Posted on 10/20/2019 2:22:33 PM PDT by bitt
The controversy over President Trump’s pullout on the Turkish–Syrian border will settle down quickly. It is another useful debunking of ancient shibboleths and decrepit truisms, like the long-impregnable encrustation of false wisdom that moving the U.S embassy in Israel to Jerusalem would unleash hell upon the whole Middle East.
There are about 35 million Kurds, approximately half of them in Turkey, where they make up about a fifth of Turkey’s population. A century ago almost all the Kurds had been in the Ottoman Empire, which the Allied powers broke up after World War I, a foolish decision that is on all fours with the destruction of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
The result was the creation of four patched-together artificial states that have all now disintegrated: Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Iraq, and Syria. They are not alike in other respects, of course. The Czechs and Slovenians (Yugoslavia) have flourished; the Slovaks and Croatians, and more recently the Serbs, have got by adequately well; and the rest of the remnants of Yugoslavia are struggling, but they are all living paradisiacal monuments to the foresight of western statesmen compared to the current fate of the populations of Syria and Iraq.
No American adult needs an update on what a debacle post-Saddam Iraq has become. The Iranians are the principal influence in the 60% of the population that is Shiite, precisely the opposite of what was intended when the United States invaded Iraq under President George W. Bush. The dispossessed Sunni 20% of Iraqis around Baghdad are being thoroughly misgoverned, even by Saddam’s standards, and the Kurds in the north, where most of the oil is, should be building a modern and autonomous Kurdistan that could attract and accommodate mistreated Kurds from Turkey, Iran, and Syria — an authentic Kurdish homeland.
(Excerpt) Read more at nysun.com ...
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Trump is absolutely right on Syria
Syria been a Russian Client state since the 1950s. We weren’t there fighting Isis. We were running guns from Libya to Syria to “arm the freedom fighters” and topple Assad. It was “regime change” again
It wasn’t foolish to break up the Ottoman Empire- salvery, on which it depended- could no more be a valid basis for an empire.
Though the lines they drew were selfish and foolish.
Just an opinion.
The article sunk completely when it asserted breaking up the Ottomans was a bad idea.
We actually don't. Thanks to our shale industry, the U.S. is 100% energy independent and we are set for petroleum and natural gas for 100 years or more.
We shouldn't touch ours until the Middle East is "cleaned out."
Bad idea. A major reason for our growing economy is the incredible growth in shale drilling. Shutting it all down and allowing it to become dormant in order to drain oil reserves from the Middle East (at much higher cost) makes zero sense.
You are 0bama’s brain!
I lived through the debacle and still remember the gas lines, etc.
“And Mr. Erdogan’s grandiose nationalist ambitions could be usefully satisfied by urging him to extend his influence over the Sunni Muslims of Iraq and Syria, leaving an autonomous Kurdistan in northern Iraq. With Hezbollah thus starved and discouraged in Lebanon, and Hamas in Gaza, a Palestinian settlement and a stable Lebanon could finally be possible”
That part from the author is more than mere wishful thinking.
Tha Arabs of the Gulf States and the Saudis - all Sunni and Arab - will continue to have more influence with the Sunni Muslims of Iraq and Syria, than will the Turks. That influence, regardless of its outside source, will not displace Russia and Iran in Syria, and THUS Hezbolla will not be starved or discouraged in Lebanon, nor Hamas in Gaza (both bow with Iran as their main support), leaving a settlement with Israel and Palestine no closer.
The Russians trained ISIS’ first leader, Zarqawi, according to one of the people Putin had poisoned. The idea that the Russians and Syria had nothing to do with the formation and growth of ISIS is complete nonsense. You can argue Obama helped but he’s always had a greater affinity for the other side than for his country.
Zarqawi was in Baghdad with one of the three terror cells he formed in Iraq in 2002, before the US invasion, at a time the Democrats were claiming there was no connection between Zarqawi’s terrorist forces and al Qaeda because Zarqawi had not [yet] sworn an oath of allegiance to bin Laden and therefore Zarqawi and his Baathist buddies could not be held responsible for AQ’s 9/11... at least not if it helped Bush get reelected.
And then there is this ISIS timeline....
https://archives.frontpagemag.com/fpm/us-didnt-create-isis-assad-and-saddam-did-daniel-greenfield/
Calm down...
Zarqawi was killed in June 2006. He was long dead when Isis reared it ugly head. More Lobby for Perpetual War disinformation.
Here is an article for you. To give you some background on the topic
Hillary Clinton’s Benghazi Debacle: Arming Jihadists in Libya . . . and Syria
By ANDREW C. MCCARTHY
August 2, 2016 6:01 PM
But in the day, when Ike took on the role of guarantor og Mid-East il, it was a terrific idea:
We’d use our already built military, get paid for doing it, we’d all benefit from dirt-cheap oil, and money would flow to a very poor area.
20 years later things had changed.
Amazing how many serious problems (thinking of China) are caused by mere policy momentum
After the US invasion of Iraq, Assad had to balance two things - he wanted to (1) inflict chaos in Iraq to discourage the US from moving on to Syria and (2) sic his home-grown Sunni Arab jihadists - who view Alawites like him as apostates to be killed on sight - on to a powerful enemy (the US) that would eliminate his jihadist problem for him. His problem is the classic one - when two of your enemies fight, one almost always comes out victorious and, in many cases, stronger. In Iraq, the jihadists won, by driving the US out. Their accumulated expertise, gained against the most sophisticated military machine in the world, made short work of a Syrian military that defected en masse because it was majority Sunni Arab, as opposed to the Syrian leadership, which is overwhelmingly Alawite, with a few token Sunni Arabs entrusted with little real power.
https://archives.frontpagemag.com/fpm/us-didnt-create-isis-assad-and-saddam-did-daniel-greenfield/
[Before the Islamic State’s current incarnation, it was Al Qaeda in Iraq and its pipeline of suicide bombers ran through Syria with the cooperation of Assad’s government.
Assad and Al Qaeda in Iraq had a common enemy; the United States. Assad had a plan to kill two birds with one stone. Syrian Islamists, who might cause trouble at home, were instead pointed at Iraq. Al Qaeda got manpower and Assad disposed of Sunni Jihadists who might cause him trouble.
Meanwhile Al Qaeda openly operated out of Syria in alliance with the Baathists. While Syria’s regime was Shiite and Iraq’s Sunni, both governments were headed by Baathists.
The Al Nusrah Front, the current incarnation of Al Qaeda in the area ever since the terror group began feuding with ISIS, named one of its training camps, the ‘Abu Ghadiya Camp”. Abu Ghadiya had been chosen by Zarqawi, the former leader of the organization today known as ISIS, to move terrorists through Syria. This highway of terror killed more American soldiers than Saddam Hussein had.
The Al Qaeda presence in Syria was backed by Assad’s brother-in-law, Assef Shawkat, who had served as Director of Military Intelligence and Deputy Defense Minister. His real job though was coordinating Islamic terrorist organizations. During the Iraq War, he added Al Qaeda to his portfolio.
Handling terrorists without being burned is a tricky business though and the blowback kicked in.
In 2008, a US raid into Syria finally took out Abu Ghadiya and some of his top people. A year later, General Petraeus warned that, “In time, these fighters will turn on their Syrian hosts and begin conducting attacks against Bashar al-Asad’s regime itself.”
Shawkat was killed by a suicide bomber three years later. Assad’s support for terrorists had hit home. Those Sunni Islamists he had sent on to Iraq who survived returned with training and skills that made them a grave danger to his regime.
Exactly as Petraeus had predicted.]
[Zarqawi was killed in June 2006. He was long dead when Isis reared it ugly head. More Lobby for Perpetual War disinformation.]
In addition we have intellectual property invested in companies and people that would be lost in a generation. Then who would develop the oil and gas fields?
I agree. IMO < it was the Kurds who took it ISIS mostly. Ira did finally get their act in gear.
The presence of our people in Syria was orchestrated by the same fools that armed the Muslim Brotherhood, and helped the Arab Spring campaign, essentially against our allies.
Khadaffi, not causing trouble.
Mubarik, our ally.
Jordan, our ally.
Syria, non of our business.
Obama, Hillary, McCain, Graham, Rubio... < idiots one and all.
Now Trump is tasked with drawing down people who shouldn’t have even been there.
In a way it’s like Nixon being blamed for not cleaning up Kennedy and Johnson’s mess. When Nixon took over, there were around 500,000 US troops in South Vietnam.
“Okay Nixon, we expect this to be cleaned up by June of 69.”
Correction:
Ira = Iraq
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