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For the third time, President Trump is trying to withdraw from Syria. For the third time, his own allies, including Lindsey Graham, are attacking him — and pressure is piling high on the White House to find some kind of way to remain in Syria to keep America’s allies, the Kurdish-dominated YPG, from enduring a major Turkish offensive.
But I think this will be the last Syrian ‘withdrawal’ — not merely because third time’s the charm, but because as impeachment now closes in, Trump needs to build up his base’s loyalty. And there have been few greater rifts between Trump and his otherwise fanatical base than Syria.
Thus to close the ranks, Trump will probably give his Alt-Right base what it has long sought in Syria — and in doing so, will help solidify their neo-isolationism as part of the Republican Party’s platform for many years to come.
Syria: where the Alt-Right meets the Old Left
Syria is a weird place in American politics. Its Ba’athist state ideology is rooted in anti-Israeli resistance and Arab socialism — old school planks of America’s Old Left, and ideas which, in the early days of the 2011 Syrian uprising, pulled many Left-wing Americas towards affinity with the murderous Bashar al-Assad. Noam Chomsky, amongst others, has at times defended Russian airstrikes and Assad’s own war crimes.
The Old Left anti-imperialism knee jerk was predictable. What was surprising was the surge of their ideological rivals, the…
