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Ex-NATO
Commander Wesley Clark To CNN: Did Erdogan Blackmail Trump?
25
December, 2018
Former
NATO commander Wesley Clark told CNN Monday morning that Turkish
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan night have blackmailed President Trump
into withdrawing US forces from Syria. The retired U.S. Army general
and former NATO Supreme Allied Commander posed the following
explosive question during a CNN live interview on Monday:
"You have to ask, why was the decision made? People around the world are asking this and our allies in the Middle East are asking, did Erdogan blackmail the president? Was there a payoff or something? What was it? Why would a guy make a decision like this?"
This
follows a broad Pentagon and deep state backlash in reaction to last
week's sudden White House announcement of a "full" and
"immediate" pullout of the some 2000+ American military
personnel training and advising Kurdish-Arab SDF forces in north-east
Syria (in October the commander of the Special Operations Joint Task
Force Operation Inherent Resolvelet
slip that there were actually 4,000 troops in Syria,
but quickly tried
to walk it back).
Quickly
on the heels of the decision Trump's senior aides noted the decision
was made after
a phone call between Trump and Erdogan on December 14th, and
curiously the U.S. State Department approved the sale of $3.5
billion in patriots missiles the day after.
Ex-NATO Supreme Allied Commander @GeneralClark: "I'm very concerned" about the US withdrawal from Syria because "there doesn't seem to be any strategic rationale for the decision."
"Did Erdogan blackmail the president? Was there a payoff is or something?" cnn.it/2Cxf7vp
Gen.
Clark said on CNN's "New Day": “There
doesn’t seem to be any strategic rationale for the decision. And if
there’s no strategic rationale for the decision then you have to
ask, why was the decision made?" And
he followed with: "People around the world are asking this and
some of our friends and our allies in the Middle East are asking, did
Erdogan blackmail the president? Was
there a payoff or something? Why
would a guy make a decision like this? Because all the
recommendations were against it."
President @RT_Erdogan of Turkey has very strongly informed me that he will eradicate whatever is left of ISIS in Syria....and he is a man who can do it plus, Turkey is right “next door.” Our troops are coming home!
Clark
further slammed Trump for weakening relationships with allies around
the world, including with NATO: “What the United States had going
for it [was] the reputation of reliable consistency — that we were
going to be there through thick and thin. The
decision on the spur of the moment as the president made undercuts
all of that,”
Clark said.
He
added further, calling the Syria pullout decision "dangerous":
That kind of decision sends a message around the world to South Korea, to our allies at NATO, to Japan. When the going gets tough, or for whatever reason no one can understand, suddenly a tweet comes out, the policy has changed. This is a really dangerous time for the United States and foreign policy because of this.
Meanwhile,
the current crisscross on interests and recent scandals (most
especially the Kashoggi killing and slow Turkish drip of
information), and the potential for geopolitical blackmail between
Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the United States just got more interesting
with the following Monday Trump tweet:
The
White House has long pushed for the Saudis to step up spending on the
coalition mission in Syria, and is now attempting to reassure the
world there will be no power vacuum in eastern Syria once the
Pentagon withdraws.
Did
we just witness a grand bargain for Syria struck based on US exit?
Gen. Clark is best known for this:
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