Trump has thrown ISIS a lifeline. That's the view of virtually every senior military and terrorism expert we have--including notably his former Secretary of Defense and his former anti-ISIS coordinator. It is a catastrophic error. So too, of course, is betraying the Kurds.
In addition, strengthening the hand of the Russians, Assad and Iran compounds the damage of the first two grievous errors. And then there is empowering and enabling Erdogan, an enemy of democracy, a thug, a bad ally who is now also a war criminal.
These are the four core failures of Trump's disastrous decision to give Erdogan the green light to invade Syria. Each makes the consequences of the next far worse. It is one of Trump's very worst foreign policy errors.
(It is not as bad as empowering or defending the Russian attack on our democracy and all Western democracies nor is it potentially as bad as pulling out of the JCPOA. But it is up there.)
