US President Donald Trump leaves the White House, Saturday, October 12, en route to the Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia. (Voice of America News 10/12/19)
President Trump poured salt in the wounds Wednesday of America’s onetime Kurdish allies, quipping that “they have plenty of sand to play with.”
Showing even less tact or humanity than usual, Trump mocked the onetime American allies who are facing ethnic cleansing after the president gave Turkey a green light to overrun northern Syria over the weekend.
“It’s not our problem,” Trump said during a White House photo op. “They’ve got a lot of sand over there … There’s a lot of sand they can play with.”
He added that the Kurds are “not angels,” even though the Kurdish forces were the primary American ally in the battle against ISIS and al Qaeda militants.
Trump also repeated a Turkish talking point when he asserted that a Kurdish political party in Turkey are terrorists.
They are “more of a terrorist threat, in many ways, than ISIS,” Trump said, without elaborating.
The comments were particularly offensive because they seem to echo common slurs against Muslims or Arabs.
The Kurds live in adjacent parts of several Middle Eastern countries but are not Arabs. Their oil-rich homeland is mostly mountainous and not desert like much of the Arabian peninsula. https://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/ny-trump-kurds-syria-sand-20191016-wefecboxwjb6xh6c4aumnll3wa-story.html
Syrian Kurds were America’s most critical ally in fighting ISIS in Syria and ending its territorial caliphate. Kurdish militias fought as part of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which lost about 11,000 fighters waging war against the terror group, a defeat for which the US president often takes credit. https://www.vox.com/world/2019/10/16/20908262/turkey-syria-kurds-trump-invasion-questions
Syrian Kurdish–Islamist conflict (2013–present) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_Kurdish%E2%80%93Islamist_conflict_(2013%E2%80%93present)
Texas Sen. John Cornyn defended the president’s abrupt decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria, arguing Wednesday that with Turkey intent on ethnic cleansing of the Kurds — longtime U.S. allies in the fight against the radical Islamic State — the move had merit.
“If Turkey was planning on coming into northern Syria and trying to ethnically cleanse the Kurds, and U.S. troops were caught in the middle, I am not completely convinced that it was a bad idea to get them out of harm’s way,” Cornyn said.
Critics of Trump’s policy have explicitly accused him of standing aside as Turkey attacked and displaced at least 160,000 members of an ethnic group that sacrificed more than 10,000 fighters in seven years of war with ISIS. https://warisboring.com/cornyn-not-a-bad-idea-to-get-u-s-troops-out-of-the-way-if-turkey-planned-to-ethnically-cleanse-the-kurds/
“Ethnic cleansing is the systematic forced removal of ethnic, racial and/or religious groups from a given territory by a more powerful ethnic group, often with the intent of making it ethnically homogeneous. The forces applied may be various forms of forced migration (deportation, population transfer), intimidation, as well as genocide and genocidal rape.
Ethnic cleansing is usually accompanied with efforts to remove physical and cultural evidence of the targeted group in the territory through the destruction of homes, social centers, farms, and infrastructure, and by the desecration of monuments, cemeteries, and places of worship.
…There is no international treaty that specifies a specific crime of ethnic cleansing. However, ethnic cleansing in the broad sense—the forcible deportation of a population—is defined as a crime against humanity under the statutes of both International Criminal Court (ICC) and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). The gross human-rights violations integral to stricter definitions of ethnic cleansing are treated as separate crimes falling under public international law of crimes against humanity and in certain circumstances genocide” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_cleansing
Syrian Kurds: ‘The world has closed its eyes on us’ (BBC News) https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-50181855
From the moment we arrived in Qamishli, ordinary Kurds from baker to waiter asked “why did Trump sell us out?” This is a traditional society that prides itself on a code of honor and do not understand why they have effectively been cut loose.
“America stabbed us in the back… Trump sold us… we were betrayed,” we heard said, again and again.
The Kurds lost 11,000 men and women battling against IS. “The fight wasn’t ours only, we fought on behalf of humanity,” the man says. “Where is the international community, why don’t they stop Erdogan?”
On our way out of Syria, I meet Kino Gabriel, spokesperson for the SDF, the Kurdish-led alliance of militias.
“The American soldiers are just like us – shocked and disappointed with this political decision,” he says. “But it is not their fault. We honor their sacrifices too.”
Eideard 
US President Donald Trump leaves the White House, Saturday, October 12, en route to the Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia. (Voice of America News 10/12/19)
President Trump poured salt in the wounds Wednesday of America’s onetime Kurdish allies, quipping that “they have plenty of sand to play with.”
Showing even less tact or humanity than usual, Trump mocked the onetime American allies who are facing ethnic cleansing after the president gave Turkey a green light to overrun northern Syria over the weekend.
“It’s not our problem,” Trump said during a White House photo op. “They’ve got a lot of sand over there … There’s a lot of sand they can play with.”
He added that the Kurds are “not angels,” even though the Kurdish forces were the primary American ally in the battle against ISIS and al Qaeda militants.
Trump also repeated a Turkish talking point when he asserted that a Kurdish political party in Turkey are terrorists.
They are “more of a terrorist threat, in many ways, than ISIS,” Trump said, without elaborating.
The comments were particularly offensive because they seem to echo common slurs against Muslims or Arabs.
The Kurds live in adjacent parts of several Middle Eastern countries but are not Arabs. Their oil-rich homeland is mostly mountainous and not desert like much of the Arabian peninsula.
https://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/ny-trump-kurds-syria-sand-20191016-wefecboxwjb6xh6c4aumnll3wa-story.html
Syrian Kurds were America’s most critical ally in fighting ISIS in Syria and ending its territorial caliphate. Kurdish militias fought as part of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which lost about 11,000 fighters waging war against the terror group, a defeat for which the US president often takes credit. https://www.vox.com/world/2019/10/16/20908262/turkey-syria-kurds-trump-invasion-questions
Syrian Kurdish–Islamist conflict (2013–present) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_Kurdish%E2%80%93Islamist_conflict_(2013%E2%80%93present)
Texas Sen. John Cornyn defended the president’s abrupt decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria, arguing Wednesday that with Turkey intent on ethnic cleansing of the Kurds — longtime U.S. allies in the fight against the radical Islamic State — the move had merit.
“If Turkey was planning on coming into northern Syria and trying to ethnically cleanse the Kurds, and U.S. troops were caught in the middle, I am not completely convinced that it was a bad idea to get them out of harm’s way,” Cornyn said.
Critics of Trump’s policy have explicitly accused him of standing aside as Turkey attacked and displaced at least 160,000 members of an ethnic group that sacrificed more than 10,000 fighters in seven years of war with ISIS. https://warisboring.com/cornyn-not-a-bad-idea-to-get-u-s-troops-out-of-the-way-if-turkey-planned-to-ethnically-cleanse-the-kurds/
“Ethnic cleansing is the systematic forced removal of ethnic, racial and/or religious groups from a given territory by a more powerful ethnic group, often with the intent of making it ethnically homogeneous. The forces applied may be various forms of forced migration (deportation, population transfer), intimidation, as well as genocide and genocidal rape.
Ethnic cleansing is usually accompanied with efforts to remove physical and cultural evidence of the targeted group in the territory through the destruction of homes, social centers, farms, and infrastructure, and by the desecration of monuments, cemeteries, and places of worship.
…There is no international treaty that specifies a specific crime of ethnic cleansing. However, ethnic cleansing in the broad sense—the forcible deportation of a population—is defined as a crime against humanity under the statutes of both International Criminal Court (ICC) and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). The gross human-rights violations integral to stricter definitions of ethnic cleansing are treated as separate crimes falling under public international law of crimes against humanity and in certain circumstances genocide” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_cleansing
Syrian Kurds: ‘The world has closed its eyes on us’ (BBC News) https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-50181855
From the moment we arrived in Qamishli, ordinary Kurds from baker to waiter asked “why did Trump sell us out?” This is a traditional society that prides itself on a code of honor and do not understand why they have effectively been cut loose.
“America stabbed us in the back… Trump sold us… we were betrayed,” we heard said, again and again.
The Kurds lost 11,000 men and women battling against IS. “The fight wasn’t ours only, we fought on behalf of humanity,” the man says. “Where is the international community, why don’t they stop Erdogan?”
On our way out of Syria, I meet Kino Gabriel, spokesperson for the SDF, the Kurdish-led alliance of militias.
“The American soldiers are just like us – shocked and disappointed with this political decision,” he says. “But it is not their fault. We honor their sacrifices too.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-middle-east-50162402/we-were-by-the-gate-when-a-shell-hit