Proponents of U.S. withdrawal ought to acknowledge and grapple with the fate of the Kurds, as Michael Brendan Dougherty and Stephen Walt do. That Turkey is reportedly massing troops along the border near territory held by Kurdish forces only increases the urgency of the matter. Perhaps there is some action America can take to prevent a slaughter, some leverage it can exert on an ally’s behalf, some time it can buy them.

But Syria hawks who insist that the United States ought to remain in the country indefinitely to avoid an immoral betrayal of the Kurds are neither acknowledging nor grappling with the full ramifications of their position—nor are they facing up to their part in any betrayal that occurs.

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For the foreseeable future, Turkey will be hostile to Syrian Kurds and strong enough to vanquish them militarily if it so chooses. If it is a betrayal for the U.S. to pull out while those conditions hold, that would seem to imply an American presence in the country for years or even decades.

But neither Congress nor the public favors the indefinite occupation of Syria to protect its Kurds from hostility by the Turkish government. Recall that Congress failed to pass an authorization to use military force in Syria even when ISIS was orders of magnitude stronger there than it is today. Would Congress or the public have approved an agreement whereby Kurdish forces helped us fight ISIS and we agreed in return to keep thousands of U.S. troops in Syria as long as Kurds there faced danger? Of course not.

Still, many now say that the United States would be betraying our allies if we leave. It’s reasonable to ask, given the positions of Congress, the president, and the public: Who took on that ostensible obligation on the nation’s behalf? What gave them the right to do so? What other checks are they writing? And is there anything that the public can do to stop them?

Opponents of an indefinite U.S. presence in Syria object in part because the longer U.S. troops stay, the greater the risk that our forces are drawn into an unplanned fight, like the four-hour battle between Russian mercenaries and U.S. commandos, but one that spirals into a larger, potentially catastrophic war between nuclear-armed states. That would be a daunting risk under any circumstances. And the risk is only heightened by Trump’s erratic streak, lack of foreign-policy experience, and penchant for impulsive risk taking that sometimes ends in bankruptcy.

“The world hoped that an Axis of Adults could constrain the juvenile in the Oval Office, but such naive expectations have been dashed repeatedly,” the Syria hawk Max Boot wrote. “Syria offers the latest example of the futility of expecting that lower-level officials can consistently save the world from the commander in chief … Trump does whatever he wants. It could be based on what he had for breakfast or there could be something more sinister going on.” But if Trump is at best an out-of-control juvenile, and plausibly the knowing pawn of America’s enemies, as Boot contends, then isn’t the U.S. safer withdrawing its troops than leaving them stationed in a powder keg, where a misstep by an unfit commander in chief could bring about a global disaster?