The “Squad” Finds Common Ground with Matt Gaetz to Spill Kurdish and Arab Blood in Northern Syria. Nothing About this is OK
On October 12th, 2019, less than a week after then President Trump announced a “withdrawal” of the small US military presence in Northern Syria, the Turkish army and an allied band of invading Islamist forces captured an unarmed Kurdish political leader. They dragged her from her car and lynched her on the side of the road. She was beaten, her legs were broken, she was scalped alive, and then shot. She was far from the only person to die that day.
Many more civilians were killed by the invading forces along with massive and indiscriminate Turkish bombing and shelling. The autonomously run areas in Northern Syria (Rojava) are mostly flat geographically. They have no air force and no air defense. In a way, it’s even wrong to call the 2019 war, a war.
Thousands of civilians were also displaced or expelled by force by the invading armies. To this day, there remains daily and indiscriminate shelling of civilians in Rojava, almost all of which emanates from the now heavily militarized, Turkish occupied regions in Northern Syria. The entire point of Trump’s 2019 “withdrawal”, was to start this war. The fact that Trump’s decision followed a phone call from Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan (literally hours after), was no coincidence.
The 2019 war also helped birth a massive Turkish drone campaign against the Rojava region. In 2022 alone there were 151 drone strikes, killing and injuring over 200 people. In just one strike in August, four children were killed while playing volleyball at a UN sponsored girls school. There was no other “target”.
Chances are, you have never heard about any of this. This news rarely penetrates the mainstream press and it is something that never penetrates the political left. But this is a really all the aftermath of the 2019 war and occupation. Gaetz, being a deep admirer of Trump, wants to emulate him with his new resolution on Syria. Luckily, he does not have the votes, and with Trump out of the White House, hopefully a little less war will come to Northern Syria. So, why then are so called progressives foaming at the mouth for more war in Northern Syria?
The small US military presence in Northern Syria came into being for the defense of the Syrian Kurds in 2014, a group on the brink of being the victims of a genocide at the hands of the Islamic State. Unlike the Yazidi communities in Iraq, who did in fact suffer such a fate, the Kurds were already organized and had a fighting defense force. The small US ground presence and direct military aid to the Kurds helped to turn the tide against ISIS, much to the chagrin of NATO ally Turkey. The small ground force remains to help coordinate counter terrorism and training missions, a clear remaining threat to the region. (1)
It is important to note that despite US support, the Kurdish led forces (consisting of far more than just Kurds) did most of the fighting and all of the dying in the war against the ISIS caliphate in Northern Syria. Further, given the Turkish state’s anti Kurdish politics and their own imperial territorial desires, the US became the only key deterrent to blocking a Turkish led invasion from the North. And while the Turkish state remains the one existential threat to the Rojava revolution, the Assad regime’s historically racist and anti Kurdish policies from the South, along with Russian pressure, has placed the Syrian Kurds in a vice. Despite this, against all odds, the revolution continues.
As an overtly decentralized, democratic socialist and pluralist revolutionary movement, it makes sense for the likes of Trump and Erdogan (and by extension the likes of Matt Gaetz) to feel threatened by the existence of Rojava. But the “squad”? Aren’t they in the DSA?
This cognitive dissonance, unfortunately, is not surprising. Despite one of DSA’s own members being literally killed in a Turkish airstrike while serving in the Rojava defense forces, the DSA itself could not even bring itself to condemn Trump in 2019 and so called anti war groups like Code Pink found themselves jumping with joy as the blood began to flow.
Let us just take a brief look into one issue, women’s rights, both before and after the 2019 war and occupation. To quote Meghan Bodette, one of the few people taking the time to do academic research and documentation into violence against women under Turkish occupied Syria:
There could not have been a more 180 degree turn when it comes to women’s liberation than what the 2019 war and ongoing occupation has done. During their heroic fight against the Islamic State, it was not uncommon for photos of Kurdish women fighters to glossed the pages of various mainstream media, however the womens’ movement in Rojava runs much deeper. One of the foundations of the revolution is not only the rights for women to follow their own destinies but rather the actual empowerment to do so.
How can anyone who claims to be a progressive actually watch this violent rollback of women’s rights, a rollback unlike anything the world has ever seen, via war, and say “let’s do it again, we need more of this” or “it was worth it” to achieve some fake, abstract ends.
Like the Right, the Left also falls into the same trap of viewing everything in black and white (the enemy of my enemy is my friend, The US military has been and forever will be an evil force, etc etc). This kind of dogmatic politic is toxic. Even Turkey being the second largest army in NATO and the main driver of the violence, simply does not matter. They are not a sexy enough enemy. It’s those couple hundred US troops (who are present with the support of the Kurds) who are the real evil.
Even if one does not know the background, it only takes all of five minutes of research and a little independent thinking around certain facts to reach the right conclusion. Rojava and all of its people must be protected. The terror and violence that will be unleashed by the Turkish state and its allied gangs is unacceptable. It is our duty as progressives to block it by standing in solidarity with the people of the region. Ironically, unlike a lot of goals of the left, we actually have a chance to actually protect the revolution. So why aren’t we? People like Bowman and AOC are not idiots. They understand the deadly and violent consequences from pushing the button that they literally have their fingers on. They simply do not care. After all, why should they?
There is an old Kurdish saying: Kurds have no friends but the mountains. A group with no state, no political power, no money, almost no political influence in the US, and even less political influence on the American left. In a pure Machiavellian sense, it’s a win win for the politicians.
There are some on the left who have certain levels of moral consistency (for example Noam Chomsky stood steadfast in his opposition to the war and in defense of Rojava, as did Bernie Sanders), but when it comes to many on the left with actual influence in government, moral consistency goes out the window.
Of course the primary goal of the “squad” is not to spill Kurdish blood. That is simply the collateral damage for the political points that they think they are winning by voting, along with Matt Gaetz, to do so. It’s easy to do that of course, if the people you are killing have zero leverage over you, political or otherwise and are thousands of miles away.
Nothing about what the “squad” is doing in this dark alliance with the pseudo fascist wing of the Republican Party is OK.
(1) Despite what its ignorant cheerleaders on the left said at the time, Trump’s “withdrawal” was not actually a withdrawal, but instead a movement of US forces away from the Turkish border to help facilitate the invasion.
