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What About the Kurds?
So Turkey is bombing the Kurds in Syria. The Kurds in northern Iraq are (were?) very friendly to the U.S. Of course most of our allies fight for their own reasons and values and not as a favor to us. Same with the Syrian Kurds. Still, this looks like another case of our having a “that was then, this is now” attitude toward those we ‘befriend” in tough times. Memories of the fall of Saigon recur.
It is not our job to police the world or right every wrong. But what sort of deal have we made with Turkey and why? What is worth risking our credibility with those we will want to enlist for aid in the future?
Or is this anxiety just further proof that my neo-con impulses are madness, that Lindsay Graham knows nothing of geopolitics, that Bill Kristol still has no reason to mistrust Trump so much, and that I should just relax and be glad that “Hilary is not President” while the Donald plays 3d chess?
(If I had to say, I guess I would go with those who said more than a year ago that there are no good options in Syria, that we had been outfoxed by the Russians, etc. and that this is just the horrible, horrible price some must pay for Great Power mistakes.)
What say ye, Ricochetti?
Published in Foreign Policy
With legitimate arguments resort to silliness would be unnecessary.
You have nothing but snark, and yet, can’t actually say what you think should happen.
You tell us why Americans should die fighting a NATO ally. Should be easy for a clever mna like you.
Burn that strawman, baby. Warm yourself in the glowing flames as they lick upward towards the heavens.
If you had any interest in real conversation it would be worth it to go beyond snark. But the truth is a fair number of you assign positions to others and then expect them to defend it. That’s not how any of this works. I’ll give you all the money in my wallet if you can find a place where it was even remotely suggested that I want to fight a NATO ally. I’ll double it if you can explain how any of the positions that have been presented are even vaguely consistent with one another. I was reliably informed that the Kurds were terrorists and Marxists, and yet nobody seems upset that we’re giving them cover to retreat. Nobody has expressed any anger or frustration that American soldiers were tasked with destroying their base of operations and told to run away. I know that Orange Man Strong and Brave but it’s not an easy sell. When the president publicly bags on Mattis and then claims that he was the genius that defeated ISIS it makes it veeeeery hard to believe that people are genuinely ok with his handling of things. And yet…crickets. Almost as if there isn’t any guiding principle here and it’s just an exercise of the president’s id.
I have no idea what your first sentence meant, but then you say you do not want to fight a NATO ally, which I assume is Turkey. You are also upset that the USA is protecting (giving cover to) the Kurds. And, third, you don’t like that, while giving cover to the Kurds, our troops are leaving (destroying our base of operations and running away) an area being attacked by our NATO ally, Turkey, whom you said you don’t want us to fight. The last couple of sentences were pretty much ad hominem and shotgun statements to which there is no reply. We need a Ricochet translation button for your comments.
I was waiting for a serious answer and got a confused one instead.