| 摘要 | There’s an old Saddam-era Iraqi joke about a journalist who asks Izzat Ibrahim, a senior Baath Party official, “Can elephants fly?” Izzat Ibrahim dismisses the question. “Of course not. What kind of person could believe that elephants can fly.” “But,” the journalist says, “Saddam Hussein said elephants can fly.” “Of course they can fly,” Izzat immediately says, “but only very slowly.”
Sometimes, partisan loyalty and obsequiousness to power twists logic.
So it is in the current debate over Turkey and its impending invasion of Kurdish-controlled northeastern Syria. An op-ed in the New York Post today by Michael Doran, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, defends President Trump’s decision to greenlight a Turkish incursion into northeastern Syria, an area controlled by the Syrian Defense Forces. Trump is restoring balance to the region, he argues, after the Obama administration entered into an ill-conceived alliance with Syrian Kurds. Doran writes:
Doran is correct that Kurdish resistance at Kobane, a town through whose rubble I walked this summer, was a watershed moment. But, in his animus toward the Obama administration (an administration whose policy toward Iran both Doran and I would agree was naïve and counterproductive) he mischaracterizes the decision process that led the United States to support Syrian Kurdish militias.
Until Kobane, the U.S. sought to work in close partnership if not exclusively with Turkey. I informed U.S. diplomats prior to my first visit to northeastern Syria a few months before the Kobane siege. At the time, they had no direct contact with the Kurds and sought no contact; they believed working with the Kurds could undercut the U.S.-Turkish partnership which they wanted to prioritize. Indeed, they asked me to convey the message, if asked, that Kurdish contacts with the Syrian regime were unwelcome.
What changed U.S. position was not Obama’s pivot to Iran (which was already well underway) but irrefutable intelligence that Turkey was actively supporting al Qaeda affiliates inside Turkey as well as ISIS.
This is the problem which Doran ignores in his efforts to castigate Obama and exculpate Trump. During the battle for Kobane, Turkish forces gave ISIS fighters free passage to outflank Kurdish resistance inside the city.
Obama’s Iran policy was unwise. But this does not mean that every decision his administration took occurred through the lens of empowering Iran. Under Erdoğan, Turkey has become problematic of its own accord. But if the goal is not simply to contain ISIS, but also stop the Islamic Republic of Iran, then Trump’s betrayal of Syrian Kurds is even more wrong-headed. Erdoğan is no ally against Iran. Hakan Fidan, an Erdoğan-appointee and Turkey’s intelligence chief, prefers Tehran over Washington. It was Fidan who exposed a spy ring focused on Iran’s illicit nuclear program, and it was Erdoğan who schemed with Iranian leaders to bypass international sanctions. Trump’s decision to remove U.S. forces also makes an Assad push into the region more likely, allowing Iranian leaders to fulfill their dream of a land bridge to the Eastern Mediterranean.
The reason why Trump’s decision to greenlight a Turkish invasion of northeastern Syria has garnered such bipartisan pushback is not because Obama’s foreign policy team hates seeing a democratically elected president undo their decisions and policies. Rather, it is because in this particular case, there is broad belief among intelligence professionals, military leaders, and diplomats that Trump’s decision not only empowers radicals such as ISIS and al Qaeda, but also because it simultaneously empowers Iran. To systematically ignore the real reason for the change in U.S. posture after the siege of Kobane ignores reality, and risks disaster. |
