First Trump Broke The Presidency For Putin, Now It's America & The Mideast

ELIZABETH GRIFFIN / ESQUIRE

My gut tells me more sometimes than anybody else’s brain can ever tell me. ~ DONALD TRUMP 

If utter stupidity and venality were impeachable offenses, Donald Trump would be long gone.  But they are not, and now the president -- in his latest but by far most consequential foreign-policy misadventure -- has managed the extraordinary feat of abandoning the Kurds, America's steadfast ally in Iraq and in fighting the Islamic State, who have now fallen into the welcoming embrace of Russia, which in turn has given new life to ISIS and meant strategic victories for Syria and Iran and left vulnerable U.S. tactical nuclear weapons at an air base in Turkey because the always problematic U.S.-Turkey alliance is now in tatters. 

Trump's latest self-inflicted wound, and make no mistake that this is entirely his own doing as he ignored months of warnings of the calamity to come from the few remaining foreign-policy advisers that he has not driven away, grew out of a so-called "off-script moment" on the Oval Office blower with one of his favorite strongmen, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey.  

Off-script is code for the president, as usual, being not just unprepared -- Fox News is always more important than policy briefing books or listening to his generals in the Situation Room -- but being unaware of the consequences of rolling over for Erdogan.  Trump, defying logic and yet again going with his sizable gut, assured Erdogan that he would remove the small U.S. troop contingent in northern Syria that was the only buffer between disaster and a tenuous peace.    

But the biggest winner in this rat fuck is Vladimir Putin, Trump's favorite strongman, who has done so much to help him break the presidency, and now break a vulnerable America and the always fragile Middle East.    

It is easy to suggest that Trump is following Putin's orders through some kind of a secret backchannel.  Easy but wrong.   It is simply a matter of Trump being a dim bulb, and an unhinged one at that, and Putin being a master who can play Trump the chump to Russia's strategic benefit, most recently in Syria and also is the powerful if invisible hand if you dig down through a layer or two of the Ukraine scandal crap, corruption and crime that has Trump in the impeachment hot seat.   

As Julie Davis put it in the Daily Beast: 

Trump is moving down Putin's wish list, fulfilling the Kremlin's aims at a rapid pace.  He is chipping away at U.S. sanctions against Russia, deepening America's internal divisions on the basis of race, faith, sexual orientation and political affiliation, vocally undermining confidence in our elections, intelligence agencies and institutions, all the while empowering our foreign adversaries and undermining NATO alliances.  Trump's claims that Ukraine -- not Russia -- is somehow responsible for the 2016 election interference fall right in line with conspiracy theories the Kremlin has been propagating for years."

That Trump's usually unquestioning Republican allies in Congress are outraged over his latest betrayal of an ally is of little consequence because they still stand with him -- or rather in fear of him -- on impeachment. 

Meanwhile, officials were reviewing plans to evacuate 50 tactical nuclear weapons the U.S. has long stored at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey, about 250 miles from the Syrian border, that are now essentially Erdogan's hostages. 

Trump's response to the Kurdish betrayal and the consequent slaughter at Turkish hands greenlit by the White House, was as predictable as the sun rising from the east over the Washington swamp: Blame everyone but himself and offer contradictory and nonsensical explanations, the richest of which is that ISIS already had been defeated, so what's the big deal? 

That lie, if you're counting, is one of the 13,400 false and misleading claims that Trump has made as his presidency slouches toward 1,000 days, and is only slightly more egregious than his explanation that the troop withdrawal is a result of his commitment to terminating "endless wars," which happened to be uttered on the day he sent 2,000 more troops to Saudi Arabia, where he has graciously allowed Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to escape accountability for the gruesome murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and refused to cut off support for the Saudis' genocidal war in Yemen. 

Having threatened to "totally destroy and obliterate the Economy of Turkey" after Republican rancor over his withdrawal order grew, Trump has now increased Turkish steel tariffs by half.  Ouch!  One can only hope that wrist-slap doesn't hurt business at his Trump Towers hotel in Istanbul.    

But back to Putin. 

Trump has taken the Russian president's side on every issue of consequence involving the two nations.  Resisting implementation of tougher sanctions.  Firing Ukraine ambassador Marie Yovanovich because she opposed the corruption on which Trump and Rudy Giuliani dined.  Holding up $400 million in badly needed aid for Ukraine to fight Russian aggression.  Diverting $700 million from defense projects for allies to fund construction of his border wall.  Insisting that Russia be readmitted to the Group of Seven after its expulsion for invading Ukraine.  Questioning whether the U.S. would live up to its mutual defense obligations under the NATO charter.  Supporting Brexit.   

And the biggie: All but publicly supporting the Russian interference that got him elected in the first place while unashamedly saying he was unconcerned about that attack on the bedrock of American democracy because the U.S. does the same thing.