• Syria: Donald Trump revives the war in Syria: the keys to the withdrawal of US troops

"Being an enemy of the United States is very dangerous. But being a friend of the United States can be even more dangerous." The phrase, apocryphal, has been attributed to the former empress of Iran, Farah Diba, after the Jimmy Carter government abandoned support for her husband in an attempt to force a transition to a pluralistic regime that eventually resulted in the Islamic Republic of Khomeini. Now, the Kurds of Syria have verified the veracity of Diba's claim , after Donald Trump decided, after a conversation with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to withdraw US forces from northern Syria and clear the Turkish Armed Forces to carry out an offensive against the militias of that community in the region.

Trump's decision has raised blisters on the right and left of the United States, as it means abandoning Washington's allies in the fight against the Islamic State (IS). Reverend Pat Robertson , one of the country's most respected evangelical leaders, has signed that, with that withdrawal, Trump "could lose the mandate of heaven" to be president.

And, what is worse, it means abandoning them for nothing. The US has not got any counterpart from Erdogan. According to the newspaper 'The Wall Street Journal', the American president made the decision after noticing the tremendous anger that Erdogan had for not having obtained a bilateral meeting with Trump during his stay in New York.

Faced with criticism - from even his closest allies, such as Senator Lindsey Graham and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell - Trump justified his decision on Tuesday with the argument that the Kurds "did not help us in World War II. , they didn't help us in Normandy, for example . " Trump's reference to D-Day has caused some surprise in the US, due to a number of factors.

The first, of a logistical nature: Kurdistan has no exit to the sea, so it would have been interesting to see how the Kurds could have articulated an air force for a landing. The second, of a historical nature: in 1944, when the Allies arrived in Normandy, the Kurds were split between the British Empire and the Soviet Union - both enemies of Nazi Germany and Turkey - which was neutral - but, as now, no they had no political entity or state to go to war with anyone. The phrase of the president of the United States has the same solidity as saying that there was not a single Spaniard - to mention someone - in the taking of Okinawa to Imperial Japan.

"Fighting for his land"

Trump's thesis is that the Kurds "are fighting for their land," and the US has spent "a tremendous amount of money supporting them." In reality, however, Washington has barely given money to the militias of that community .

The question is not about money, but about strategy. And there Trump has taken another step, saying he doesn't care that detainees in the Islamic State (IS) are released as the Kurds who hold them in jail leave, go to Europe. "Well, they're going to escape to Europe, which is where they want to go, they want to go to their homes. But Europe didn't want us to give them to them," Trump said. According to the president, "we could have given them to them, they could have tried them, they could have done what they wanted. But, as always, it was not reciprocal." These statements not only reveal a lack of absolute interest in transatlantic relations that have been the basis of Western politics since, precisely, Normandy. In addition, the vast majority of IS militants do not come, but from the Middle East. Finally, the coalition that fights the Islamic State is made up of 80 countries. In fact, eight American soldiers, a Frenchman and a Briton have died in Syria.

Actually, the Kurds should not be surprised. In 1991, George Bush 'father' urged them to rebel against Saddam Hussein in Iraq and then leave them abandoned. As Lord Palmerston said - one of the builders of the British Empire - "nations have no enemies or permanent allies. They have permanent interests." In the case of northern Syria, the US withdrawal has ratified the correctness of the phrase in relation to friendship. What nobody has been able to clarify yet is how the decision favors the interests of the United States.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Know more

  • Islamic State
  • Syria
  • Europe
  • Turkey
  • U.S
  • Donald Trump
  • WWII
  • Iran
  • Germany
  • Iraq

United StatesDonald Trump justifies the withdrawal in Syria because the Kurds "did not help us with Normandy"

International US takes custody of 40 fighters of the Islamic State, including two British

United Nations Hasan Rohani at the UN: "The security of Saudi Arabia will be guaranteed when it stops intervening in Yemen"