Poll: Baltimoreans support return of surveillance planes
City business and religious leaders consider whether to endorse controversial effort
As leading business and religious groups consider whether to endorse the return of crime-fighting surveillance planes above Baltimore, a poll commissioned by a prominent local pastor shows strong support for the initiative among city residents.
Backers funded the survey to gauge sentiment on the planes as violent crime remains stubbornly high, skepticism lingers from the secretive rollout of surveillance flights in 2016 and Police Commissioner Michael Harrison has said there’s insufficient evidence of the planes’ effectiveness.
The Rev. Alvin Hathaway Sr., senior pastor of Union Baptist Church in Upton and a member of the Greater Baltimore
the prospect of a deepening conflict, all U.S. forces along the border will now follow that move. It was unclear where they would go.
The Pentagon chief did not say U.S. troops are leaving Syria entirely. The only other U.S. presence in Syria is at Tanf garrison, near Syria’s southeastern border with Jordan. The U.S. and coalition troops there are not involved in the Kurd mission, and so it seems highly unlikely the 1,000 being moved from the north would go to Tanf.
Critics say the U.S. has betrayed the Kurds by pulling back in the face of Turkey’s invasion, but Esper said the administration was left with little choice once President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told Trump a week ago that he was going ahead with a military offensive.
Esper said the Kurds have been good partners, “but at the same time, we didn’t sign up to fight the Turks on their behalf.”
The Kurds then turned to the Syrian government and Russia for military assistance, further complicating the battlefield.
The prospect of enhancing the Syrian government’s position on the battlefield and inviting Russia to get more directly involved is seen by Trump’s critics as a major mistake. But he tweeted that it shouldn’t matter.
“Others may want to come in and fight for one side or the other,” he wrote. “Let them!”
New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Trump is weakening America. “To be clear, this administration’s chaotic and haphazard approach to policy by tweet is endangering the lives of U.S. troops and civilians,” Menendez said in a statement. “The only beneficiaries of this action are ISIS, Iran and Russia.”
The fast-moving developments were a further unraveling of U.S. counterterrorism efforts in Syria, and they highlighted an extraordinary breakdown in relations between the United States and Turkey, NATO allies for decades. Turkish troops have often fought alongside American troops, including in the Korean War and in Afghanistan.
Asked whether he thought Turkey would deliberately attack American troops in Syria, Esper said, “I don’t know whether they would or wouldn’t.”
Esper disputed the notion that the U.S. could have stopped Turkey from invading in the first place. He said Erdogan had made clear he was going to launch his incursion “regardless of what we did.”
Strongly critical of the Turks, Esper said “the arc of their behavior over the past several years has been terrible.” He added: “I mean, they are spinning out of the Western orbit, if you will. We see them purchasing Russian arms, cuddling up to President Putin. We see them doing all these things that, frankly, concern us.”
The chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., said the U.S. and its NATO partners should consider expelling Turkey from the alliance. “How do you have a NATO ally who’s in cahoots with the Russians, when the Russians are the adversaries of NATO?”
In explaining Trump’s decision to withdraw from northern Syria, Esper cited two weekend developments.
“In the last 24 hours, we learned that (the Turks) likely intend to expand their attack further south than originally planned — and to the west,” he said.
Trump, in a tweet Sunday, said: “Very smart not to be involved in the intense fighting along the Turkish Border, for a change. Those that mistakenly got us into the Middle East Wars are still pushing to fight. They have no idea what a bad decision they have made. Why are they not asking for a Declaration of War?”
Esper said he would not discuss a timeline for the U.S. pullback.