“Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.”      --Walter Scott.   

Donald Trump’s recent decision to pull U.S. Armed Forces personnel from Syria has been assailed by liberals, conservatives, military and diplomatic strategists,  men and women of high stature, religionists and agnostics, and people of goodwill from all walks of life around the world. His only supporters appear to be Vladimir Putin and those near to him, Kim Jong Un, and perhaps China’s power elite. The consequence of pulling our troops was followed by Turkey’s invasion of the corridor along its eastern border with the purpose of annihilating the Kurds who occupy that region, while also killing thousands of innocent men, women, and children and creating as many as 3 million refugees. 

In the wake of all this opposition, Trump’s personal fact checkers asserted only that the refugees would be Europe’s problem, not ours, and the Kurds were expendable because they had refused to help the Allies during WWII, and they were notably absent from the landing at Normandy.

Apart from the fact that Trump was also absent from the entire war in Vietnam when he was a young man under the guise of a “bone spur” in one of his feet, proclaimed to be there by a physician who was one of Fred Trump’s renters in one of his Manhattan buildings, the fact-checkers were also wrong about the Kurds in general. 

After about 5 minutes of personal fact-checking, I learned the following about the Kurds. First, our military leaders in the Middle East have been virtually unanimous in their opinions that the Kurds are fierce fighters who have fought along-side U.S. troops since the outset of hostilities in the Middle East. Their courage under fire is well-known. Second, the Kurds have no government, and no world standing as a nation state. The reference to Kurdistan applies to their various settlements in 5 nations: Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and  Armenia.   These nations were mostly neutral during WWII. Many Kurds, however, fought with the Soviet Union and with Turkey against the Axis powers in that war. 

It appears to this observer that Trump wants to assert to his followers in the upcoming election cycle that he has kept his word about pulling our troops out of Syria, about building a wall along our southern border with Mexica, while decimating our immigration policies, destroying planned-parenthood, women’s rights, bringing down our public education system, weakening all forms consumer protections, taking away worker’s rights, packing our Supreme Court and federal courts with ultra-right wing conservatives, and disengaging the U.S. from our alliances around the world. 

But will he also tell them that he lined the pockets of the ultra- rich with huge tax cuts; eliminated the inheritance tax for his own estate; aligned the U.S. with the interests of Russia and North Korea; while forcing consumers to pay for most of the items on this list by imposing tariffs on imports that have been passed on to them in higher prices on a very long list of products; conspired with Russia and Ukraine to help him in the upcoming election; widened executive privilege to include all members of the executive branch of government; while encouraging criminal activity by all those who do his bidding with the promise of a pardon in advance of their crimes?    

It seems almost a merging of comedy with tragedy to add that Donald has proclaimed himself to be a “genius” while he has also told more than 12,000 fact-checked lies to the world with a straight face. If there is such a place as Heaven, what are all those spiritual beings now thinking of the killing fields and the troubled times that he alone has brought upon us?   I propose this sign on the outskirts of Washington, D.C. “Welcome to the New Swamp. Set your clocks back 243 years.”