This may be the one thing that actually sticks to Trump. He can stand by and watch a wholesale slaughter unfold, or he must send in more troops, and lots of them, to restore some sense of order thereby admitting he made a mistake. Casualties will be heavy on the ground and politically. Nixon had his "peace with honor" by abandoning the South Vietnamese to be slaughtered. We know what happened to him. Trump will be saddled with the same body count for his indifference to the Kurds. Both men deserve our contempt for such actions. If we're going to tell people go out and fight, we got your back, then we must back that up with action. To do otherwise is despicable. Bottom line, we're a fucking paper tiger that has been trading on brave men who won battles long ago. Everybody supposed to be soooo scared of us. They ain't, and with good reason.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...b5fab8-ec5a-11e9-a329-7378fbfa1b63_story.html U. S.-allied Kurds strike deal to bring Assad’s Syrian troops back into Kurdish areas BEIRUT — Syrian government troops began moving toward towns near the Turkish border Sunday night under a deal struck with Syrian Kurds, following a chaotic day that saw the unraveling of the U.S. mission in northeastern Syria. Hundreds of Islamic State family members escaped a detention camp after Turkish shellfire hit the area, U.S. troops pulled out from another base and Turkish-backed forces consolidated their hold over a vital highway, cutting the main U.S. supply route into Syria. By the time Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper appeared on CBS’s “Face the Nation” to announce that President Trump had ordered the final withdrawal of the 1,000 U.S. troops in northeastern Syria, it was already clear that the U.S. presence had become unsustainable, U.S. officials said. The announcement by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) that they had reached an agreement with the Iranian- and Russian-backed government of President Bashar al-Assad further undermined the prospect of any continued U.S. presence in the country. The deal will bring forces loyal to Assad back into towns and cities that have been under Kurdish control for seven years.
Do you feel we need to go back into Syria? The Kurds want to be left alone. They’ve inhabited those parts of Syria for eons and were basically run out an attempted genocide by ISIS. They partnered with the US to drive back ISIS. Now they’ve reached out to Syria. The country they inhabit in this area. Makes sense to me.
quick 180 you did there from a few pages ago. We allied with the Syrian separatists against Assad and Russian interventionism in pursuit of democracy & we allied w/the Kurds against ISIS. I do not see how having our former allies joining forces with our now enemies (Assad) as a positive.
Interesting read https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2019/10/13/hayward-the-case-for-kurdish-statehood/ Hayward: The Case for Kurdish Statehood
Not a 180, just a reality for Syrian Kurds. The above article outlines some of the problems Kurds face, namely they need their own land. Until then they’ll continually be dependent upon others for security matters.
https://www.axios.com/trump-erdogan...uff-fc761d8f-e33b-473b-8ece-d0b8b3a51f26.html Behind the scenes of the Trump bluff that kicked off Turkey's invasion President Trump had been calling Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's bluff for more than 2 years, and some senior administration officials thought Erdoğan would never actually go through with his long-threatened Syria invasion, according to 6 sources with direct knowledge of the situation. The big picture: Trump would tell Erdoğan that if he wanted to invade Syria he would have to own whatever mess ensued, according to these sources. Erdoğan would have to take care of ISIS and manage international condemnation, trouble from Capitol Hill, and the quagmire with the Kurds. And when Trump put it in such stark terms to Erdoğan, the Turkish leader would demur. Until last Sunday, that is, when he told Trump he was moving ahead with the invasion of northern Syria. This time, Erdoğan called Trump's bluff, having waited for international forces to wipe out the ISIS caliphate. Erdoğan's decision — which the White House cleared the way for in its Sunday night announcement, alienating and blindsiding key allies including Republican lawmakers and the Christian right — has plunged the Middle East and Trump's political standing in Washington into crisis. Sources in Turkey have indicated that while Erdoğan was talking big, he thought Trump would restrain him, a U.S. official familiar with the details told Axios' Margaret Talev. For example, Erdoğan did not expect — or want — a 30-km-deep (18-mile) buffer; that was assumed to be a negotiation aimed at getting something smaller. Now Erdoğan may be in over his head and facing global condemnation and sanctions, but he got so far extended politically inside Turkey that he has had little choice but to go forward, the official said. Behind the scenes: In phone calls and in-person meetings dating back to 2017, Trump has been effectively calling Erdoğan's bluff, according to sources who have been in the room with the two leaders and had access to their phone calls. On one 2017 phone call, Erdoğan was complaining to Trump about the Kurdish threat on his border and told Trump he wanted to move in to take care of the Kurdish threat, per a source with direct knowledge of the call. The source paraphrased their recollection of what Trump said on the call: "It was pretty blustery. Trump was like, 'I don't want to be there in the first place, but you know our guys are there. They don't take s--t. We're there. Maybe I don't want to be there, but if you do a border crossing and come into conflict with our guys, they are way better equipped and you don't want to do that.'" Trump's message, the source said, was "don't mess with the U.S. military." But after conveying that threat, Trump signaled he wasn't going to keep his troops in Syria for long and was not going to be hanging around to protect the Kurds against the Turks, the source added. Trump said something to the effect of, "But you know I don't want to be there. We're there to defeat ISIS. My people tell me we are winning. ... So hang tight. But you don't want to get into a conflict with my guys," the source recalled. Another former senior administration official, who was with Erdoğan and Trump when Erdoğan visited the White House in 2017, said Trump called the Turkish leader's bluff then, too. "Trump basically said, 'Look, if you want it you own it, but don't come looking to me for help. You can take it, it's yours,'" the former official recalled of that 2017 conversation about Turkish intent to cross the border into Syria