What happens when a president has zero credibility?
by digby
I'll be honest. I'm of two minds on this Syria withdrawal that Trump impulsively announced on twitter yesterday. It's clearly a wag-the-dog moment for him but I have to admit that if a president is going to us such self-serving tactics (he isn't the first) I prefer such moves to be the withdrawal of troops rather than escalation. And if the president were a normal thoughtful person who understands the issues, reads all the briefing papers, has a good handle on all the geopolitical implications of his decisions, I wouldn't object to him going against the conventional wisdom of his party and the military. Their bias in favor of military options needs a counterpoint more often than not.
But I think we all know that Trump is not that person. We don't know exactly why he's made this decision but it's fair to say that if it turns out have been a good one, it's a total accident. And there's some good evidence that it's based on something that will actually end up blowing back on the country and the world in unpredictable ways:
The White House's announcement Wednesday of a withdrawal of troops from Syria came a week after President Donald Trump made the decision. The Republican leader informed his military officials following a call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan regarding an arms deal and a potential offensive against U.S. allies.
The New York Times reported that U.S.-backed Kurdish leaders were informed of Trump’s decision on Wednesday morning.
Turkish troops and allied Syrian rebel groups have waged offensives that have pulled Kurdish fighters away from U.S. front lines against ISIS, frustrating the coalition’s efforts at critical points in the fight. Erdogan recently threatened to wage a new offensive against Kurdish positions in northern Syria, prompting condemnation from the Pentagon and a conversation last week between the Turkish leader and Trump.
Trump was reported to have told off Erdogan on Friday, but a Pentagon source told Newsweek that it was after this discussion that the president made his intentions to withdraw U.S. troops known to officials over the weekend.
But on Monday, Erdogan renewed his threats for a Turkish offensive in the U.S.-controlled territory in northeast Syria during a speech in Turkey's central Konya province. The Turkish president vowed that American forces would not be harmed in pending operations set to commence soon in the region.
At the same time, Congress was notified of a potential arms sale to the Turkish government of 140 Patriot surface-to-air missile variants and equipment worth $3.5 billion, according to a press release from the Defense Security Cooperation Agency.
Did he do this for arms sales? To wag the dog? Because Erdogon strong-armed him? Does he have a clue about the potential ramifications of doing this, particularly is there is a Kurdish bloodbath? (Not bloody likely.)
I suppose we could all be impressed by the fact that he is so secure that he feels no compunction about openly pleasing the Russian government with this decision even as it's more and more obvious that he's been unduly influenced (to be generous) by Vladimir Putin and may soon be facing very serious consequences for it. Unfortunately, it's obvious that he's either too dumb to understand that the optics of this move make him look even more guilty --- or he has no choice, which is much worse.
This is the central problem we face with Donald Trump. He is pathologically dishonest, chaotic, undisciplined, stupid and vain and he has destroyed every norm that had, up until now, held this system together. And as a result, it's impossible to take anything he does at face value or even allow that he might have come to the right conclusion even by accident. Because if that's how it happens, he is incapable of managing the fallout or charting a rational follow-up.
It's always bad when a leader makes the right decision for the wrong reasons because it rarely solves the real problem. In Trump's case, it's downright dangerous because he is so transparently out of his depth that it provides adversaries with a huge advantage.
I don't know what the right response it. Syria is one of those proverbial problems from hell. Maybe this will work out. But I don't sleep well knowing that Trump's decision making tends to give dangerous people ideas:
North Korea said Thursday it will never unilaterally give up its nuclear weapons unless the United States first removes what Pyongyang called a nuclear threat. The surprisingly blunt statement jars with Seoul's rosier presentation of the North Korean position and could rattle the fragile trilateral diplomacy to defuse a nuclear crisis that last year had many fearing war.
Maybe this announcement is unrelated to the news that Erdogon may have strong armed Trump into withdrawal. But would anyone be surprised if it was?
If you find what we write here every day to be valuable, I hope you'll consider putting some change in the Hullabaloo holiday stocking. Your support buys me the time to spend my days wading through the muck of the day's political stories to bring you highlights and analysis that I hope you will enjoy and find informative.
If you've already donated, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. If you haven't and would like to help support this blog for another year, the paypal buttons are on the sidebar and below as is the snail mail address.
And I wish all of you Very Happy Hollandaise!
cheers --- digby
Digby's Hullabaloo
2801 Ocean Park Blvd.
Box 157
Santa Monica, Ca 90405
