The behavior of Erdogan's Turkish military and "uncontrolled" militias, if correctly reported, in the murders of Kurdish civilians along the Turkey-Syria border in a frenzy of ethnic cleansing, may force the US to remove its nuclear arsenal from Turkey before taking any action that might be perceived as anti-Turkish. Such a pullback from Turkey has been the former USSR and Russia's and Putin's wet dream for SIXTY YEARS since the Cuban missile crisis! What will Fearless Leader do next? Only one thing is certain: It will be something equally thoughtless and ignorant.

The substitution of defensive deployments to protect Syrian oil fields for the previous deployments to protect actual human beings is in an INCREASE in the number of US troops in Syria and in no way meets the generally accepted goal of reducing the US footprint in the region. The reduction in the border area appears to have been a whim based on a desire to please Erdogan and the latter should have been a joint effort by an international force. Both would have benefitted from forethought and diplomacy, which are both in short supply in today's regime.