The Twitter Foreign Policy Experts
It’s amazing how many people on Twitter who couldn’t identify Syria or Turkey on a map are suddenly foreign policy experts on Syria and Turkey.
It’s amazing how quickly all the legal experts on Twitter shift gears and become foreign policy experts, isn’t it? And not just any foreign policy experts. They’re all experts on Middle East geopolitics and military strategy.
People who probably couldn’t point out Turkey or Northern Syria on a map if their lives depended on it and know the sum total of zero about the historical geo-politics of that region are now certain that President Trump is “abandoning our allies” the Kurds.
I was very sick with a fever yesterday and spent a great deal of time on Twitter reading the hot-takes from noted foreign policy experts like S.E. Cupp and Meghan McCain.
Let me tell you, it made for some pathetic reading.
So you can imagine how refreshing this tweet from Julie Kelly was:
If only more people would just admit they really don’t know enough to offer an opinion.
But, as I said, just as Twitter spawns legal experts who know nothing of the law, it spawns foreign policy experts who know nothing about all the moving parts surrounding the Syrian Civil War, the Kurds, and Turkey.
Sadly, many of these faux foreign policy experts were blue checkmark “journalists” and “pundits” whose only mission in life is to find some reason to attack President Trump.
No matter what the President does, they will come out against it. It’s just how these people are.
Now, I’m not a foreign policy expert. And I certainly won’t pretend to be.
I realize there are a lot of politicians who believe American forces once deployed should never ever leave. How else do you explain our presence in Afghanistan for nearly two decades?
Personally, I’m not a fan of “mission creep.”
Yes, the Kurds were fighting the same enemy we were. Which explains why we armed them so well.
And though I think it’s nutty that they are, Turkey is a NATO member. In other words, they too are an ally.
Do Meghan McCain and S.E. Cupp really want the US to send troops to battle a NATO ally in order to protect the Kurds?
Now, I’m not one of those foreign policy experts, but that seems like a tremendously bad idea that would create a whole bushel of new problems.
Then again, the Twitter foreign policy experts who are attacking President Trump never do seem to get around to outlining what should be done instead.
You’d think they’d know what to do since they’re all so well informed, right?
Americans elected Donald Trump because he promised to put America and American interests first. He was not in any way coy about his desire to end our interventionist policies in the Middle East.
What have those interventionist policies brought us? We’ve been in Afghanistan for eighteen years. Sons are now fighting in a country their father’s fought in. Doesn’t that seem a tad insane to you?
President Trump sought to destroy ISIS. We’ve done that. Their caliphate is history.
At some point, the question has to be “how does staying in a Civil War on the other side of the planet serve our national interest?”
Everyone clutching their pearls and whimpering, “But we’re abandoning the Kurds!” seem to think the Kurds are helpless little lambs who couldn’t survive without a couple hundred US troops standing guard over them.
Is that even the case? Do these Twitter foreign policy experts even know if that’s the case?
I read the White House statement on this and it seems to me the Twitter foreign policy experts are making a hell of a lot of inferences that aren’t supported by the statement.
Instead, they seem to be basing their remarks, not on the statement itself, but on the inferences of other people.
But see, this is how the game is played. They’ve done the same thing with that phone call with the Ukrainian President — telling us Trump demanded Ukraine “dig up dirt” on his political opponent or he wouldn’t give them US aid. As if that is in any way supported by the transcript itself. Everyone is getting angry, not over what the President actually said, but with the inferences made by people who want to paint the President in the worst possible light.
See, this is why I appreciate Julie Kelly’s tweet.
Better to simply admit you don’t know enough about this than to pop off as if you do.
But then again, it’s Twitter in the Age of Trump.
Not having Clue One about an issue should never get in the way of your mission to attack all things Trump.
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