Natural Essays

On the pastoral road to doom

By Richard Phelps
Posted 10/16/19

Between here and Connecticut, it’s still possible to get on a narrow road that takes you back in time, like a time machine, into the rolling hills of New England, with the hewn structures and …

This item is available in full to subscribers.

Please log in to continue

Log in
Natural Essays

On the pastoral road to doom

Posted

Between here and Connecticut, it’s still possible to get on a narrow road that takes you back in time, like a time machine, into the rolling hills of New England, with the hewn structures and hand-me-down paint colors of barn-red, white and mustard.

Driving to the Bethlehem garlic festival, the sun not quite up, the sky orange, blue and strung with jet trails, I could almost begin to think America was normal again, if it ever was, which it wasn’t. Driving through the green mown fields edged with stone walls and yellow maples, and seeing the reflective ponds and streams and the trusting US mailboxes, gives you time to think, to think on America.

The stench coming from Washington is like poison gas and the White House is oozing like an open wound. I am aware of the sad fact a majority of voters in our county and town voted for the current president, for whatever reason, but I hope his instability, greed, and ignorance of the world is becoming apparent to those who were so desperate for change that they voted for such a man, not caring about the outcome. The invocation to Russia and Ukraine and China to openly interfere in our election process should, alone, be enough to kindle remorse. But the betrayal of the Kurdish people by the President ranks as an all-time American foreign policy low. Treachery is a word with meaning.

Of course, part of the Trumpian disdain for the Kurds comes from the fact that our alliance with the Kurds was forged by President Obama, and in Trump’s enraged mind, anything of Obama must be destroyed, like a new pharaoh obliterating the stone cartouche of the previous ruler with a hammer and stone chisel. Obama’s challenge with the ISIS caliphate was to end the danger without putting American troops back on the ground in significant numbers. To do that, Obama forged an understanding with the Kurdish forces of northern Syria to do the fighting with US logistical support, Special Forces and air cover. It worked.

It is well known that the Kurds want their own country and their tribes are centered on lands making part of Syria, Iraq and Turkey. Trump has Trump Towers in Istanbul, capitol of Turkey, and in a phone call with Erdagon, president of Turkey, agreed to abandon US support for the Kurds. The Kurds lost thousands of fighters fighting alongside our forces in defeat of ISIS. Now the Kurds are under attack by Turkey. The statements made by Trump about the Kurds are callous and shortsighted and, typically, unfeeling.

In an odd twist today, we learn the Kurds have formed an alliance with the murderous Assad Syrian regime and its Russian backers to counter the Turkish invasion of northern Syrian Kurdish and free Syrian territory. This, a day after Trump said he didn’t care if the Kurds found other allies. Odd, isn’t it? Who really is in control here? Is this another open win for Putin? Did Trump throw northern Syria to the Russians and further weaken NATO by withdrawing American support for the Kurds and allowing Turkey to invade Syria to draw Russia even closer to another NATO border? And now, economic sanctions on Turkey, when all we had to do to stabilize the region was to do nothing? To keep our support where it was while fostering a negotiated peace? But negotiating anything of last value is too complex for the Trump team. They would rather just walk away, make a meaningless, heartless statement, let the chips fall where they may. And the chips are falling with reports of 100,000 new refugees of Kurdish women and children on the dusty roads of the old Orient. No real talks with North Korea, nothing going on with Iran, no movement on Palestine, State Department positions unfilled, lifelong foreign diplomats fired or resigning. It’s a shambles. The consequences of NO POLICY are as real as the consequences of the wrong policy.

I’ve been to Turkey, to Istanbul. I have left notes on the Pudding Shop’s Wall of Messages, where travelers from around the world, passing through the real bridge over the Bosporus, connecting Europe to Asia, leave messages, paper notes, for friends to find whenever they get there.

Connections, trust, fellowship, communication. I’m on the clean roads of New England and the Kurds are on the hot roads of Syria and we are all on the road to doom.