The Donald Trump thread

[jon1959]

Why blame Trump?

The UK funded and armed these very "mercenaries" under Cameron and May. These are the "FSA" you lot were counting on to liberate Syria. Think of the hundreds of thousands of Syrians they killed before this, while you cheered on "democrazy." https://t.co/Rvo56MgltM

— Sharmine Narwani (@snarwani) October 14, 2019

Seriously? 'Why blame Trump'? Your excuses for him this time will surpass all previous spin.

Who else do you suggest enabled and encouraged this latest round of killing and displacement (and then very half-heartedly pretended to be trying to put the genie back in the bottle once he realised that he had blundered into another massive and fatal cock-up)? He has finally managed to unite Democrats and Republicans, Europeans and Saudis in condemnation. Shot himself in the foot (and the Kurds in the head) and then doubled down on his stupidity in a week of tweets. MAGA my arse!

I doubt anyone on here will try to sanitise the background and history of the Free Syrian Army, but the reason they are running amok now as part of the Turkish assault is because Trump gave the green light.

[cyril evans awaydays]

Seriously? 'Why blame Trump'? Your excuses for him this time will surpass all previous spin.

Who else do you suggest enabled and encouraged this latest round of killing and displacement (and then very half-heartedly pretended to be trying to put the genie back in the bottle once he realised that he had blundered into another massive and fatal cock-up)? He has finally managed to unite Democrats and Republicans, Europeans and Saudis in condemnation. Shot himself in the foot (and the Kurds in the head) and then doubled down on his stupidity in a week of tweets. MAGA my arse!

I doubt anyone on here will try to sanitise the background and history of the Free Syrian Army, but the reason they are running amok now as part of the Turkish assault is because Trump gave the green light.

Not any kind of nod and wink either. Immediately after another one of those "perfect calls" with foreign leaders only too happy to queue up to take advantage of the master negotiating the art of the deal!

[Wales-Bales]

Seriously? 'Why blame Trump'? Your excuses for him this time will surpass all previous spin.

Who else do you suggest enabled and encouraged this latest round of killing and displacement (and then very half-heartedly pretended to be trying to put the genie back in the bottle once he realised that he had blundered into another massive and fatal cock-up)? He has finally managed to unite Democrats and Republicans, Europeans and Saudis in condemnation. Shot himself in the foot (and the Kurds in the head) and then doubled down on his stupidity in a week of tweets. MAGA my arse!

I doubt anyone on here will try to sanitise the background and history of the Free Syrian Army, but the reason they are running amok now as part of the Turkish assault is because Trump gave the green light.

Wait, we were told the FSA were the good guys, trained and armed by the West to oppose Assad, and now they are the bad guys and it's all Trump's fault? You need to give some more details here ...

[jon1959]

Wait, we were told the FSA were the good guys, trained and armed by the West to oppose Assad, and now they are the bad guys and it's all Trump's fault? You need to give some more details here ...

You dodge a straight question about Trump's responsibility for this political and humanitarian disaster - so far over 100 dead (including executions of prisoners), over 150,000 people fled from their homes, 750 ISIS affiliates escape from detention.... abandoned Kurds appealing to Assad for help.... all the result of Turkish air and ground attacks and the actions of their local clients and proxies.... and I need to give 'more details'?

Are you trying to claim that Trump had a reasonable expectation that the Turks and the FSA would occupy swathes of northern Syria under Kurdish control and would not commit atrocities? That ISIS prisoners would be kept secure? Turkey has been armed and trained by other NATO powers for almost 70 years but has not hidden its agenda in regard to the Kurds and Syria. The FSA (who have morphed all over the place in the past 8 years from anti-Assad military defectors through to Turkish client jihadists) are just an adjunct to the Turks.

Trump set this off through his deal with Erdogan when he had slipped his minders. He has never had the interest or the capacity or the attention span to understand complex geopolitical issues, and in this case he sold out the Kurds and threw a hand grenade into the Middle East for what the thought would be glowing domestic headlines (to distract from impeachment talk). He was wrong on that too.

It seems your best defence of him and answer to 'Why blame Trump?' is that he was too stupid to know better ('we were told the FSA were the good guys'....). He is to blame for this political chaos and humanitarian tragedy. Own it!