Posted on 10/20/2019 12:19:34 AM PDT by Jim Robinson
Outrage met Donald Trump’s supposedly rash decision to pull back U.S. troops from possible confrontational zones between our Kurdish friends in Syria and Recep Erdogan’s expeditionary forces.
Turkey claims that it will punish the Syrian Kurds for a variety of supposed provocations, including aiding and abetting Kurdish terrorist separatists inside Turkey. But what they say they can so easily do and what they really can do inside Syria are, of course, two different things.
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Otherwise, our presence in the firing line could raise the specter that we’d either refuse our Article V (collective defense) commitments to Turkey that Erdogan might cynically invoke in a larger war in Syria, or we’d find ourselves actually killing Turks to save Kurds. Either of these scenarios is theoretically quite possible, and both would be far more injurious to the spirit and cohesion of the presently composed NATO alliance than asking Germany and its followers to pony up the contributions that they had long promised.
As I understand the present outrage, the logic goes like this: It is a sellout to leave the Kurds vulnerable to the Turks, and it undermines our noble promises and our credibility in a way that ignoring our ignoble, legal commitments to Turkey do not. That may be a legitimate assumption that we all would like to embrace, but it is not yet the policy of the United States.
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Any current critics calling for the use of American trip-wire soldiers to protect Kurds from the Turkish military — in the current stated mission to defeat ISIS and keep it defeated — should at least make the case that de facto fighting against Turkey means that it is therefore no longer a friend and should no longer be a NATO ally, and thus, in extremis, can be opposed militarily...
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
mcconnel and the rest of the gopE in congress have been undermining Trump since before he was sworn in. They are no different then the dems. They just have the cowardly luxury of sitting back and letting the dems do the heavy lifting.
VDH nails it...again...as always!
Anyone that discusses the Kurd ‘war-machine’, has to contend with the PKK which is funneling the money into the system. Between money-laundering, drug-distribution, and kidnapping...they are a unwise ‘friend’ and you can’t allow yourself to be partnered to something like this.
This is just Northrop Grumman.
Employees of Northrop Grumman Political Action Committee (ENGPAC) 2018 Contributions
Employees of Northrop Grumman Political Action Committee (ENGPAC) 2017 Contributions
Plug in the name on your "Find" function of those raising a stink about Syria and you are probably going to find them there.
(and some you probably thought you wouldn't find there as well)
California's recipients should be of interest to you, Mr. Jim.
$297,50 in 2017 and $193,500 in 2018...State totals.
He is definitely my ‘go to’ guy when I want a clear explanation!
So unassuming, modest and gracious!
My question: Why do we still have nukes in Incirlik? I'd like to see our Commander-in-Chief order all of those nukes removed, all at once and without making it public until they are gone (or ever, except that the Deep State would leak the decision immediately - even if they knew that would risk the security of those nukes in transit).
I’ve been asking that question for years. And there were some rumors that they were removed a couple years ago.
As for the Turks holding “hostage” our 50 nukes (that we stupidly haven’t retrieved from Incirlik Airbase yet), not a problem.
Every cargo plane that flies out of Incirlik needs to carry an extra “passenger” or two. Every flight, every day.
It won’t take long to ship 50 nukes. Just don’t tell anybody, ESPECIALLY the Turks. They probably have plans for those warheads.
We could always make a silent statement by moving the military personnel and weapons to Fort Trump in Poland.
I hope those rumors are true (and that no one who know the facts links the decision to President Trump and then leaks the truth).
If being involved in whatever Kurdish separatism is going g on is such a good idea, then Nancy Pelosi should call a vote and declare war. I’m sure Romney and Graham will support such a vote in the Senate.
So alll the chicken hawks can go have their war and own it.
Of course, they won’t because. (1) no clue who to declare war against and (2) all they really want to do is attack Trump.
But this is the line. If it’s such a great idea, declare war Nancy.
Victor Davis Hansen is an exemplary historian and researcher. I place more weight in his opinion that others. THank you, Jim.
Start here: “The chief problem is that the Kurds are our friends but not our legal allies. In contrast, the Turks are not really our friends anymore but are legal, treaty-bound allies.”
I don’t know the mechanism and I understand there currently is no way to de-list a NATO member. This has to be a multi-national effort or none at all, otherwise, all of our treaties are pointless.
Every cargo plane that flies out of Incirlik needs to carry an extra “passenger” or two. Every flight, every day.
It won’t take long to ship 50 nukes. Just don’t tell anybody, ESPECIALLY the Turks. They probably have plans for those warheads.
Considering the size and weight of these old style weapons, moving them in this manner would not be practical. Also, the base is full of Turkish workers and most of them are likely government workers. Secrecy is out of the question. Our options are very limited.
It’s my understanding these nukes are tacticals, not big strategic devices, so they probably aren’t all that big. You can probably fit a few of them into a single truck.
Getting those nukes from their bunkers to the flight line might be tricky, but only if we let the Turks see what we’re doing. I’m convinced the Turks want those nukes to stay, and not for deterrent effect.
[....] Those on the left now screaming about loyal allies, and the ignominy of selling out friends, had no problems abandoning the Vietnamese and Hmong to Communist retaliation. They have demanded abject withdrawals from both Afghanistan and Iraq, which could lead to slaughter in the former case, and actually did in the latter, by creating a void that birthed the mass-murdering ISIS in Iraq.
It's pure political pandering by the leftist pukes (apologies for the alliteration).
L8R
Hanson is about the only historian I trust now.
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