NSA documents reveal that the Israelis delibrately attacked the ship

They still paid up though, and I did not find it in this link where they specifically said that

But I'll grant you that Israel between 1950 and 1970 does not seem to be acting very much like an Ally

Frankly, I think he made the right move here. I just hope the Ruskies back Assad and Syria gets locked down again.

Tyrants aren't nice, but they keep that region of the world stable.

And Assad is certainly not the worst leader they've ever had.

the issue is the Turks

Russia and Assad are fine

but the Turks will move in and either basically ethnically cleanse the Kurds

or impose their own government

and the US as an ally will be geopolitically forced to at the least ignore it and at worst support it

We tacitly support the break up of the Palestinian people. It's basically a slow genocide. Same with South Africa, Tibet, Myanmarr, we did jack shit for the Cambodians, almost all of the green middle bit of Africa is an active warzone with mass rapes and torture and ethnic cleansing.

How and why is this either different or unique?

nah, Palestine isn't a cleansing

And, more importantly, worth the blood and treasure of the American people?

people who say that forget how many times Israeli offered peace and an end to settlements

I'm honestly asking this.

Because I don't know enough to judge it.

they don't *have* to actually go into combat

My knowledge is "American adventurism in Syria"

just the presence of US troops is enough intimidation

Again you'd know more than I would.

Bolton and Mattis just asked him to ask the Turks to stall, for instance

But my understanding was that Obama (thanks) was backing Not-ISIS

but Trump apparently just gave into the turk demands after an hour or two

And the Qataris were selling Not-ISIS guns we sold them

And that Assad was a dick but not an extremist and "not, generally speaking, rapey or murderous"

they shifted support from the Islamist FSA to the Kurdish-left SDF, which is smaller and weaker but a lot less Islamist

Hmm. I doubt the Kurds will ever get statehood. It's like hoping Greek Bactria gets made up out of Afghanistan and Kazakhstan.

Scrolling through the wikipedia page, I don't think they're a legitimate force outside of their own ethnic minority.

Especially since they're like to pull fire from Iranians, Turks, and Syrians.

That is a ROUGH gangbang to be in the middle of.

well, generally they basically want autonomy more than statehood iirc (YPG/commies are the statehood folks)
they also apparently did a lot to fight ISIS

I remember reading about Kurds, especially kurdish women, spent a lot of time fighting in the northern bits.

But it was also around that time I basically got bored of Syria before 1500 AD

I guess, personally, I have to say I'm ambivalent about it, but generally approving of his, more or less, generalized step down of the US presence in the near east.

I'm a big anti war guy

And I'd rather the US not have its teenagers losing legs and eyes over in afghanistan just because we want to make nice Saudi Arabia.

Still, your take in general is that this is a bad move?

it seems against what was advised, at least he should have made Turkey give assurances of neutrality, then pulled out

While I feel that would be pointless, Erdogan is a slime ball who has no problem constantly breaking his word and making threats, I suppose that would have been the political move.