The Republican Party owns Donald Trump. Every Republican who has done nothing to stop him is fully complicit, and that includes every Republican member of the Senate. That also includes the invertebrate Republicans who posture and do nothing. Trump's corruption is their corruption. Trump's failures are their failures. Trump's devastation of national security is their devastation of national security. Trump's attempts to destroy the republic are their attempts to destroy the republic. This is who the Republicans are. This is not a drill.
One of the more insidious results of Trump's unprecedented corruption was apparent everywhere in the aftermath of the announcement that he was abandoning America's longtime Kurdish allies to invasion by Turkey and Russia. After the shock, the outrage, and the profound worry about the humanitarian crisis that soon would engulf the Kurds, came the question: What is Trump getting out of the deal? The question is not what the United States is getting, but what Trump personally is getting. Because everyone knows that, under Trump, American foreign policy no longer has anything to do with America’s best interests. But what is Trump getting? Did Turkish autocrat Recep Tayyip Erdoğan promise to concoct dirt on Joe Biden? Was it about Trump's business interests in Turkey? Or was it just Vladimir Putin completing his shopping list before Trump completely implodes?
The attempts by some Trump apologists to spin this disaster as a plausibly sensible policy decision are as craven as they are stupid. If the goal was to stop sacrificing American troops in far, foreign lands, that could have been done without blindsiding the Kurds. They could have been warned. They could have been promised defensive air protection and given more defensive weaponry. And even if one wants to claim that longtime allies who have risked and suffered so much in pursuit of common goals somehow weren't deserving of such a financial expenditure, that still doesn't explain Trump's giving his approval to Turkey and Russia to invade. That's where even the most desperate and ludicrous arguments in defense of Trump collapse.
Trump attempted to explain himself with his usual blithering idiocy, but his bootlicking secretary of state attempted damage control, blatantly mendacious as it was. Because any claim that Trump didn’t assent to the attack on the Kurds is refuted by the official White House statement itself, which opened with the announcement of the imminent Turkish invasion, which it uncritically and blithely described as “long-planned.” The announcement of the troop withdrawal literally came after. Because the former was what mattered, and the latter was meant to enable it.
This wasn't just America pulling out, it was Trump giving a green light to the much better armed enemies of the Kurds to roll in. Trump signed on to a bloodbath against one of America's most valuable allies, many of whom will be slaughtered, and many more of whom will become refugees, fleeing to the desert. And this didn’t happen in a vacuum. This didn’t come out of nowhere. Trump set the Kurds up.
This was a betrayal of such magnitude that it is hard to conceive of a time in any near future when America's allies again can trust it, or even consider America an ally. This was a betrayal of such magnitude that it is hard to conceive of a time in any near future where America's enemies need rule out the possibility of being simply handed the opportunity to pursue their aims with impunity.
For the United States, there is no upside. On the micro level:
And on the macro level, Trump is gutting what's left of America's international reputation.
Traditional allies were blindsided.
They couldn't contain their shock:
“Any unilateral action could have significant humanitarian consequences and would not provide the conditions for the safe and voluntary return of refugees to their areas of origin,” the French Foreign Ministry said in a statement. “It would undermine the stability of this region and our direct efforts on the ground.”
Norbert Röttgen, head of the foreign affairs committee in the German parliament, was more direct. The U.S. “troop withdrawal from northern Syria constitutes another abrupt and destabilizing foreign policy move by the United States,” he said.
“This damages U.S. credibility and stability in the entire region. The planned Turkish offensive is contrary to international law and further militarizes the Kurdish conflict,” he added.
America can’t be trusted anymore.
America's enemies are gloating:
As always, with Trump, America loses and Vladimir Putin wins. And the Republicans do nothing.
And to underscore how much damage Trump is doing, when asked about the potential escape of ISIS prisoners as a result of his latest foreign policy catastrophe, Trump could not have been more clear.
This is both profoundly ignorant about the origin of most of the fighters, and devastating in the message it sends to European nations, both blaming them and also shrugging that they now may face an onslaught of terrorism that Trump caused!
The world no longer looks at the United States as a symbol of strength. The world now understands that the United States has no strategic interests apart from Trump's petty personal interests. The democratic world now looks on the United States as but another kleptocratic failed democracy. The autocratic world now looks on the United States as one of its own, to be used and manipulated as needed. Because taking advantage of Trump is child’s play. Trump is a deeply stupid man who routinely gets his ass kicked on the world stage. And America is suffering for it. The evidence could not be more stark. People are being killed.
This is a national emergency, and the Republican Party owns all of it.