After President Donald Trump announced the removal of U.S. ground troops from battlefields in northern Syria — something he told us he was going to do before he even became president — people in the media who used to pretend to hate war suddenly found themselves foaming at the mouth over it.
It was a terrible decision, they said, to remove troops and create a power vacuum in the region. This, they added, would allow radical forces in the area to expand their influence, and undue years of hard-fought progress. Basically, the media repeated every single Republican talking point about the Iraq War from 2006 to 2016. It was really stunning to watch.
And, credit where credit is due — they were sort of right. Turkish forces did begin expanding influence in the area, taking the fight to Kurdish fighters they were already engaged with locally. To really bring this point home, ABC News went live with truly terrifying footage from the conflict. There was just one problem — the footage wasn’t from Syria at all. In fact, it wasn’t from the same year, or even the same continent. It was from a 2014 gun show in the United States.
So, in reality, this image isn’t terribly far off…
