ABC News reports:

President Donald Trump on Wednesday called Turkey’s offensive in Syria “a bad idea” that the United States did not support, hours after Turkey launched a long-planned military offensive in northeastern Syria.

“The United States does not endorse this attack and has made it clear to Turkey that this operation is a bad idea,” Trump said in a statement.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced via Twitter on Wednesday that the incursion has begun, with a mission to “prevent the creation of a terror corridor across our southern border.” The Turkish military is targeting the Syrian-Kurdish fighters that helped the United States defeat ISIS.

The anticipated move comes just days after Trump’s announcement that American troops would withdraw from the region and hand control to the Kurds’ sworn enemy, the Turkish government.

Mustafa Bali, a spokesman for the Syrian Democratic Forces, a U.S.-backed military alliance led by the mostly-Kurdish militia YPG, confirmed that “Turkish warplanes have started to carry out airstrikes on civilian areas” in northeast Syria.

“There is a huge panic among people of the region,” Bali tweeted Wednesday. [Continue reading…]

Politico reports:

Turkey’s incursion into Syria on Wednesday is prompting fresh bipartisan condemnation of President Donald Trump’s moves and more congressional threats to hamstring Turkey economically, with some Republicans calling the situation “sickening” and a “terrible mistake” by the president.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), otherwise reliable allies of Trump, both lambasted the president on Wednesday after Turkey moved into northeastern Syria, which is occupied by Kurdish allies of the United States. The U.S. worked closely with Kurds to defeat the Islamic State, and now lawmakers in both parties fear Trump’s conversation on Sunday with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that led to a U.S. pullout has become a “disaster in the making,” as Graham put it.

“Pray for our Kurdish allies who have been shamelessly abandoned by the Trump Administration. This move ensures the reemergence of ISIS,” said Graham, vowing to lead congressional efforts “to make Erdogan pay a heavy price. I urge President Trump to change course while there is still time.”

Cheney said that “President Trump’s decision to withdraw U.S. forces from northern Syria is having sickening and predictable consequences” and vowed that lawmakers “must and will act to limit the catastrophic impact of this decision.”

Just this year lawmakers in both parties have showed significant support for a continued U.S. presence in Syria. But whether Congress will able to do much about it is another matter. [Continue reading…]

Josh Rogin writes:

Just last week, two top Trump administration officials publicly defended the U.S. Syria strategy and explained why a Turkish attack on Kurds in northeastern Syria would ruin it completely. Now, everything they were working on is in tatters, and the dangers they warned about are coming true — thanks to President Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

“Right now … we’re embarked on implementing an agreement that would establish a zone along the Turkish-Syria border,” Joel Rayburn, the State Department’s special envoy for Syria, told an audience at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington on Oct. 2. “It’s meant to be a zone that’s safe for both Turkey and for … Syrians. So far, the implementation is going pretty well.”

Rayburn was touting what’s been called the “buffer zone,” or “security mechanism,” that the United States and Turkey had been working on for almost a year. The idea was to address Turkey’s concerns about Kurdish forces near its border — specifically to prevent their invading and killing our Kurdish allies, as they just began doing Wednesday.

Rayburn warned that a Turkish attack in northeastern Syria would not only be a disaster for the region, but would also set back efforts to solve the greater Syria conflict and hand a gift to America’s enemies. He also warned that it would hurt other U.S. objectives, namely to ensure the enduring defeat of the Islamic State and push back against Iran. [Continue reading…]