There’s A Disconnect Between Washington And Heartland On Syria/ Turkey Clash

Outside of Washington and the hyper-political watchers, does anyone really care?

Tom Bevan: Rally response shows a ‘disconnect’ between Washington and the heartland regarding wars, military

There is a “disconnect” between Washington, D.C. and the rest of America regarding Syria, this according to RealClearPolitics.com co-founder Tom Bevan who was reacting to President Trump’s rally.

“I was just in Washington yesterday and we spent all week talking about Syria and the Kurds,” Bevan said on “The Ingraham Ingraham” Thursday. “And you saw the disconnect on display with Trump out in the heartland, now making his case and the response that he got about bringing troops home, rebuilding the military to keep it strong.”

During the rally the president addressed his decision to withdraw troops from northern Syria a decision that many Republicans have been critical of.

“Endless wars, they don’t stop. They don’t stop. They go on forever,” Trump told the rally crowd. “These wars brought mass chaos, instability, destruction and death. Today, we choose a different path.” (snip)

“It’s something that he did run on. It’s something that has widespread support across the country. I think the only thing that Trump, you know, runs the risk of here is if ISIS reconstituted itself and starts creating some havoc before his election next November,” Bevan said. “But just if that doesn’t happen, there is widespread support and it’s a definite disconnect between what what people in sort of the heartland think, a real America, versus what everybody is talking about inside the Beltway.”

At the end of the day, does pulling the small number of U.S. troops out of Syria and giving Turkey, a NATO member, the green light to intervene move the needle with most outside the Washington bubble? Is this something they are thinking about, caring about, talking about, reading about? A lot of people were probably surprised we had that many military members in Syria, considering Obama was saying there would be no boots on the ground, that Democrats were against putting boots on the ground. Now you have crazy Dems like Wesley Clark, the general who became a darling of the Democrats over the Iraq War, when the Dems wanted us out of Iraq, telling us to stay in Syria.

(Real Clear Politics) But wait a minute. Turkey is a NATO member. Were we prepared to go to war with an ally to defend this strip of land held by the Kurds? Even if the Turks had an ulterior motive of seeking to punish their traditional enemy, the Kurds, were we willing to sacrifice American lives to take sides in that conflict?

Also, how exactly do we distinguish between the U.S. invading Syria several years earlier for our “national interest” and what the Turks are doing now for their own perceived “national interest”?

But then there are the Kurds…

We don’t want them to become the victims of genocide the way the Armenians were at the hands of the Turks in the last century, but what kind of commitment can Americans make to police Syria into the foreseeable future? Are we supposed to keep our soldiers at risk forever to prevent war between enemies who have irreconcilable differences?

What were a few dozen soldiers going to do? And do the people outside of the Washington bubble really care what’s going on, despite the media drumbeat? Nope.

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4 Responses to “There’s A Disconnect Between Washington And Heartland On Syria/ Turkey Clash”

  1. Dana says:

    Our esteemed host asked:

    What were a few dozen soldiers going to do?

    They were the ‘tripwire,’ whose presence made sure that the Turks were not going to invade, because the Turks didn’t want to start a war with the United States. The same logic is in place in the Korean Demilitarized Zone, where several thousand US troops serve to keep two million North Koreans from invading the South.

    That said, the Kurds have been seeking autonomy and independence for decades, and their area in Syria is far smaller than in Turkey, Iraq and Iran. An independent Kurdistan would take land from five separate countries (if a small sliver in Armenia is included) and, let’s be real here, just isn’t going to happen. Should US forces constitute tripwires in ethnic conflicts across the world?

  2. Professor Hale says:

    Several thousand = 23,000. The “tripwire” policy hasn’t been in effect for decades.. since 1950 to be exact. American forces in Korea are fully functional combat forces that are fully capable of repelling an attack by North Korea. They are not a tripwire for anything.

    Nor are our forces in Syria a tripwire against Turkey. The forces in Syria today are there to fight ISIS. They provide important combat enablers for the Syrian Kurdish forces and they closely coordinate their activities with the Syrian government, Russia, and Turkey so that they don’t have accidents. This has been going on since 2016.

    • Doom and Gloom says:

      Your obvious MIC roots shine every time you talk about the military and military action. How much longer are you going to support our boys and girls dying in foreign countries where everyone hates us?

      How much do you get paid to visit blogs to keep the restless sheep in line? America is sick of YOUR wars. I am as conservative as they come but I am sick of these endless wars and a world ablaze with anger at each other.

      All across Europe Populism is sweeping the continent because of the discontent with the MIC and globalism. The longer YOU let this go on the worse things are ultimately going to get. Go back to your bosses and tell them the natives are restless, because we know they all hang out in DC with their heads up the asses of Politicans making sure they smell which way the wind is blowing.

      NOT.

      • D&G,
        Where did I say anything at all that disagrees with your premise?

        Wars are bad. Agree.
        The Military is a fat bloated bureaucracy. Agree. I have been saying this for decades. The proper size for our forces is half as many carrier battle groups, half as many Army divisions, half as many Air force groups, Zero Marine corps forces.
        I don’t agree on sending any US military forces abroad at this time, to any country. I have written about this extensively. Korea: Defend yourselves. Japan: Defend yourselves. Germany: Zero balance, close everything. Shut down everything in Afghanistan and crater the runways on the way out. Zero balance everything in Iraq, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Africa, and Kurdistan (TM).

        Was that clear enough?

        Read to what I actually write, not what the voices in your head are telling you I believe. Knowing about history and our current military policy does not make me an advocate for anything. Facts are facts. They don’t change just because you don’t like them.

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