By Finian Cunningham

October 11, 2019 "Information Clearing House" -  For a change, President Trump managed to unite the US Congress this week – in provoking broad condemnation of his surprise announcement to withdraw American troops from northeast Syria.

All the more so because his ad hoc deal with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has quickly spun out of control, launching a Turk offensive against Kurds in northeast Syria.

Turkey labels Kurdish militants “terrorists”, while the US has allied with them, having used them as proxies ostensibly to fight jihadist terror groups. (The US has also covertly sponsored the jihadist terror gangs, such as Islamic State, or ISIS, indicating that the real role of the Kurds for the Americans was to annex parts of Syria.)

Trump was assailed by Democrats and Republicans for his “betrayal” of the Kurds and for “destabilizing the Middle East”. Even political allies like Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell and hawkish advisers Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio joined the fray to lambast Trump over his apparent policy shift.

Hold on a moment. The reaction is no doubt hyperventilating over-reaction, which gives Trump way too much credit in making a “strategic decision”.

Closer to the truth is that this president, in typical loose-cannon fashion, simply stumbled into what appears to be a major policy shift, when in reality what he was after was a cheap PR boost for re-election next year.

After all, we are in American presidential campaign mode. That’s why the Democrats are gunning for impeachment based on flimsy “evidence” of Trump’s alleged collusion with Ukraine against Democrat rival Joe Biden.

For his part, Trump is, of course, seeking a bit of glory with voters, and that most likely explains his announcement last weekend ordering US troops to withdraw from northeast Syria. That followed a phone call with Turkey’s Erdogan on Sunday in which Trump apparently acceded to demands to give Turkey a free hand to make an incursion in northeast Syria to push back Kurdish fighters.