Democrats Are Hypocrites for Condemning Trump Over Syria
Presidential hopefuls blasted Trump for abandoning the Kurds—but want the U.S. to pull out of Afghanistan under similar conditions. theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
Presidential hopefuls blasted Trump for abandoning the Kurds—but want the U.S. to pull out of Afghanistan under similar conditions. theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
On Tuesday night, the Democratic presidential candidates vied with one another to offer the harshest condemnation of President Donald Trump’s abrupt withdrawal of American troops from northern Syria.
Joe Biden called it “the most shameful thing that any president has done in modern history … in terms of foreign policy.” Elizabeth Warren said Trump “has cut and run on our allies,” and “created a bigger-than-ever humanitarian crisis.”
Kamala Harris announced, “Yet again Donald Trump [is] selling folks out.”
Pete Buttigieg’s denunciation was the most personal. Recalling his military service in Afghanistan, the South Bend, Indiana, the mayor asked whether America’s wartime allies would ever trust it again.
“When I was deployed,” he declared, “not just the Afghan National Army forces but the janitors put their lives on the line just by working with US forces. I would have a hard time today looking an Afghan civilian or soldier in the eye after what just happened... ” in Syria
It was a powerful statement—but also an ironic one.
Ironic.
If Trump’s unilateral, non-negotiated withdrawal from northern Syria makes it harder for Buttigieg to look America’s Afghan allies in the eye, the same might be said of the unilateral, non-negotiated withdrawal that Buttigieg and other candidates propose in Afghanistan.
If Trump’s unilateral, non-negotiated withdrawal from northern Syria makes it harder for Buttigieg to look America’s Afghan allies in the eye, the same might be said of the unilateral, non-negotiated withdrawal that Buttigieg and other candidates propose in Afghanistan.
At this week’s debate, Warren explained that the United States should only have withdrawn its troops from northern Syria “through a negotiated solution.” But speaking about Afghanistan last month in Houston, she rejected that very same principle.
ABC’s David Muir asked whether she would “bring the [American] troops home starting right now with no deal with the Taliban.” Warren replied, “Yes.”
When Buttigieg was asked whether he would stick to his pledge to withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan in his first year despite warnings from top American commanders, Buttigieg ducked the question and insisted that “we have got to put an end to endless war.”
When Biden was asked about “concerns about any possible vacuum being created in Afghanistan.” But Biden brushed them off, declaring, “We don’t need those troops there. I would bring them home.”
In condemning Trump’s actions in Syria, Warren accused him of having “helped ISIS get another foothold, a new lease on life.” But experts forecast a similar terrorist resurgence if Warren carries out her proposed Afghan withdrawal.
Following a unilateral American departure, the Rand report predicts, “extremist groups, including Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, [will] gain additional scope to organize, recruit, and initiate terrorist attacks against U.S. regional and homeland targets.”
In Afghanistan, the United States is defending a government it installed when it overthrew the Taliban in 2001.
In Syria, by contrast, the United States was, until Trump’s withdrawal, defending an autonomous zone—known as Rojava—that the Kurds carved out themselves, and then expanded with American help during the war against the Islamic State.
