Reminder that the US considered supporting the YPG their last option. Before they even communicated with the YPG on any level there was internal argument over supporting them. While Daesh took slaves and ethnically cleansed, and Yazidis were slaughtered, the US debated

"What if the Kurds take the money and weapons and try to build their own state?"

"What if their socialist ideology spreads and turns on the west?"

"They are PKK terrorists, its best to support terrorists Turkey likes, not terrorists they despise"

"Can we ever control them?"

In some ways the US was right

They intended to make the YPG into a proxy force, moreso even than the KDP peshmerga. A force directly under US oversight. They wanted to combine "desirable" forces under one coalition banner.

The SDF was on the US' creation. Thd US dreamed of the basic concept, a friendly umbrella structure for anti-Daesh forces.

But this ignores that they wanted them subservient, secular, apolitical and capitalist.

The SDF in reality became independent, poly/pan religious, politically proactive and anti-capitalist.

And we have documents about how the US, especially the CIA, despised this. The more the SDF defined its own identity and direction, the more support the US withdrew