U.S. diplomats have the worst job in Washington right now. Every day, they have to appear before the cameras and try to convince the American people and U.S. allies in the Middle East that President Barack Obama's policies on Syria, PKK terror and the PKK's Syrian franchise, the Democratic Union Party/People's Protection Units (PYD/YPG), aren't a complete disaster. It must be a relief to watch Donald Trump clinch the Republican nomination and be part of the team that he, if elected, will fire on the first day.

Jokes aside, U.S. officials have been embarrassing themselves by making conflicting statements about Washington's relationship with the PKK and YPG. Last week, Defense Secretary Ash Carter testified at a Senate hearing and pressed by Senator Lindsey Graham admitted to something disturbing about President Obama's Syria policy, around which all the spokespersons in town had been tip-toeing. Carter told the Armed Services Committee that the PYD and the YPG were aligned with the PKK, which the United States considers a terrorist organization. In the end, it took poor John Kirby, the State Department spokesperson, to fix the problem. On Friday, he told reporters, "Nothing has changed about [the Obama administration's] take here."

The United States effectively has a monopoly over which armed groups are designated as terrorist organizations. The PKK and PYD represent a unique challenge for Washington: At this point, the United States considers the PKK a terrorist organization, but refuses to admit that the PYD/YPG, which follows the same people's orders, fields the same fighters and uses the same weapons, is no different. To make matters worse, the Obama administration has turned a blind eye to weapons delivered to YPG militants being used in PKK attacks on Turkish soil. Needless to say, the Obama administration just wants to make sure that the YPG, which the White House considers the most effective local force against DAESH, remains loyal to the United States.

Nowadays, the YPG is waiting for Washington to give them the green light pending the Train and Equip 2.0 effort on which President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Mr. Obama shook hands last month.

Taking his time to set up a de facto safe zone in the Azaz-Jarablous area, Mr. Obama wants to take his YPG policy to the next level and save his staff the trouble of tip-toeing around an obvious fact. The two-pronged approach involves reinvigorating disarmament talks between Turkey and the PKK leadership, which the terrorists support, and allocating a bigger role to the YPG in the counter-DAESH campaign in Iraq and Syria. In return, the United States wants Turkish leaders to make their peace with the PKK running the show in northern Syria and demands the PKK leadership stop challenging Turkey's authority over predominantly Kurdish parts of the country for the foreseeable future.

If the U.S. proposal sounds like a stretch, it's because it is. To be clear, it makes sense for the PKK leadership to reinitiate talks with Turkey for the purpose of stockpiling weapons in town centers, recruiting new suicide bombers and getting their hands on new military equipment – the whole nine yards. But the Turkish government won't stop fighting the terrorists until they are completely and irreversibly removed from southeastern Turkey. Unwilling to give the PKK another shot at seeking autonomy behind the smokescreen of peace, Turkey has no choice but to defeat terrorism – regardless of the PKK leadership's game plan. Having scored valuable points in northern Syria, the PKK simply won't accept Turkey's terms.

Here's the million dollar question: Can't U.S. officials figure out why their plan is doomed to fail before Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump starts calling the shots?