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After he campaigned endorsing torture and mayhem against terrorist suspects, Trump is now just fine with ISIS fighters running free.

Published by digby on October 14, 2019

After he campaigned endorsing torture and mayhem against terrorist suspects, Trump is now just fine with ISIS fighters running free.


by digby
He’s whining like a little baby that it’s all Europe’s fault. I’m sure all those cult-members who loved that violent video of Trump killing his enemies in the media and the Democratic party think his ongoing sniveling and whimpering is yet another sign of his overwhelming macho potency, however.
Anyway:

Kurdish forces long allied with the United States in Syria announced a new deal on Sunday with the government in Damascus, a sworn enemy of Washington that is backed by Russia, as Turkish troops moved deeper into their territory and President Trump ordered the withdrawal of the American military from northern Syria. 

The sudden shift marked a major turning point in Syria’s long war. 

For five years, United States policy relied on collaborating with the Kurdish-led forces both to fight the Islamic State and to limit the influence of Iran and Russia, which support the Syrian government, with a goal of maintaining some leverage over any future settlement of the conflict. 

On Sunday, after Mr. Trump abruptly abandoned that approach, American leverage appeared all but gone. That threatened to give President Bashar al-Assad and his Iranian and Russian backers a free hand. It also jeopardized hard-won gains against the Islamic State — and potentially opened the door for its return. 

The Kurds’ deal with Damascus paved the way for government forces to return to the country’s northeast for the first time in years to try to repel a Turkish invasion launched after the Trump administration pulled American troops out of the way. The pullout has already unleashed chaos and bloodletting. 

The announcement of the deal Sunday evening capped a day of whipsaw developments marked by rapid advances by Turkish-backed forces and the escape of hundreds of women and children linked to the Islamic State from a detention camp. As American troops were redeployed, two American officials said the United States had failed to transfer five dozen “high value” Islamic State detainees out of the country.

Trump has been lying about this of course, saying the US has them all. It’s not true. But whatever. He can say up is down and black is white and it’s perfectly normal.

Turkey’s invasion upended a fragile peace in northeastern Syria and risks enabling a resurgence of the Islamic State, which no longer controls territory in Syria but still has sleeper cells and supporters. 

Since the Turkish incursion began on Wednesday, ISIS has claimed responsibility for at least two attacks in Syria: One car bomb in the northern city of Qamishli and another on an international military base outside Hasaka, a regional capital further to the south. 

Mr. Trump has said repeatedly that the United States has taken the worst ISIS detainees out of Syria to ensure they would not escape. But in fact the American military took custody of only two British detainees, half of a cell dubbed the Beatles that tortured and killed Western hostages, American officials said. 

Here he is today on twitter:

In other words, it’s nothing but a shithole country and I don’t care what happens to any of them unless they put money in my pocket (or have some kompromat. )

It’s overwhelmingly ignorant but I suspect it has some power with his base. They like war but they don’t like peacekeeping. Being a protective force or part of an international coalition to keep the peace or working with allies has never been of interest to them. They like bloody, violent, dominance period.
Trump knows his cult. Indeed, he is one of them through and through. They don’t live in the world. They live in their heads. And it’s not a pleasant place.

Here’s a NYT explainer about the camps in northern Syria.

Update

Trump’s latest flailings. God only knows what is in his head at this point:

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