Article link at shafaaq.com
Posted on 04/30/2017 11:09:47 AM PDT by drewh
The US has sent a group of US Marines armed with eight-wheeled Stryker armored carriers to northern Syria as a buffer between Syrian Kurds and Turkish forces, after Turkish air strikes killed 20 members of the US-backed Kurdish YPG (People’s Protection Units) militia, injured 18 and destroyed the local Kurdish command headquarters.
Clashes broke out between Turkish and Kurdish forces after the air strikes. The convoy of US armored vehicles took up positions at the village of Darbasiyah in the northeastern Hasakah province, a few hundred meters from the Turkey border. It was the second time American armored troops had stepped in to separate Turkish and the Kurdish YPG militia that leads the Syrian Democratic Force (SDF), to which the Americans assign a major role in the offensive to capture Raqqa from ISIS.
On March 17, US Marines advanced towards the northern Syrian town of Manbij when the Turkish army was on the point of fighting the Kurdish militia for control of the town. However, on April 24, the Turkish air force went into action against the PKK (Kurdish Workers Party) base near Sinjar on Mount Karachok in Iraq, wiping out ammunition dumps and weapons store - but also against a YPG command center in northeastern Syria, claiming they were both hubs of a conjoined terrorist entity.
By its twin operation, Ankara emphasized that Turkey was very much present in the Syrian and Iraqi arenas and informed Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin that Turkey’s view of its national security interests in those arenas took precedence over helping to promote the two powers’ objectives. The Pentagon responded Friday, April 28, that the US wants the SDF to focus on liberating the ISIS-held town of Tabqa and the ISIS capital of Raqqa “and not be drawn into conflicts elsewhere.”
The movements of Turkish jets in Syrian air space are routinely reported and coordinated in advance with Russian and American air force command centers in Syria. The YPG commanders therefore took note that neither the Russians nor the Americans chose to warn Turkey off its plans to hammer the US-aligned Kurdish militia. They feared this would happen when they threw in their lot with the American forces. But the US command in Syria promised them protection under an American ground and aerial umbrella.
After the Turkish attack, the Trump administration, seeing the Kurdish militia had one foot out of the door of the alliance versus ISIS, was forced to choose between losing the operation’s spearhead or spreading the American umbrella to avert more Turkish attacks. By sending another contingent of marines over to Syria - “We have US forces that are there throughout the. entire northern Syria that operate with our Syrian Democratic Force partners,” Pentagon spokesman Army Capt. Jeff Davis said – President Donald Trump made a fateful choice: In the face of Turkish President Tayyip Edrogan’s threats of all-out war on the Kurds, he decided to commit US military forces to keeping the Kurdish militia safe under the US military wing and fully focused on the main objective of defeating ISIS.
The potential of a rare military run-in between two members of NATO may now be in store for the US president. And pretty soon, there may be fireworks when he sits down opposite Erdogan at the NATO summit in Brussels on May 25.
It is past time to abandon the air base at Incirlik and those listening posts at the top of Turkish mountains. Turkey could turn on the US at any moment. Muslims take hostages; have since the seventh century.
Okay, we should probably help out but there are some questions. Here is a eulogy written for the Kurdish “martyrs” and I don’t like the illusions to Communism. PKK uses the hammer and sickle. So.
“...Yet, their often exceptionally brief time on this planet — because of their ultimate sacrifice — manifests in deaths that, to echo what Mao Zedong once said, are heavier that Mount Thai in contrast to the reactionaries whose deaths are lighter than feathers. Kurdish culture is one in which mountains have a key significance, so the idea of the Chinese revolutionary conveyed more than half a century ago is one that I’m certain has some degree of relevance for a modern revolutionary struggle half way across the world. It is often said, after all, that Kurds have no friends except these mountains.
The number of young warriors who are taken from this world at an appallingly young age in conflict is almost impossible to conceive of in the contexts of the relative comfort of western society today. The struggles of the 20th century bare out just how much blood had to be spilled onto the battlefields of Asian, Africa and Latin America in struggles that were principally about national liberation, not to mention the second world war in which up to 27 million Soviets gave their lives to smash fascism. 1.5 million perished in Algeria to boot out the supposedly democratic French state. Millions more died in Indochina to kick out the same initial colonizer, and later the United States. Struggles in Africa against the Portuguese, Spanish, British and French claimed millions more. We know all too well the optimistic and romantic revolutionary sentiments associated with such monumental suffering. Che Guevara once said it didn’t matter if he fell anywhere in the world as long as another comrade came to pick up his gun. It was an idea I was to hear repeated throughout my time in Rojava.”
More: http://kurdishquestion.com/article/3914-rojava-martyrs-don-039-t-die
So, this communist talk is just bs; we better know what we are doing. I’m no judge of this myself.
And when did we declare war on ANY of these people.
If we fire on Turkey, can the invoke NATO’s defense clause? Would they send the Army to fight the Marines?
Christian Marines separating Muslim Syrians from Muslim Turks in a sovereign country the Marines’ government is trying to overthrow via assassination.
That should turn out well.
Onward to Damascus and then Jerusalem.
USA! USA!
“If we fire on Turkey, can the invoke NATO’s defense clause? Would they send the Army to fight the Marines?”
That sounds more frightening than having the collective might of guatemala and el salvador thrown at us
What could possibly go wrong?
So when did the Marines get Stryker vehicles? I thought they were Army vehicles.
Marines don’t us Strykers. We use LAVs. They are similar and both are built by General Dynamics, but the LAV is lighter and faster.
I appreciate USA doing this, but it in no manner helps stop the Turks from bombing troops they should bomb; like the YPG. Do something serious about this, USA.
Wow, my previous should have been: “Turks from bombing troops they shouldn’t bomb”...
You are correct on all counts. Let the muzzards fight each other.
Bookmark
We need to wait and see on this stuff.
And they are fighting alongside Iran’s IRGC.
How wonderful!
We’re helping Iran’s interest in the region.
Sheer stupidity to pour out our military blood like water in every Muslim civil war. But then, our leaders are totally loving it. Great photo opps.
If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.
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