Posted on 02/10/2017 10:39:32 AM PST by Lorianne
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and U.S. President Donald Trump agreed in an overnight phone call on joint action against Islamic State in the Syrian towns of Raqqa and al-Bab, both held by the militants, Turkish presidency sources said on Wednesday.
U.S.-Turkish differences during former President Barack Obama's administration impeded the U.S.-led campaign against Islamic State, and closer coordination could mean faster progress towards freeing swathes of northern Syria from IS.
Erdogan now hopes that relations with Washington, strained by the presence in the United States of a cleric he blames for an attempted military coup last year and by U.S. support for Kurdish militia in Syria, can be reset under Trump.
Turkey has the second largest army in the NATO alliance and is key to any success in rolling back and eventually neutralising IS in Syria and Iraq where IS declared a cross-border caliphate after lightning advances in 2014.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Erdogan is not to be trusted and I see no reason why we should help him when he has double crossed us many times. ISIS is his problem in the region, not ours. It is a religious civil war in which we should take no part.
I understand to some degree. But if this ends up killing any ISIS forces that could be infiltrated into emigrating refugee numbers, is that a bad thing?
No but that is iffy.
A better approach is just keeping the ‘refugees’ out until they can be vetted adequately. Or keeping out military age men as refugees, or some combination.
Getting involved in Syria (and Libya and Yemen etc) is bad enough without also getting involved with an untrustworthy country like Turkey.
We already are involved, and the OPTEMPO is going to pick up big time very soon.
We should not be involved.
It is (yet another) fiasco in the making.
Who cares whether the Sunnis or Shias come out on top?
This is an ISLAMIC religious civil war. We have no side.
I can see your side, but I also realize we have evil judicial forces in this country that will work against us to let these people in. Then what becomes the approach? Is there no quarter for the potential do decimate the ISIS infiltrators? ISIS. When the official impetus for the ‘refugee’ BS is taken off the table, where does the do-gooder concern ninny backtracking go?
Diminish the validity of ‘refugee’ and you diminish bleeding heart sympathy. To do that means killing ISIS under whatever pretense necessary, IMO. I’m talking about the current catalog of concern - Syria and what adds to that so-called refugee population.
I agree with about Erdogan. He is not to be trusted. Trump had better have a “Lay off the Kurds” clause in whatever agreement he is making.
I’m very sympathetic to your sentiments, and I’d totally agree if not for the fact that the ISIS and al Qaeda factions don’t just strike their Muslim foes. I’m sure you know they attack frequently and with great violence, as much as they’re capable of, in the USA, Western Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Southwest Asia, and other places. Knocking out their so-called Caliphate will be a major victory that will do great harm to recruiting. Quitting isn’t a good alternative.
Erdogan is an Islamist snake.
He cannot be trusted.
He will use any excuse to attack the Kurds who are our only real ally in the region.
>We should not be involved.
It is (yet another) fiasco in the making.
Who cares whether the Sunnis or Shias come out on top?
This is an ISLAMIC religious civil war. We have no side.
ISIS propaganda & success has had a nasty effect in the west. They need to be defeated in a quite humiliating manner to stop a future terrorist attacks.
Yes, one of many reasons to not be in league with him
By getting involved in the conflict we are only creating more ‘refugees’ that it will be claimed we are then responsible for.
I’d rather work to keep them out and to aggressively vet them to make sure they are actual refugees and not economic refugees and to make as reasonably sure as we can that they do not have violent intentions before letting them in.
In other words I’d rather be mean to them at the VISA desk than to kill them in their own region.
ISIS ideology cannot be defeated. They can make people with that ideology faster than we can kill them.
The best course of action is containment. Besides, they are mostly focused on killing other Muslims who don’t conform to their ideology. I’d rather they do that over there.
They spend an overwhelming amount of their time and resources attacking other Muslims in their own region.
We should not divert them by delivering them non-Muslim targets right to their doorstep.
Again, if we could contain these monsters and let them kill their own co-religionist, I’d be fine with that. As it is, we’re using air power, UAVs, artillery, and Special Operators to take the fight to the nerve center of ISIS. To not act, is to accept the tradeoff. It means we allow them a sanctuary to plot against the rest of the world. I don’t see that as an option that is politically acceptable to President Trump or the American public.
In the sane, rational world of course this is the preferred route. But you cannot tell me after us having gone through this 9th Circus treachery that "mean to them at the VISA desk" is really a simple viable option. We have a substantial amount of work to do to put down this liberal judicial rebellion and I am irredeemably against trying to offset the cause of the impetus of this with the blood of US sons and daughters in that damn country.
We will only create more refugees by sending our men and women over there.
In addition, ISIS will take a break from killing apostate Muslims to kill our soldiers instead. So we’d be sending our people there as basically decoys so that apostate Muslims would have a break for short while ... or join ISIS to kill the even more apostate non-Muslims ... our troops
We can contain them fairly well. At least we can refuse to contribute to creating more refugees and we can do our damndest to keep them out of our country. The more there are, the harder that will be.
We should not under any circumstances get involved in an ISLAMIC religious civil war, which is what is really going on and no one will say it.
Actually, I think a lot of people say that. And a lot of people also want to get out of the Middle East, and even out of Europe. A lot of people want to hunker down within the USA and let the rest of the world go to hell. Some of them wanted that on 8/11, but 9/11 changed the discourse. It’s going to be awfully hard to put the toothpaste back in the tube now.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.