I heard it on the news this morning, in passing, almost as an afterthought. The President says he never wanted to be there anyway, and now that “ISIS has been defeated” he’s pulling out the US advisors and technicians that have been supporting Kurdish troops fighting in Syria, just south of the Turkish border. But there’s more to this than meets the eye. I’ll leave it to you to connect the dots.

The Kurds have always been pro-US, and are the most motivated and effective fighters in the region. You may recall that many of their battlefield commanders at the platoon and company level are women! They are, in essence, our mercenaries in the fight against ISIS, and we employed them against our enemies in both Syria and Northern Iraq. We have made them lots of promises and they have bled for us. They are the most secular and least sectarian of all the ethnic groups in the region, where they are spread across Syria, Turkey, Iraq, and Iran and have carved out their own prosperous autonomous region in northern Iraq. Arabs, Turks and Iranians hate them, seeing them as a political, religious and ethnic threat.

The Turks, in particular, feel the Kurds are sponsoring a separatist and terrorist Kurdish movement in their country, and are now going after the Kurds in Syria–militarily. The Turkish leader has announced that Turkish forces are crossing the border into Syria to eliminate the Kurds there once and for all. The Turkish authorities claim that they have no quarrel with US forces aiding the Kurds, but if fighting is to be expected, it is inevitable we will get involved.

The Turks have recently taken a sharp Right turn, purging opposition leaders, jailing political opponents, and persecuting potential enemies of the regime and attacking their domestic press for “fake news”. They have lately put down a coup viciously and are using that as an excuse to justify their extreme crackdown. Turkey is the world’s newest fascist state. They have been pressuring the US to return a Turkish dissident cleric who has taken refuge in Pennsylvania, and there are unconfirmed reports that the US is considering caving in to their demands.

Turkey has several important US bases on their territory, they are a NATO member, and are trying to join the EU. And lately, they have embarrassed our Saudi allies over the Kashoggi affair.

Its a complex situation with (as the current phrase goes) a lot of moving parts. But once again, I see the US abandoning the Kurds, a brave and loyal ally, for political and economic expediency.

Meanwhile, Mr Trump is threatening to close down the government over his Wall, getting chummy with Putin, the Chinese are fortifying the S China Sea and gearing up for a trade war with us, the N Koreans are cheating on their “agreements”, and the Mueller Probe goes on, lumbering towards Bethlehem.