Background Briefing: October 7, 2019
In Selling out the Kurds, Trump Is Doing Putin’s Bidding
We begin with Trump’s sellout of the Kurds who were America’s boots on the ground having fought for us and defeated ISIS at the cost of 11,000 dead and 22,000 wounded only to be served up by Trump to Turkey’s Erdogan to be slaughtered. Trump’s sudden and abrupt move comes after months of negotiations and is a repeat of his early effort to pull out of Syria without getting anything in return which led to the resignation of Secretary of Defense Mattis and it follows Sunday’s phone call between Trump and Ergodan whose dirty deal remains top secret locked up by the White House along with records of Trump’s secret deals with Putin, MBS, Xi Jinping and Kim Jong-un. A former senior advisor and foreign affairs expert to the U.S. Department of State during the administrations of Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama, David Phillips, the Director of the Peace-building and Rights Program at the Institute for the Study of Human Rights at Columbia University and author of “The Great Betrayal: How America Abandoned the Kurds and Lost the Middle East”, joins us. Given the strenuous objections from the Defense and State Departments and the Republican head of the Senate and Trump’s ally Senator Lindsey Graham, we will discuss whether this is perhaps the worst example so far of Trump’s incompetence or is it yet another example of his treasonous behavior and fealty to Putin since the only winners are Putin, Assad and their ally Iran.
Erdogan’s Plan to Ethnically Cleanse Syria’s Kurds
Then we go to Istanbul, Turkey and speak with an expert on Turkey and U.S. foreign policy, Nicholas Danforth, a Senior Visiting Fellow at the German Marshall Fund who has an op-ed at The New York Times, “Turkey’s Plan to Move Refugees to Syria is Dangerous”. He joins us to discuss Erdogan’s plan to resettle Syrian refugees along Turkey’s southern border as a way to ethnically cleanse the Syrian Kurds who defeated ISIS. With over 90, 000 ISIS fighters and their families held in camps controlled by the Syrian Kurds, we assess what will happen when the Kurdish fighters have to abandon guarding ISIS prisoners to confront an invasion by the vastly superior forces of Turkey, NATO second biggest army.
Can Democratic Socialism Overcome the Crises of Capitalism
Then finally. Paul Adler joins us in the studio. He is the Chair of Business Policy, and Professor of Management and Organization, Environmental Studies, and Sociology at the University of Southern California and author of the new book just out, “The 99 Percent Economy: How Democratic Socialism Can Overcome the Crises of Capitalism”, which are Economic Irrationality, Workplace Disempowerment, Unresponsive Government, Environmental Unsustainability, Social Disintegration and International Conflict.