To Appease Turkey’s Erdogan, Biden Tells Kurds to Retreat After Pushing Back ISIS
Kurdish fighters remain the only fighting force with a track record of holding their ground against ISIS
The Obama Administration told Kurdish forces in Syria to move back from their positions after they seized control of the ISIS-held Syrian town of Manbij. “We’ve made it absolutely clear [to the Kurdish forces that] they must move back across the river,” Vice President Joe Biden said during a visit to Turkey on Wednesday. “They cannot — will not — under any circumstance get American support if they do not keep that commitment.”
Biden’s stance is widely seen as an attempt to pacify Erdogan’s Turkey, alarmed by recent Kurdish gains against ISIS in Syria. Erdogan’s Turkey, after maintaining long tacit alliance with the Islamic State, has recently dispatched military troops into Syria — not to fight ISIS but to hold the line against Kurds. In contrast, Kurds of Syria and Iraq have proven themselves as the most reliable fighting force in war against the Islamic State.
The Associated Press reports:
U.S. Vice President Joe Biden is calling on Syrian Kurdish forces to move back across the Euphrates River, telling them they will lose U.S. support if they don’t.
Speaking at a press conference in Ankara on Wednesday, Biden says Kurdish forces “must move back across the Euphrates River.”
He says “they cannot — will not — under any circumstance get American support if they do not keep that commitment.”
Biden indirectly expressed support for the Turkish operation launched Wednesday to clear Islamic State militants from the town of Jarablus and deter Kurds from further expanding in northern Syria.
This wouldn’t be the first time that Obama administration will be casting its lot with an Islamist regime — at the cost of a reliable ally. President Obama came to the office in 2008 with the hope of improving U.S. relations with the Muslim world by offering an olive branch to Islamists across the Middle East.
The President placed great hopes in ‘moderate’ Islamists like Egypt’s Morsi, Iran’s Rouhani and Turkey’s Erdogan. If their friendship were to come at the cost of jeopardising ties with trusted allies, it was a price he was willing to pay. This explains the ill-advised nuclear deal with Iran at the cost of Israel’s safety and that of other regional allies’, or attempts to strong-arm India into compromising territorial sovereignty in the Muslim-majority Kashmir region to please Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Let us not forget that Turkey’s President Erdogan, who is now busy rounding up tens of thousands of his citizens following a failed coup, was once considered by Obama as a ‘role model for Muslim leaders’.
Despite Erdogan’s dubious track record, the Obama administration is pinning all hopes on Islamist-led Turkey in its war against ISIS — while side-lining Kurds, the only fighting force in the region capable of holding its ground against ISIS onslaughts. Emboldening Islamist despots like Erdogan is not a winning strategy in the war against Radical Islam.
Video: Turkish, U.S. forces launch operation in Syria; Biden calls for Kurds to halt advances:
[Cover image courtesy BBC, YouTube]
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Comments
Erdogan wants the Kurds to be defeated and enslaved. He is a good Muslim.
appeasement has not worked in the past
yet this is more of the same from the Obama administration. this leaves a bigger vacuum for others to fill. Worse those that would fill the vacuum will not have our best interests at heart.
Others will notice and respect the US even less and the cycle will repeat
Something similar happened in Iraq following Bush I’s failed rehabilitation of Hussein and later with Obama’s premature withdrawal of honest brokers. The sodomy and abortion of Gaddafi seems to have been done for a Libya-ISIS Affair, and Benghazi happened when Obama, Clinton failed to perform to their allies’ expectations… I mean, the video provoked a planned guardianship. Then there are the Europeans, Americans, etc. who have been ordered to assimilate to an alien culture, and integrate with the refugees of social justice adventurism.
Tough choice for Bammie. He wants to support the Muslims. That means Erdogan. Or does it mean the Kurds? They’re as Muslim as anybody else in that area. What to do?
Let Crazy Uncle Joe make the strategic decisions, perhaps.
This is tantamount to the Allies spitting on the contribution of Muslim soldiers during WWII. When you have allies in the field who are carrying the fight, you don’t undercut them this way. You support them.
Echos of Czechoslovakia.
The Fresh Prince must be sensing another line in the sand out there somewhere and is looking for somebody to surrender to.
Just where would we base the troops if we wanted to drop Erdogan and overtly support the Kurds? Iraq, Syria, Jordan – nope. I’ve got it! We could base them in Israel.
The Kurds response to Biden should come from somewhere between their two back pockets.
TELL ME TELL ME TELL ME- why over the past 16 years– we have left the Kurds hanging? They should have gotten their own state in 2005. What is their offense to the west and to other countries in the reason that is preventing this?
And in other not-so-unrelated news, Obama sent 1.3 billion to Iran on top of the 400 million cash.
This guy is a traitor.
Biden is always dispatched to say the stoopid stuff, get stood up/rebuffed and not realize it. He’s a moron (and not the AOSHQ kind)
The Kurds are in fact not just an effective fighting force, they are politically sophisticated and know this man is a world class clown and obama’s court jester who will be gone in a few months. He should wear a hat with 3 dangling bells on it as befits his station.
Saladin, the “chivalrous infidel,” was a Kurd.
Just saying.
We can do business with them.
More correctly, Salah al-Din al-Ayubbi.