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U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy lays into Trump’s foreign policy at Ricky D’s Rib Shack.
Abandoning allies is morally wrong — and strategically, it potentially leaves the U.S. without future allies in battles against terrorism.
Chris Murphy, the state’s junior U.S. senator and a member of the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee, offered that take Thursday on the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw American military personnel from Syria’s northeastern border with Turkey, essentially abandoning the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDR) to the ground and air assaults of a hostile Turkish military.
Murphy was asked about the developments in Syria during an unrelated visit to Ricky D’s Rib Shack in New Haven’s Science Park.
Murphy called foul on Trump’s “immoral” decision to capitulate to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s now quickly materializing plans to assault a U.S. ally that has been instrumental in the fight against the Islamic State (ISIS).
“What Trump has done in Syria is absolutely unconscionable,” Murphy said, “to double cross the Kurds, who dismantled their defenses because we promised to protect them.”
That move is also “awful” for the U.S.‘s national security, he said. ISIS will only get stronger as current detainees potentially escape and return to their previous fight, as the Kurds potentially partner with Syrian dictator Assad in their battle with Turkey for national autonomy, and as the United States declares to all future potential allies that it will abandon them at the drop of a hat.
“Why would another vulnerable group answer our call to help us fight terrorism,” he said, “after they’ve watched us turn our backs on the Kurds?”
He said he has been rallying his colleagues in Congress to pressure the president to change his mind and continue protecting the Kurds. But so far, he said, that Congressional call has fallen on deaf ears in the executive branch.
“We have asked the Kurds to do the fighting against ISIS for us,” he said. “We owe them protection in return.” He said the Trump Administration should have spent the past two-and-a-half years “working really hard to fight a governing structure in northeastern Syria where the Kurds had ownership stake and Turkey’s security concerns were answered.”
That was possible, Murphy said. But for most of Trump’s first term, he had only one single diplomat in northeastern Syria, making a political solution all but impossible.
“There was a pathway to avoid this catastrophe,” he said. “Donald Trump didn’t choose to take it.”
Click on the Facebook Live video to watch Murphy talk about Syria (at the 2:20 mark), and to hear him endorse Justin Elicker for mayor.