provides a good pretext to do what really should have been done some time ago, remove Turkey from NATO.
The Kurds should in turn seek the assistance of the Syrian government. They are, after all, in Syria.