The military branch of the PYD party was crucial during the fight against ISIS. Leaving them to die in Erdogan's hands is tragic.
Energy independence from the ME is a reliable quality by which the US (and others) will care less about the region. But this also means leaving the regional developed powers to manage the area with greater and greater autonomy (e.g. Israel and SA).
To that end, we are arguably less “involved” today. Our dependence on that oil and our direct action involvement there are directly related.
By the numbers, we are less involved than in, say, 2005 if the US body count is the metric. If civilian deaths are the metric, Iraq’s numbers have fallen off a cliff since 2017 [0]. I would guess the same for Syria but don’t have data at hand.
It’s tough to want it both ways - asking the US to intervene for peace but not spill any blood. If the ME tells us anything, it’s that peace does not come from doing nothing - it is not the region’s default state given the cultural animosities. Stability seems the best chance for civilian peace there. The US is increasingly delegating or abdicating that role to the most friendly options available.
How would you prefer that the trajectory change? More direct “peacekeeping” involvement? Total abandonment while watching a regional death match play out?
[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/269729/documented-civili...
This is also how I feel about China and Hong Kong, NK, how I would have felt under WW2/Germany, and how I would feel basically every other foreign policy incident.
I think this is the biggest place where he said one thing, then immediately did another. We are involved in the Middle East as we ever were, and much much more so with more disastrous effects in places like Yemen. The US' involvement in Yemen should be enough to laugh Trump offstage any time he talks about "getting out of the middle east".
Please please please don't let him off the hook for this by saying he had "good ideas" here when he was talking out of one side of his mouth while civilian families are being slaughtered.