Posted on 10/06/2019 9:10:07 PM PDT by janetjanet998
I and many voted for Trump to get us out of forever wars & not start new ones. He’s coming through on that vital issue, God bless him.
Syrian Kurds had a choice and their leadership chose to be under Ottoman Turkish control, rather than have some autonomy under Damascus control. The did it in Afrin & now again in Eastern Syria. Terrible leadership.
Russia is friends with Turkey & with Syria. It’s playing the long game, and very intelligently.
Where are the gas canisters?
Oh, that’s good. I like that.
They have been fighting on their own behalf. We have helped them with logistics, weapons, and intelligence to eradicate a common enemy, i.e., ISIS.
The Kurds have been seeking an independent state for decades. There are Kurds in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Armenia, and Turkey.
ISIS/ISIL forces are largely destroyed in Syria. U.S. backed forces are in the northern part, while Assad controls most of the middle and southern Syria. Turkey can not attack without going through U.S. backed areas, or attacking Syrian controlled areas.
There is not much for Assad to attack, unless he wants to risk attacks in U.S. or Syrian controlled territory. That may backfire on any attack.
Assad has Russia on his side, and that made getting involved a stupid idea in the first place. Russia was never going to give up one of oldest and one of her last real allies without a fight. I do not know how much international support Erodgan really has now since Trump was elected.
I see what u did there...clever :-)
There’s two groups of Kurds... one group are die hard communists, the PKK, the ones that plague Turkey. The PKK was also in Iraq, but are not the ones we worked with and the PKK has had no qualms about attacking anticommunist Kurds in addition to Turks.
Hopefully the Turks are going after the PKK.
Mullah Krekar of the terrorist group that merged with Zarqawi and which was used by Saddam Hussein to assassinate Kurdish leaders before the war that were friendly to the US was/is a Kurd. The merged group became al Qaeda in Iraq, then ISIS. So not all Kurds are good.
Not all Kurds are alike. The PKK is as nasty as they come, genuine Marxist-Leninists terrorists, the Kurdish equivalent of Antifa on steroids.
Kurd Mullah Krekar... involved in European terror attacks too... Italy even wanted him for involvement with terror cells there:
https://gatesofvienna.net/2019/07/mullah-krekar-will-be-relocating-to-a-warmer-climate/
I believe you're right. Turkey backed ISIS and other groups to try and overthrow Assad but the payoff was never what they expected. If they're no longer backing the terrorists, it's reasonable to have a buffer zone of sorts where the Turks can hopefully target terrorists before they come for revenge within Turkey over the Turks ceasing to support them. Turkey would recognize a lot of people Assad's folks might not so it helps Assad, too.
I think both Putin and Assad would go along with this as long as Turkey is willing to accept some pullback date in the not too distant future and promise to coordinate actions with Syria and Russia. Syria can still use all the help they can get and playing the anvil is easier and less lethal to your own forces than playing the hammer. Russia is clearly going to stand with Assad so as long as Turkey plays nice with Assad, I believe they'll agree to any kind of arrangement that Assad agrees to.
Whether any arrangement exists or not probably won't be in the news unlike the now popular US practice of insisting that private talks between leaders be published for the media Mad Hatters to twist and torture.
JMHo
Let’s play one of America’s FAVORITE games for 3 decades now!!
It’s called “#### THE KURDS!!”
It’s all the rage!!!
The object of the game is to be the one to screw them the FASTEST after our use for them is done. :)
Ages 35 and over.
Let them eat whey.
They are a bunch of communists and they should have made their peace with Assad to prevent this long ago.
They aren’t worth a drop of American blood and we need to leave, we should have left when Trump wanted to.
Hopefully the Turks are going after the PKK.
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That’s not the Kurds the Turks are going after. They are going after the Kurds who were our foot soldiers in the defeat of ISIS. The Turks will ethnically cleanse these Kurds and replace them with their Islamist Arab allies.
People greatly overestimate Russia's ability to project power. Russia has nowhere near the forces in the region required to oppose Turkey in Northern Syria, and no way to get them there quickly. Russia would also not be willing to accept the losses they would take.
Krekar’s family has both PUK and KDP members, he claims not to be concerned about parties but rather wants a Talibanlike caliphate..
PUK, like the US Congress’ Progressive Caucus members, is a member of Socialist International, very tight with Iran.
KDP is more confusing, fractured more along tribal/family lines than ideology, less ‘progressive’...occasionally goes into anti communist mode though its roots go back to Soviet influence. Its peshmerga are the ones we were interested in.......very complicated history also involving Iran.
The conservatives were the old monarchists.
If ever there was to be an independent Kurdistan, the PKK’s palestinian-trained terrorists, other communists and socialists would destroy it... while the KDP factions squabble among themselves.
I doubt that is a distinction the Turks recognize since they’ve been conducting a campaign of genocide for decades. But if they confine their campaign to the PKK that would be appropriate.
I agree that their main goal is independence but they have been useful in many of our own battles as well. It would be shameful in my opinion to abandon those of them who are true friends.
The Kurds did most of the work on the ground to defeat ISIS. That’s all there is to it. No we don’t abandon them. Maybe Turkey will behave as well, it’s not pleasant but are we to get into a fight over this? I also do not believe in the alarmist talk that there will be genocide.
Turkey has taken in over 3,000,000 Syrian refugees, as much as I don’t like Erdogan or Turkey for that matter, they still have some valid points for their side.
The Dutch government researched the whole matter as to whether Turkey was helping ISIS, they came up with the answer of “no” and this is in the last 6 months.
This is not for us to go to war over, a Nato ally but Turkey must act responsibly as a Nato ally.
Screw Russia, they don’t have any say in this, they just lost 35 soldiers helping Haftar in Libya and there have been reports, they’ve lost a lot in Syria. Screw the Russian Putin troll propaganda.
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