Rojava and Impeachment

With the Turkish invasion of northeast Syria about to begin, Kurdish forces are vowing to resist. One can understand why. The Syrian towns of Tel Abyad and Ras al Ain, where Turkish forces are massing and where U.S. forces recently pulled back, lie at the center of Rojava.

The Pentagon has pledged to close theater airspace to Turkish F16 jets. Turkey used air power extensively to defeat the Kurds last year in Afrin. Maybe some of those Javelin anti-tank missiles sold to Ukraine can be diverted to the Kurds, leveling the playing field.

Trump has threatened Turkey with devastating reprisals if its invasion is bloody and destabilizing, at the same time he gave it the green light to go ahead. Congress could punish Turkey if Trump fails to:

Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, addressed Turkey on his own Twitter account on Tuesday, warning the country not to go ahead with the operation.

“To the Turkish Government: You do NOT have a green light to enter into northern Syria,” Mr. Graham wrote. “There is massive bipartisan opposition in Congress, which you should see as a red line you should not cross.”

Trump has an equally big mess on his hands at home. White House counsel Pat Cipollone sent a letter yesterday to the U.S. House of Representatives declaring that the White House will not cooperate with the impeachment inquiry. Nancy Pelosi now needs to schedule a full vote of the House on impeachment. She wins that vote, Trump will likely tack back and provide some sort of limited cooperation.

The left case against impeachment, articulated by Taibbi and Urie, is that the whistleblower who got the ball rolling is not a real whistleblower but a spook and impeachment is a CIA-instigated coup. To which I say, okay, yes, you are right. But this doesn't mean that impeachment should be blocked or Trump defended. The underlying facts of Russiagate were never proven. The underlying facts of Ukrainegate are not even in dispute.

Taibbi says

The argument that’s supposed to be galvanizing everyone right now is the idea that we need to “stand up and be counted,” because failing to rally to the cause is effectively advocacy for Trump. This line of thinking is based on the presumption that Trump is clearly worse than the people opposing him.

That might prove to be true, but if we’re talking about the treatment of whistleblowers, Trump has a long way to go before he approaches the brutal record of the CIA, the NSA, the FBI, as well as the cheerleading Washington political establishment. Forgetting this is likely just the first in what will prove to be many deceptions about a hardcore insider political battle whose subtext is a lot more shadowy and ambiguous than news audiences are being led to believe.

My point is that impeachment is a galvanizing and informative exercise. Already the quality reporting that has been done on Ukrainian politics in the last week is much better than what has been delivered in the last three years.