Trump’s Syria Mistake

The Trump administration is making a serious mistake. Late Sunday night, it released a statement declaring that Turkey would be “moving forward with its long-planned operation into Northern Syria” and that American forces “will no longer be in the immediate area.” The practical result of this statement is obvious: Turkey now has an American permission slip to conduct an invasion into Kurdish territory, kill American allies, and carve out a zone of dominance that will further inflame and complicate one of the world’s most dangerous regions.

There are no easy...