On Thursday, Donald Trump completed the war he began in betraying America’s Kurdish allies by surrendering for them. In a room where the only players were Turkish autocrat Recep Erdogan and devoted gazer Mike Pence, a surrender agreement for the Kurds was worked out in which the Turks would kindly give them five days to pack up their kids, leave their homes, and become refugees from the land where their people had lived for the last 4,000 years. If it looked less like a cease-fire than an ultimatum, that’s because it was—which was underlined by an almost immediate resumption of bombing.
It was a day in which the United States bombed its own military base, a base that had just been abandoned because of Trump’s greenlighting of Erdogan’s invasion. In fact, the bombing was required because U.S. troops had been pulled out of the area so quickly, and with so little planning, that they left a large ammunition cache behind. The next time Donald Trump claims American forces are short of ammunition, someone should remind him of all the ammunition that had to be blown up because his thoughtless policy generated a headlong rush for the exits.
And Trump’s response to all this was a celebration. When people wonder where all the “wins” are that Trump promised to deliver, it turns out you just have to look very closely. Because this: surrendering an ally’s territory, authorizing a still greater international incursion, and bombing our own military base to blow up the munitions we left behind … this is what Trump considers a win.
To double down on that win, Trump explained how it was necessary for the Turks to clean out the Kurds. “For many, many years, Turkey, in all fairness, they’ve had a legitimate problem,” said Trump. “They had terrorists, they had a lot of people in there they couldn’t have …. and they had to have it cleaned out.” In the eight stages of genocide, Trump has helped the Turks get past those problems with classification and dehumanization. The Kurds aren’t the allies that helped America in Iraq and against ISIS. They’re terrorists. Their homeland isn’t the place where they live with their families—it’s just an area Turkey deserves to “clean out.” With that help, Turkey can resume stage 7—the one called “extermination.”
And if he hadn’t done enough to trivialize a massive diplomatic, military, and humanitarian disaster, Trump went on to smirk about the whole thing at a Dallas rally. “It was unconventional what I did. I said, ‘They’re going to have to fight a little while.’ Sometimes you’re have to let them fight a little while. … Sometimes you gotta let them fight. Like two kids in a lot, you gotta let them fight. Then you pull them apart.” Trivialization isn’t a step on the genocide scale, but then, that scale was written before Trump.
The Kurdish civilians slaughtered along roadways and left in heaps. The towns and cities that have been, are now, and will be bombed into rubble. The human rights worker who was pulled from her car, raped, and stoned to death … that’s all just two kids fighting. Exactly according to Trump’s plan.
What Trump, with the help of Pence and Mike Pompeo, achieved on Thursday wasn’t a cease-fire. It certainly wasn’t a victory. It was nothing less than a second, brighter, clearer, more public green light. If Trump could argue before that his private conversation with Erdogan didn’t really mean waving a start flag for an invasion of Kurdish territory, Trump can’t make that claim now. Because now it’s official. Now Trump hasn’t just stepped aside—he’s given his blessings.
In fact, Trump bragged about how he was “proud of the United States” on the day it bombed its own base and surrendered by proxy for an ally. This “unconventional” approach, wrote Trump, had achieved a deal that people had been trying to make for years. As long as those people were Recep Erdogan, Trump is right—because he got everything, for the low, low price of not a damn thing.
And of course, what that “two kids” story says is more than just that Trump is utterly indifferent to suffering and absolutely free of either sympathy or empathy. What it says is that this is what he wanted all along.