What I do not understand about all the criticism of President Trump’s abandonment of the Kurds is why, exactly, the Kurds should be entitled to a state in northern Syria. I had always thought that carving up sovereigns and doling out territory to favored groups was by general agreement consigned to the dustbin of imperialist history after World War Two. Especially by us Americans, with our relatively anti-colonial past.
But that’s exactly what anyone lamenting President Trump’s withdrawal from Syria seems to be calling for: that we back, militarily, the attempt of a particular group to carve its own ethnic homeland out of an existing UN-recognized country.
In other words, while other Syrians were fighting the Assad regime to create a more democratic, tolerant Syria, the Kurds were fighting the Assad regime to grab land for themselves. That’s hardly the sort of democratic behavior we normally think of ourselves as supporting. Yes, the Kurds helped us fight the Islamic State, but Syria isn’t ours to carve up and dole out to our allies like so many slices of reward cake. Yes, the socialist Kurdistan Workers’ Party has a women’s movement, but again, Syria isn’t ours to carve up and dole out to socialist women’s movements like so many slices of reward cake, especially when we’re not (yet) voting socialist here at home.
And while I’m on the subject of the beatification of the Kurds, I wish to note the irony of the House’s recent rebuke of Turkey for attacking the Kurds in Syria by voting to recognize the Armenian mass killing as genocide. For, as any Armenian will tell you, the Kurds played an important role in carrying out that genocide a century ago.
President Trump made the right call on Syria.