The end of the American Empire
This tweet came across my timeline:
US official tells @npwcnn that the campaign to defeat ISIS in Syria is “over for now” and that ISIS “has a second lease on life with nearly 100,000 [people] who will re-join their jihad.”— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) October 13, 2019
In this official’s opinion, “US policy has failed.”
In one tweet, Donald Trump's utter failure of a foreign policy is laid bare.
The United States has spent the past five years fighting to reduce the death cult of Daesh. It had won the war, with the major lifting done by Syrian Kurds and Iraqi forces. And now, in one fell swoop, Trump has undone everything.
We're already seeing the fallout of his actions.
Just today, the YPG has allied with Russia and Assad so that Syrian Army units can take control of two border towns in the path of the Turkish onslaught.
With 100,000 Daesh fighters and their dependents released, who haven't been dissuaded from their jihadist ideology, Syria will remain riven by civil war, and Iraq will fracture again.
Iraq will finally splinter, with the Shi'a south aligning with Iran, the Sunni Arab middle subsumed again by Daesh, and the Kurdish north declaring independence, possibly moving into the Kirkuk oil fields, and aligning with Russia as a counterweight to Turkey, as it can't depend on the US as an ally.
The country was warned that this would happen if Trump became president. That he knew nothing about geopolitics and the American alliance system. That he would subvert everything to his own corrupt interests. But 62 million voters were so incensed at what the country was becoming—more open, more liberal, more just—that they betrayed everything it means to be American and put into office a man who spoke to their fears and hatreds. I don't want to hear about economic fears; the only fears they had were of the Other.
Now, even when we rid ourselves of this monster—and we will—our role in world affairs will be greatly diminished. We will be in a world akin to the one before the First World War, with great powers jockeying for influence. We know how that turned out.
The days of the American Empire are over. And while that would have been a worthwhile goal as long as it was managed, the way it's happening is redolent of Saigon 1975. The world is being plunged into chaos as the US is in the grips of man facing his final political quietus. He knows he's doomed, and in a fit of senile animus he will take the country down with him, if not the world.
I wish I could be more positive. I think we will get through this. But nothing will ever be the same. Our role as citizens over the next decade will be to institute structures so that this never happens again. Unfortunately, there will be blood before we can repair the damage.