By Gregory William
After Trump announced U.S. forces would withdraw from northern Syria, the House of Representatives voted on a non-binding resolution against it. Although Republicans and Democrats seem divided on many issues, both are parties of endless war for profit who voted 354-60 to continue the illegal war in which 400,000 people have died since 2011.
Trump is a warmonger who just approved sending 1,800 more troops to Saudia Arabia, a U.S. ally carrying out a genocidal war against Yemen. Trump has pledged to keep troops in Syria to protect oil fields—the only thing the U.S. capitalists care about in the Middle East.
Pulling troops from Syria is not a bad thing. By attacking him on this, the Democrats are trying to be more right-wing than the war-crazed Trump.
Many progressives are confused. Hasn’t the U.S. military been protecting the Kurds in Syria? The answer is a clear “no” if we look at the big picture.
The Syrian Kurds have been attacked by Turkish forces, but Turkey is a Washington ally. The far-right Turkish regime represses workers and carries out constant attacks against the Kurdish people, all the while receiving more U.S.-made weapons than any country besides Israel or the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.).
Washington has supported the Turkish state for decades. So close is the relationship that the U.S. government has at least 50 nuclear warheads in Turkey. These stockpiles go back to 1962, when the U.S. government began positioning nuclear weapons there to threaten the Soviet Union.
But what about the “crazy militias” the corporate press says attacked the Kurds? The U.S. government has backed 21 out of 28 of these groups. Most are off-shoots of Al-Qaeda and Al-Nusra, armed and trained by the CIA and Pentagon. Washington used these groups to undermine the elected government in Syria and carry out atrocities throughout the country, not just against the Kurds.
The U.S. has fomented war in the country for eight years, but now that Syria has been restored to the control of the Syrian government, there is finally a prospect of peace. The Kurds have joined forces with the Syrian Army. There is no longer any pretext for the U.S. to be there.
It’s right that workers are angry over Turkey’s military attacks, and so our demand should be that Washington withdraw all support for Turkey, ending all arms sales and military aid to that murderous far-right regime.
We must demand: U.S. and Turkey out of Syria!