Middle East Trump makes way for Turkey operation against Kurds in Syria

[Erwin_Pommel]

Hm, America is going to have an interesting future with its allies... On one hand, people will reference the Kurds as why they can't be trusted, on the other? A long history of backing up varying nations and a long since dried up willingness to foot the bill that other members of their alliances have failed to give. Interesting situation they have indeed.

 

[remulian]

Eh. Fuck the Kurds. Not like you did not fuck over the Tadjiks in A-stan.
Or other such little issues.
And its not like every big stick in any alliance has not fucked over the little sticks for its own benefit since time immemorial.
The mistake is thinking you are any different, and as such getting hung up in useless principles, ethics and morals instead of calmly accepting the fact that some people outlived their usefulness and now you need to pivot just the right way so that their grisly deaths are totally not your fault - as far as the average pleb is concerned - and you gain another catspaws somehow.
Oh, right. Public forum not a inner party geopolitics meeting.

*Ahem*

Turkey is a official member of NATO, facilitating valuable and large contributions to the Alliance and if military action is needed to safeguard their borders we wholeheartedly support them in that endeavour as we would support any member of the alliance in military actions designed to secure their border and territorial integrity.

 

[ShadowsOfParadox]

...ok, does anyone have some sort of evidence that Turkey's been actively attacking Kurds in Syria with Trump doing nothing?

Or is this just "Trump pulled out troops and this is clearly abandonment"

Do I have to link the JANUARY New York Times article on Trump's opinion of Turkey attacking the Kurds and how the Secretary of State was in negotiations prior to those tweets? Again?

 

[The Name of Love]

We could keep them. I would rather fight wars for promises than for greed or ideology.

So we could promise them their own nation, which we would have to carve out of Turkey and Syria? By the way, the Kurds? They are a bunch of violent anarcho-communists. Rather not let them have their own state.

Yeah, let them fight their own independence. No more blood wars for Israel!

 

[Deleted member]

So we could promise them their own nation, which we would have to carve out of Turkey and Syria? By the way, the Kurds? They are a bunch of violent anarcho-communists. Rather not let them have their own state.

Yeah, let them fight their own independence. No more blood wars for Israel!

The current ruling Kurds in Rojava are, you are correct, but the sensible right-wing Kurds in Iraq were already defeated by our refusal to intervene against a much weaker and easier to control enemy (the central government of Iraq)... To whom we owed much more. When you refuse to do what is right, doing what is right later on costs you more and gets you less. That's true here as in many other things (the same thing with saving Chiang in the Taiwan Straits Crisis).

 

[The Name of Love]

The current ruling Kurds in Rojava are, you are correct, but the sensible right-wing Kurds in Iraq were already defeated by our refusal to intervene against a much weaker and easier to control enemy (the central government of Iraq)... To whom we owed much more. When you refuse to do what is right, doing what is right later on costs you more and gets you less. That's true here as in many other things (the same thing with saving Chiang in the Taiwan Straits Crisis).

Here's the thing: I actually don't think it's "right." In fact, I believe that every aspect of U.S. foreign policy is a reckless act of aggression fueled by ideology, not unlike the leaders of the French Revolution.

 

[Deleted member]

Here's the thing: I actually don't think it's "right." In fact, I believe that every aspect of U.S. foreign policy is a reckless act of aggression fueled by ideology, not unlike the leaders of the French Revolution.

I believe a nation's obligations remain true even if entered for ill-cause or by an ill government. I would rather, of course, help the Kurds without fighting, but Erdogan is utterly determined to crush them. To be honest, in the case of the Montagnards, I would sooner give them citizenship (and kick out illegals to free up the space) rather than fight. But the point remains the same in both cases.... Aye, it was an ill government and an ill cause that brought us into alliance, but the deed was done.

Anyway, we can't extricate ourselves from Empire without suffering horribly. It's not possible. Our liberties and traditions die in these foreign adventures, but we have traded Freedom for Glory. If you try to retrench the United States, you cannot predict the ill outcomes.

But you are right. Wilsonian internationalism was an act of a revolutionary ideology equal to the French Revolution. On the other hand, would all of Afro-Eurasia now be Red if we hadn't become a global power? I think so. So we likely saved hundreds of millions from savage deaths at the hands of communist atheists. Don't forget that, too. But after 1991? We lost the point. We should have extended the hand of friendship to Russia and put the vice on Red China.

 

[remulian]

But you are right. Wilsonian internationalism was an act of a revolutionary ideology equal to the French Revolution. On the other hand, would all of Afro-Eurasia now be Red if we hadn't become a global power? I think so. So we likely saved hundreds of millions from savage deaths at the hands of communist atheists. Don't forget that, too. But after 1991? We lost the point. We should have extended the hand of friendship to Russia and put the vice on Red China.

I disagree. If that was the aim having Patton engineer a Pearl Harbour Mk2 and continuing to Moscow would have been a lot easier especially as most east Europe would have stood with the allies.

Without capitalising on that leaving Europe to its own devices and maintaining the pressure valve of the Americas for people that are valuable and manage to escape would have served the USA far better especially under a nuclear umbrella. Disengaging from the continental squabbles.

The Brits and French would have had to maintain their colonial empires and oppose communism and the US would not have had to bother with it directly.

The US would be far richer and less bloodied and those whom are most concerned with the issues would have been forced to do or die.
Communism after all inevitability burns itself out -and without marking yourself out as the main antagonist for it you may have had a chance to actually purge yourself of it, or allow the old empires to go Inquisition on it should they have had manage to pull it off either way a far more beneficial outcome.

 

[Deleted member]

@remulian , I think @Francis Urquhart can go to some extent into just the effort required. While I sympathetic to the idea of "Hemispheric Defence" as the maximum limit of American power projection, it would have been quite impossible for anything other than a European Federation to stand off communism, and even that could have been a near-run thing. A lack of American intervention would still be unlikely to avoid major ramifications in the colonial Empires, even though I've always disagreed that they were as doomed as others assert--by 1945 the situation was not a salvageable one in the Asian colonies, for instance.

And where do we draw the line? 1919 or 1945? Better still 1917, of course, if we are to walk that road.

 

[Es Arcanum]

The Kurdish militia groups are not a sovereign state and didn't help the USA out of the goodness of their own hearts.

They did so because it was in their strategic interests to fight off ISIS and stave off Assad and it bought them time.

But ultimately the USA is not at war with Assads Syria, nor is it at war with Iran or Iraq. The USA is even allied to Turkey and no it doesn't matter if Erdogan is a nice guy or not.

All the people complaining about the withdrawl of US troops can offer no alternative but endless deployment because no country in that area is going to agree to an independent Kurdistan and it is not a responsibility of the US Commander in Chief to try and push for one. The President promised Americans he would withdraw Americas troops from overseas conflicts and bring them home and that is exactly what he is doing. He's done it in Iraq, he's doing it in Afghanistan and now he's doing it in Syria. That region is NEVER going to be peaceful so if it was going to be done there is never going to be a time when it will have no effect.

The USA is not the worlds policeman. The USA has lost thousands of soldiers and spent trillions of dollars in that region to stabilise the worlds oil supply and get revenge for 9/11 and eradicate other terrorist groups. The first mission is no longer central as the USA is now self sufficient in oil and other countries can pick up the slack and the second has been accomplished as much as it ever would be in that part of the world. Its been almost 20 years for fucks sake. Within the next few months there will be soldiers serving in Afghanistan who were literally NOT EVEN BORN YET when 9/11 happened.

The Middle East is not important as it once was to the USA, the region can handle itself and the USA can support allies in the area to do the lifting. The USA needs to be focussing its military lens on East Asia and China which is far more important for its future security.

 

[LordsFire]

Really? Because last I checked, it seemed to me like they were siding with China. Also, Russia wouldn't be trying to "eat parts of Eastern Europe" if we hadn't been trying to do so for decades. The violent overthrow of a pro-Russian Ukrainian government by a pro-NATO coup was simply the final straw, and I'd argue everything they've done in regards to Ukraine is nothing we wouldn't have done if the opposite had happened in a country that shares a land boarder with us.

I am, and was sick, and am perhaps not expressing myself the best as a result.

While the US is the world Hegemon, Russia will play nice with China. It suits both of their interests.

If China is ever in danger of replacing the US as world Hegemon, Russia will happily ally with the US to stab China in the back, for the reasons I expressed in my prior post.

I'm sorry for not clearly differentiating the two different types of situations a choice is made in.

 

[prinCZess]

there was a window of opportunity there to turn our former enemies into our friends, and we refused to take advantage of it.

Attempts were made. I'm old enough to remember some of the first foreign policy ideas floated in the Bush presidency to be incorporating Russia into NATO and putting the Cold War and the mess in the Balkans behind both sides, but it got push back from the Europeans and then Putin when the Iraq shitshow swung into being.

Saddened by this--because it very much is a third or fourth betrayal of the Kurds by the US in the interest of securing larger 'strategic concerns' in the region...Concerns which, themselves, have been overly and unduly influenced by Saudi Arabia and Turkey (who aren't good actors themselves), and Erdogan is actively an ass doing his best to undermine Turkey's secular dtate, so anything good for him is disheartening.

That said, a sovereign Kurdistan isn't functional even if it were formed. The divides in their clans and leadership between Barzani and his KDP and the PKK really only stopped because first Saddam, then post-war Iraq's cluster, then ISIS created larger, existential threats that took priority over anything else.
I suppose that Iraq, Syria and Turkey might take the place of those in the event of a new state...But with those three regional enemies it's kind of unlikely they'd hold off anything, and those divides have already shown themselves with some parties willing to work with Iraq more-so to secure lower-level benefits than nationhood.

So I know why we did it and not dumping more lives into the ME in another endless deployment that rnrages Islamists and 'secular' Turkey both appeals to me...But it's pretty far away from being the Kennedy-esque ally of freedom-loving peoples the US would rather present itself as, and that doesn't.

 

[Deleted member]

@prinCZess , how much of our issues with our military interventions in the Middle East has been generated by our refusal to be practical to begin with? We refused to let the Loya Jirga in Afghanistan consider restoring the King when we convocated it after the initial invasion, because we wanted to "build democracy" in a medieval country. We refused to consider a partition of Iraq when we invaded in it -- and spent the next decade fighting to keep the minorities off of each other. All of this was driven by ideology, an ideological dictate that we had to force ethnic minorities to get along, and moreover we had to force them to get along inside of a democracy. There was no willingness to consider that other forms of government might work better for other countries, and there was no willingness to consider that maybe the three major ethnicities of Iraq would just be more functional in separate nations. This was driven by an ideology of democracy, and an idea fixé of inalterable borders in the modern world, and both were deeply irrational.

 

[Marduk]

@prinCZess , how much of our issues with our military interventions in the Middle East has been generated by our refusal to be practical to begin with? We refused to let the Loya Jirga in Afghanistan consider restoring the King when we convocated it after the initial invasion, because we wanted to "build democracy" in a medieval country. We refused to consider a partition of Iraq when we invaded in it -- and spent the next decade fighting to keep the minorities off of each other. All of this was driven by ideology, an ideological dictate that we had to force ethnic minorities to get along, and moreover we had to force them to get along inside of a democracy.

Yup. This kind of political mandete "for international dog and pony show" with no regard to practicality is what does "lose the peace" no matter how many wars are won. It's the same reason why USA didn't simply install a military governor in either of these places at least for the time of the peacekeeping operation, regardless how much simpler it would make pretty much everything related to getting these places into order. It's not like USA is driving these demands on itself alone though - imagine the reaction from the UN and chief whiners of "international community" if USA did anything sensible in this regard.

 

[Terthna]

I am, and was sick, and am perhaps not expressing myself the best as a result.

While the US is the world Hegemon, Russia will play nice with China. It suits both of their interests.

If China is ever in danger of replacing the US as world Hegemon, Russia will happily ally with the US to stab China in the back, for the reasons I expressed in my prior post.

I'm sorry for not clearly differentiating the two different types of situations a choice is made in.

No problem; what you're saying makes sense, in any event. I hope you're right. Still, I would have much preferred Russia as a actual friend, rather than a potential ally of convenience.

 

[Lanmandragon]

What exactly does Turkey offer to be considered a member of NATO? Because whatever it is, I refuse to believe it makes up for them doing something like this.

The ability to lock the Russians out of the Med. That was the original reason at least.

 

[Arch Dornan]

from the UN and chief whiners of "international community" if USA did anything sensible in this regard.

I heard they're getting broke.

 

[StormEagle]

I heard they're getting broke.

We can only hope.

 

[Porkchopper]

I think this is just more evidence as to what a huge piece of cowardly shit Trump is. Erdogan should have been told to get fucked. Not only that but have you seen the excuses Trump posted. Well the Kurds didnt help at Normandy. Fucking hell. Yet im sure some slack jawed mouth breathers will still support the Cheeto in Chief.

 

[The Name of Love]

I think this is just more evidence as to what a huge piece of cowardly shit Trump is. Erdogan should have been told to get fucked. Not only that but have you seen the excuses Trump posted. Well the Kurds didnt help at Normandy. Fucking hell. Yet im sure some slack jawed mouth breathers will still support the Cheeto in Chief.

I’d actually support Trump if he pulled out all of the troops from the Middle East. But you are right: he’s too cowardly to defy the Neocons and the Military-Industrial Complex.