Importing Middle East Terrorism

Cliff Kincaid

by Cliff Kincaid: Obama bureaucrats in the CIA are still stinging over President Trump's dramatic decision to both withdraw U.S. forces from northern Syria and take down the leader of ISIS. The decision was a win-win, as the communist terrorist PKK/YPG Kurds in northern Syria were dealt a military defeat by Turkey, and the ISIS terrorist leader was sent to hell, as a result of U.S. military might and canine expertise.

But now, American and other 'volunteers" who went to the Middle East to fight for a Kurdish utopia known as Rojava are coming back to America to continue their revolutionary struggle here.

It never made sense for the U.S. to back one set of terrorists, the PKK/YPG, against another, ISIS. But that was Obama's conscious and deliberate policy. Trump decided he would pursue a pro-American foreign policy that respected our ally Turkey and would leave both terrorist groups in ashes. In another masterstroke, Trump wisely decided to withhold details of the anti-terrorist operation from the leakers and liars on Capitol Hill.

Now, the Kurds are whining to their Obama handlers, many still in the national security bureaucracy. Hence, the same CIA bureaucrats who engineered Obama's no-win policy are now retaliating with smears of Trump in the fake news media. They placed an anti-Trump article in the Tuesday New York Times, under the long title "As Kurds Tracked ISIS Leader, U.S. Withdrawal Threw Raid Into Turmoil." The theme was that Trump betrayed the Kurdish "allies" who had helped locate the ISIS leader by stealing his underwear.

Here's how the Times put it: "...even as the Syrian Kurdish fighters were risking their lives in the hunt that led to Mr. al-Baghdadi's death this weekend, Mr. Trump abruptly shattered America's five-year partnership with them."

That "partnership" was initiated by the previous Obama Administration, which has blood on its hands for funding various terror groups in an effort to initiate "regime change" in Syria and Libya. Let's remember that Obama's legacy was up to 500,000 dead in Syria, Libya became a disaster as well, and Germany welcomed a Muslim invasion of Europe.

The PBS Newshour ran an interview with Obama's CIA Director, John Brennan, in which he called the outcome "regrettable."

How does Obama's CIA director get away with simply saying that the human misery and suffering in Syria spilling over into Europe are "regrettable?" Where is the accountability for this debacle? And on what legal and constitutional basis did Obama take America to war in Syria anyway?

Perhaps this is why Brennan and his comrades conceived Russia-gate. It was a largely successful effort to divert public attention from the bloody policies they pursued in the Middle East.

It's not as if the media didn't understand what Obama's CIA was doing. The Washington Post and the New York Times both reported that a secret CIA operation to train and arm "rebels" in Syria had cost $1 billion by the middle of 2015. The Post said the CIA program set up in 2013 was "to bolster moderate forces." But according to Brennan on PBS, more radical groups joined the fight, leading to a "regrettable" situation.

Those groups joining the fight included the Kurdish PKK/YPG. But they were supported overtly by the Obama Administration, using the CIA and the Pentagon to create a new nation state of Rojava in northern Syria. Members of Antifa, anarchist, and communist groups in the U.S. went there to fight for this new socialist paradise. They formed an "International Freedom Battalion," a "socialist fighting group of foreign volunteers fighting ISIS and Turkey in Syria."

Like the CIA and Pentagon war in Syria, Obama's intervention in Libya was also illegal and unconstitutional. But the media failed to acknowledge the facts. Under the War Powers Act, a president can go to war on his own only if there is an imminent threat to the U.S., and there is a 60-day deadline for the withdrawal of forces. Obama violated both provisions of the law. There was no direct or immediate threat to the U.S. from Libya or Syria, and Obama ignored the 60-day deadline for approval from Congress.

Back in 2007, then-Senator Obama loudly declared that "The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation."

One result of Obama's Libya intervention was the Benghazi massacre of four Americans. Obama's intervention in Syria could result in "blowback" on American soil.

Consider the fact that Americans and others fighting for the PKK in Syria produced a film, "We Need to Take Guns," about their effort. A masked fighter in the film says "this is how internationalism works," and predicted that those who came to the region would take their experiences "back home."

Earlier this year, the Times actually featured an article about some of the "American volunteers." These were among the "hundreds of civilians from Western nations" fighting for the new Marxist state of Rojava in the PKK/YPG military units. "I've always hated capitalism and materialism," said one American from Texas. "What the Kurds are doing fits with what I believe."

In fact, in the wake of the recent PKK/YPG defeat against the Turks, many of these fighters may be returning to the U.S. as hardened communists with military skills, including bomb-making. A "Solidarity With Rojava" organization in the U.S. claims affiliates in several American cities and has announced a "World Resistance Day" against the U.S. and Turkey.

The theme of Trump "betraying" the PKK/YPG terrorists serves to further radicalize left-wingers in love with the mythical state of Rojava. There was never an "alliance" with the Kurds, as the paper claimed. Obama used them against ISIS, based on the expectation they would eventually get their own state in northern Syria. It was a fiction that Obama's CIA dangled in front of them. But Trump was having none of it.

Whatever the Kurds did, they did on their own behalf. But Trump was under no obligation to them. Instead, he had a commitment through NATO to NATO member Turkey, which has been attacked by the PKK/YPG for decades, losing thousands of their citizens to terrorism. In Syria, these units called themselves the Syrian Democratic Forces. Their presence on Turkey's border was a clear and present danger.

Instead of sticking by the Kurdish Marxists, who always had their own terrorist agenda, the United States had and has an obligation to NATO member Turkey to turn over alleged YPG/PKK terrorist leader Ferhat Abdi Sahin, codenamed Mazloum Kobani. The Turkish Embassy says he has killed 41 Turkish civilians and wounded more than 400 in his 28 years in the PKK terrorist organization.

Indeed, Turkey has requested the extradition of Mazloum Kobani under the Treaty on Extradition and Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters between the US and Turkey.

But several U.S. senators are moving in the opposite direction, asking the Trump Administration to expedite a visa for Kobani to enter the U.S. They are Senators Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland), Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tennessee), Jeanne Shaheen (D-New Hampshire), and Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut)

This is a dangerous time, and we can expect more of the same "betrayal of the Kurds by Trump" stories, since they conveniently divert attention from Obama's illegal and immoral policy of arming the Kurds in the first place without congressional approval. Many Obama bureaucrats in the intelligence community and the Pentagon are implicated in this bloody and disastrous policy. They hate Trump for putting a stop to the endless war.

But now, the carnage could come to America.

The February, Times article noted that some of the PKK/YPG volunteers "have returned to the United States, where they are often detained on arrival for questioning about their activities," but that none so far have been prosecuted. However, "that could change if Turkey – a NATO ally – goes to war with the Kurdish forces in Syria," the paper said.

As a result, the communist and anarchist hotheads may now be returning to the United States, to take up arms against Trump, who engineered the perceived "betrayal" of their comrades.

America's new Civil War could be taking an ominous turn.
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Cliff Kincaid is a veteran journalist and media critic and writes for RenewAmerica.

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