Today's Must-Read: Digby on the Syria Mess

Digby has a good post on what our pull-out in Syria means for the Kurds and Arabs in the region, ISIS, and, by implication, for us:

Here's the New Yorker's Robin Wright on the subject:

At 3 a.m. on Monday, Middle East time, the commander of American special forces in Syria—whose name is not public for security reasons—held a video teleconference with General Mazloum Kobani Abdi, the Kurdish militia commander who led the war against isis on behalf of the U.S. coalition. The commander had bad news. President Trump had decided—after a telephone call with the Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan—that the United States would stand aside if Turkey, as announced, soon invades northeast Syria. U.S. troops positioned in two key posts in Syria on the border with Turkey would immediately be withdrawn. Mazloum and his Syrian Democratic Forces, who lost some eleven thousand fighters in the grinding five-year war against isis, were on their own.

Mazloum recounted the conversation to me a few hours later. “The implications are catastrophic,” he said. “We told the Americans we would prepare for war. The Kurds will defend themselves. There is no place for us to go. So that means a war between the Kurds and Turkey. The Arabs also won’t accept a Turkish invasion, either.” The S.D.F., created under U.S. tutelage, includes both Kurds and Arabs.

What Digby doesn't touch on, but I think is there by implication, is that we (meaning the squatter in the White House) have just insured ongoing instability in the Middle East, this time focused on Turkey and northern Syria. I mean, does anyone think that Turkish forces slaughtering Syrian Kurds is not going to have repercussions at home, where Kurds are the largest minority?

One more thing I can see happening: The Russians gathering up the pieces by means of a series of mutual-defense treaties -- against the U.S.

Read the whole thing.