Trump got it backward on who helped the United States take down Baghdadi
All praise to the brave special forces operators and CIA analysts who took down the heinous ISIS chief, Abu Bakr albaghdadi.
President Donald Trump gets credit for ordering the raid, but his effusive self-praise diminished the moment. (He apparently forgot his tweet storm in 2012 demanding that credit for Osama bin Laden’s demise go to “our brave military and intelligence officers,” not to President Barack Obama.)
Moreover, Trump’s remarks on Baghdadi’s death ignored the heavy cost of his sudden retreat from Syria, which nearly undercut the Baghdadi mission. That retreat leaves the door open for the rise of new jihadi movements.
Most unsettling, Trump thanked Russia, Syria and Turkey — all countries that have helped ISIS — while insulting our Kurdish allies, who were key to this mission. His failure to distinguish America’s friends from our adversaries portends future security troubles.
No surprise, Russia topped Trump’s thank-you list, though he admitted they knew nothing about the operation and did nothing.
Russian TV called the Baghdadi operation “very strange” and accused Americans of “creating” Baghdadi. Yet Trump called the Russians “very good.”
As for Syria, Trump actually thanked a regime headed by war criminal Bashar al-assad, who released hundreds of ISIS fighters from prison at the beginning of their rise to power. Assad has also let Iran take over much of Syria.
But the worst was Trump’s praise for Turkey, a country notorious for letting ISIS fighters cross freely into Syria.
Baghdadi was found, not in ISIS’ traditional area of eastern Turkey, but far away in western Turkey, near the Turkish border and Turkish military outposts, suggesting Turkish military intelligence knew Baghdadi’s location.
Clearly, the U.S. military distrusted Ankara. They chose to launch the Baghdadi operation from hundreds of miles away in Iraq, rather than from nearby Turkey (a NATO partner), and reportedly they gave Turkey no advance notice. Yet Trump singled this ISIS enabler out for thanks.
And whose crucial help did he downplay? The Syrian Kurds, who reportedly provided more key intelligence than any country, and were key in locating Baghdadi. Syrian Kurdish leaders say they were working with U.S. forces on this mission for the past five months, and continued to do so even after Trump sold them out to Turkey.
Trump is clearly ignorant of, or doesn’t care about, Turkey’s enabling of ISIS. Ditto for Russia’s and Syria’s indifference. He keeps repeating that they all hate ISIS. They don’t.
It’s the Kurds who hate ISIS, and who lost 11,000 fighters defeating them. It’s the Kurds who were willing to keep the ISIS network from reviving, backed by a minimal 1,000-troop U.S. presence that suffered almost no casualties. It was a small, safe investment to prevent an ISIS revival until Syria stabilized, not, as Trump insists, a 200-year commitment.
Instead, Trump, on a whim, pulled out U.S. troops and gave the Turks the green light to invade Syria.
The Turkish invasion made 200,000 Kurds refugees and forced the Kurds to turn toward Russia and Syria.
That’s why CIA operatives in Syria, which Trump did praise, were dismayed by the troop withdrawal, saying it betrayed allies they’ll need going forward.
Baghdadi’s death, some military and counterintelligence sources told the New York Times, “occurred largely in spite of, and not because of, Mr. Trump’s actions.”
A U.S. president praising our adversaries and undercutting our friends — that was the unnerving subtext of Trump’s thumping self-celebration of Baghdadi’s death.