Fifteen years ago, I began to offer a course on religion and violence. The course was a response to 9/11, a way of introducing students to groups who, while claiming to be religious, were prepared to use violence to achieve their goals. I taught the course every year until I retired last May, which is another way of saying that the problem continues.
To offer such a course meant that initially I had to try to understand Al-Qaeda. In addition, I had to learn about white supremacist groups in Europe and North America as well as far-right Jewish groups in Israel.
It was discouraging to both my students and me that the number of violent groups claiming to be religious increased every year. We witnessed the rise of extremist Hindu groups in India; other Islamist groups in the Middle East, such as Al-Nusra; and extremist Buddhist groups in Myanmar.
Eventually, ISIS became a focus of the class and of my research. I was asked by various TV channels and radio stations in Indiana to explain the origins and aspirations of ISIS.
Studying ISIS meant that I had to understand the role of the Kurds in the regions of Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Turkey. Not that long ago, ISIS forces advanced from Syria into Iraq and threatened to overwhelm both nations. The map was changing every day, and ISIS looked unstoppable. Syrian and Iraqi forces were no match for the highly disciplined ISIS troops, and there was a real possibility that northern Syria and Iraq would become the heart of an ISIS caliphate led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Our memories are tragically short if we forget how close ISIS came to achieving its goals. There was only one military force that could battle ISIS and push it back. And that force was the Kurds. Without the Kurds, the battle against extremist groups such as ISIS, Al-Qaeda, and Al-Nusra would have been lost. In other words, Kurdish blood was shed for us.
What motivated the Kurds to be America’s most effective ally in the region? The Kurds have always had one goal in mind, that being to establish their own autonomous nation-state in the areas of northern Syria, Iraq, Iran, and southern Turkey where their people live. The Kurds fought and helped defeat ISIS both for us and for themselves. They pinned their hopes on the belief that if they fought along US forces, one day the US would support their desire for a country.
That is the background to the shocking and shameful decision made by Trump to betray the Kurds and do nothing while Turkish forces invade Kurdish-held regions. Once again, Trump acted without consultation with experts in the region from his own party. Once again, Trump made foreign policy based on a whim. If a Democratic president had done this, Republicans would surely have pressed for impeachment. Perhaps Republicans are finally waking to the fact that Trump isn’t a Republican at all, and he never has been. He is the leader of the Trump party, a party often of one, a party that sees no problem acting without a sense of loyalty or a sense of history.
It has been reported that Trump defended his decision by saying the Kurds didn’t fight for the US at Normandy, meaning WWII. Think about the lunacy of that comment. If a student at Franklin College had written something so inane in a paper, that student would have failed the assignment.
Imagine being a small country today that has been an historic ally of the US. What guarantee does that small country have that Trump won’t betray it tomorrow, as he betrayed NATO and the beleaguered Ukraine? The only countries who appear safe from Trump’s betrayals are Russia, North Korea and Saudi Arabia. With friends like that . . .
History will not be kind to Trump. Blood, Kurdish blood, is on Trump’s hands. As one US soldier serving alongside the Kurds in northern Syria posted on social media, he is for the first time ashamed of his country and president.
If you are ashamed of what Trump has thoughtlessly done in betraying the Kurds, let your representatives know. Republicans and Democrats can certainly agree on this, that the US doesn’t betray its friends.
David Carlson of Franklin is a professor of philosophy and religion. Send comments to [email protected]t.
