IN DEFENSE OF PRESIDENT TRUMP

“The forecast for autumn: Gloomy” is an article by Amnon Lord that was published in Sunday’s issue of Israel Hayom. A portion of that article explains that the Kurds Trump abandoned were the PKK, a communist terrorist group aligned with Iran, something that most of his critics, including myself, are not aware of. Here is that portion of Lord’s article:

Are these the same Kurds?

The US move in Syria does not empower Iran, but it sends a message of American weakness in a critical area of the Middle East.

One of the problems with US President Donald Trump's announcement that the US was opening the door to a Turkish incursion into northeast Syria and abandoning the Kurds was exactly the use of the general name "Kurds."

The mid-1970s saw the first major US abandonment of the Kurds. Henry Kissinger managed to mediate a deal between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and Iran, which was still ruled by the shah. The Kurds paid the price of the deal, and Kissinger forced Israel to cut off its ties with and assistance to the Kurds.

They were the Kurds of Iraqi Kurdistan, whereas the Kurds of northern Syria – no matter what initials you assign them – are the PKK, which is basically a communist terrorist group.

There have been endless analyses of and responses to Trump's announcement, and in the meantime, the Turks have already started aerial bombardments ahead of a ground incursion. I'm backing strategic analyst Michael Doran from the Hudson Institute, who was able to – in real time – parse former President Obama's complicated decisions and how he was moving closer to the Iranians and the Russians.

Doran lays out Trump's latest move in light of the long-standing war between the PKK and the Turks. Some 40,000 Turks have been killed in that war, and in the ongoing battle against the Islamic State, the Kurds of northern Syria occupied areas they had never dreamed of. Obama had bet on them as part of the deals he struck with Russia and Iran.

So no one needs to panic about Trump abandoning the Kurds; the problem is that it happened immediately after the Iranian attack on Saudi Arabia. The message received was that America was weak and fleeing the Middle East and betraying its allies.

Some claim that the move puts Iran into a stronger position, but Tehran was furious about it since the American move paved the way for the Turks. The Kurds, who will withstand the Turkish assault, were allies of Iran. During the years they were fighting ISIS, they received a lot of air support from the Americans, but the alliance was only temporary.