LONG TIME COMING: Soothing words aside, the Trump administration recognizes that the relationship with Turkey is dangerously near the breaking point.

America needs to bolster Sunni Arabs in Syria, lest the Islamic State returns. But American commanders know that it’s the Kurds (who the Turks now say they want to destroy) who have done the bulk of the fighting and dying. The civilian death toll in the Islamic State conflict hasn’t been well-calculated, but it was horrific.

Votel visited the ruined city of Raqqa on Monday. He told reporters that the campaign there was “ugly,” but necessary. When we talked last week, he said in the last phase of the Islamic State campaign, U.S. advisers and airpower would partner with the SDF in a war of “annihilation” against “hundreds” of Islamic State fighters who are trapped in the lower Euphrates valley. U.S. commanders worry that their SDF allies will be pulled away from this essential mopping-up operation to fight the invading Turks.

A sign of the new post- Islamic State crackup in Syria was this headline in the Turkish newspaper Yeni Safak about Votel’s arrival in the war zone: “U.S. commander visits … terrorists in Syria’s Raqqa.” That bodes ill.

Yep.