As Russia takes US airfield, Trump serves Putin again

[Boats]

As Russia takes US airfield, Trump serves Putin again
By: Quin Hillyer - Washington Examiner - 11-16-19
RE: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/o...es-putin-again

More evidence that President Trump is acting as Putin’s poodle comes with news late this week that Russia is now taking over a key U.S. airfield in the Kobani region of Syria. Russian forces raised their flag on Nov. 14 over the Serin base south of the city of Kobani which, as one report accurately put it, “has symbolic value since it was the first city w[h]ere the Islamic State was defeated in January 2015.”

As explained by an analyst on Kurdish TV, “If US forces completely withdraw, it could open the city to attacks by Turkey and will damage the perception of Kobani’s people. The stability and peace that the city enjoyed would turn into chaos, as is what happened in other parts of Kurdish-controlled Syria.”

The United States built the airstrip, which was “critical to the defeat of ISIS’ so-called caliphate.” Those were the words of lament from Brett McGurk, a conservative who worked under former Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist as a law clerk before serving key diplomatic roles under Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Trump. The surrender of the area, and the airfield, to Russia came via orders from Trump.

This is just the latest example of how Trump’s foreign policy consistently serves the interests of Russian leader Vladimir Putin, not to mention all the times and ways he originally tried to do Putin’s bidding before being pulled back from doing so by his own top military and diplomatic officials. Almost all of Trump’s actions with regard to Ukraine, for example, have sided with the pro-Russian side of Ukrainian affairs, even as he reportedly has said Ukraine isn’t even a “real country” but should still be a part of Russia. Even when he acquiesced to letting Ukraine purchase Javelin missiles, he added the caveat that for the time being, they couldn’t even be deployed but merely kept in reserve, more or less symbolically.

Trump has pushed to re-admit Russia to the G-7 economic group despite its unlawful military conquest of Ukraine. He recalled a U.S. warship that was entering the Black Sea on a rather routine mission upon hearing that Putin objected. He said he doesn’t even really object to the Russians interfering in U.S. elections. He has allowed Russian officials into the Oval Office without accompanying U.S. officials. He repeatedly threatened to renounce the single most important part of the NATO alliance, Article 5, which calls for mutual aid if any NATO member is attacked, backing down from that stance only after repeated, frenzied lobbying from his own generals and Cabinet.

Trump repeatedly disputed the British government’s solid conclusion that Russia had poisoned a former Russian spy on British soil. And he has repeatedly hired aides in the pay of Russians or those with pro-Putin sympathies, including Rudy Giuliani and the now federally imprisoned Paul Manafort.

All this, of course, comes on top of his years of repeated public fawning over Putin, publicly not just defending him but singing his praises at almost every opportunity.

And now, he gives Putin everything Putin long has wanted in Syria, to the extent that Russia TV alternately sings Trump’s praises, gloats over his surrender in Syria, and mocks him for his subservience to Putin’s leader.

Unfortunately, this is not funny. Russia’s economy may be weak and its population unhealthy, but Putin still commands even more nuclear warheads than the U.S. does — and he is working feverishly to develop stronger ones that U.S. missile defenses cannot block.

Trump’s kowtowing to Putin runs directly counter to U.S. interests. It is dangerous. It must not continue.