Donald Trump and his campaign gutted the GOP’s anti-Russia stance on Ukraine from the party platform in 2016, and now it appears a similar revision will have to made on backing the Kurds in 2020.
The Republican Party platform, adopted the week Donald Trump accepted the party’s nomination in 2016, vowed to stand by the Kurds:
A Republican administration will restore our nation’s credibility. We must stand up for our friends, challenge our foes, and destroy ISIS. We continue to support the Kurdish people, whose bravery and cooperation with our forces merit our respect and their autonomy.
Trump disavowed the GOP platform this week, allowing Turkey to attack US allies in Syria with the odd explanation that the Kurds did not fight alongside the US in World War II.
With humanitarian groups reporting the bombardment could displace as many as 300,000 people, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s top adviser claims that Trump knew in advance about the scope of the Turkish attack.
“President Trump and President Erdogan have reached an understanding over precisely what this operation is,” Gulnur Aybet said from Ankara. “He knows what the scope of this operation is.”
The news trickling out of Syria fed some congressional Republican anger, while the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, Ronna Romney McDaniel, stayed conspicuously quiet.
Trump’s decision to abandon the Kurds is in direct violation of his party’s own stated mission.
Some Republicans have been willing to be public in their scorn.
“News from Syria is sickening,” Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the third-ranking Republican in the House, tweeted yesterday, echoing lawmakers across the spectrum.
Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio noted that “at request of this administration the Kurds served as the primary ground fighters against ISIS in Syria so U.S. troops wouldn’t have to.”
Then, he charged, the administration “cut deal with Erdogan allowing him to wipe them out. Damage to our reputation & national interest will be extraordinary & long lasting.”
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland on Wednesday announced a framework to place immediate sanctions on senior Turkish government officials, ban all US military business and military transactions with Turkey, and immediately activate 2017 sanctions on the country until Ankara stops its operations against the Kurds.
But Trump has resisted any plea to change his mind, even as rockets bombard one of America’s most dependable allies in the Middle East.
Both Pentagon and State Department officials advised Trump against making the move, arguing a US presence is needed to counter ISIS and keep Iran and Russia, both influential inside Syria, in check.
On Sunday, after Trump’s phone call with Erdogan, the White House said US troops would move out the way and would not support or be involved in the operation.
Trump downplayed Turkey’s move in comments to reporters at the White House Wednesday.
He shrugged off the likely escape of ISIS fighters from Kurdish prisons, essentially saying it is Europe’s problem, not his.
“Well, they’re going to be escaping to Europe, that’s where they want to go,” Trump said.
Trump downplayed the alliance with the Kurds, 11,000 of whom died fighting to help the US mission against ISIS.
“They didn’t help us in the second World War, they didn’t help us with Normandy for example,” Trump said. “They’re there to help us with their land, and that’s a different thing.”
Normandy is an area of France, not the U.S.
The Trump campaign worked behind the scenes at the last GOP convention to make sure the new Republican platform didn’t call for giving weapons to Ukraine to fight Russian and rebel forces, contradicting the view of almost all Republican foreign policy leaders in Washington.
Throughout his presidency, Trump has been dismissive of calls for supporting the Ukraine government as it fights an ongoing Russian-led intervention.
Paul Manafort, worked as a lobbyist for the Russian-backed former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych for more than a decade.
A federal judge sentenced Manafort to seven and a half years, denouncing him as a man who “spent a significant portion of his career gaming the system.”
Trump now faces almost certain impeachment by House Democrats after he withheld funds from Ukraine until they investigated one of his political opponents in the 2020 election.