Passing under the yoke

In ancient Italy, the highest humiliation for a beaten army was to “passum sub iugum” or, pass under the yoke.  During the Social Wars, the Samnites trapped a Roman army in a defile. The army, facing starvation was forced to pass under a yoke comprised of spears in a sort of ritual humiliation.  This was the highest form of humiliation a defeated army could face. However, passing under the yoke could also be passed under as a means of making amends or atoning for some wrong.  

Now you may be thinking, what has that got to do with today?  I couldn’t help but think of the convoys departing from Syria last week with their flags flying high.  To my mind, the American convoys leaving Syria should have been flying their flags at half mast because the withdrawal from Syria was not a defeat, but it certainly wasn’t done on a basis of strength and the flags at half mast would be modern day symbolic gesture of atonement to the Kurds.

I don’t mean this as any disrespect to the soldiers themselves who did a hell of a job keeping the Turks and Kurds from coming to blows.  The failure of leadership lies with President Trump, who true to his nature, threw the Kurds under the bus. The Kurds lost over 11,000 lives in defeating ISIS while America lost less than 20.  As the NYT put it, America essentially outsourced the fighting and deaths in the battle against ISIS to the Kurds. How did America repay them? By abandoning them to their 

The minute ISIS is nearly broken and destroyed, President Trump arbitrarily decides to pull out leaving the Kurds at the mercy of the Turks.  Keep in mind, American soldiers lived, fought and bled since 2014 with the Kurds. In an effort to keep the Americans in place, the Kurds agreed to destroy fortifications, supplies and make other concessions in an effort to placate the Turks and remove any reason for them to feel threatened from The Kurds.

This withdrawal was not American soldiers leaving from a position of strength, but rather a scattershot withdrawal and its showed.  F15s were required to bomb a base in order to destroy its usefulness since departing soldiers were in such haste they couldn’t do the job themselves,  Furthermore, there are suspicions that the Turks deliberately fired artillery at outposts manned by Americans . This withdrawal wasn’t America leaving on its own terms and conditions in a planned fashion but a pullout like a whipped dog.

Despite being thrown under the proverbial bus, the Kurds, despite having every reason to have their hearts filled with hatred, even assisted in the withdrawal of the Americans.  The Kurds, gave more assistance than any country in identifying, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS and creating the conditions necessary for his successful elimination.

What Trump did to the Kurds was a stain on American honor.  All Americans should pass under the yoke to atone for the wrongs done to these people.