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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
Agree. My attempted point is if we don’t like our reaction to 9/11 think what “we” will do if ISIS gets loose again and manages mayhem on our soil.
Right. There are Kurds and then there are Kurds. One Kurdish group has been on the Official Terrorist Organization list longer than Al-Qaeda.
Editor Note:
Please do not use swear words or obscenities, per the Code of Conduct —MaxIt’s not NATO’s job. Look, the downside of being one of the few adults in the room is that we are expected to knock this [expletive]off when it comes up. Nobody else is reliable. The UN? Please. They’ll send in some rice and penicillin after the refugees have already fled. It falls to us because we’re the only ones who have the stones to step up. Or at least we did. Obama wasn’t keen on having any balls. This mess is on him more than Trump.
Our troops supporting the Kurds against the Turks has no visible endpoint.
My God people like you are insufferable.
Standards exist for a reason. I’m not interested in hearing more Pollyanna babble from the Ron Paul wing of reddit Enjoy your noninterventionist fantasyland.
I have little sympathy for the Kurds given there role in helping to perpetrate the first of the great Massacres of the 20th Century. The Kurds were instrumental in the butchery of the Armenians.
That being said, the US is withdrawing and leaving their allies in the lurch. What a shock. The USA has a long reputation for screwing over its allies and leaving a bunch of countries to fend for themselves. In fact that number is so long I dont dare count it.
Much like you left large portions of Yugoslavia and various fighters who fought in WW2 to the tender mercies of the Soviets, so do you now leave the Kurds to the mercies of another one of your Cold War Allies. Perhaps you should be asking yourselves if Turkey is going to go around killing the Kurds, why are you in an Alliance with them? Why are you in NATO if its members are busy going around being barbarians?
How much blood and treasure should we spend? What’s the endgame look like? What’s the exit strategy? How do we know when we’ve reached “Mission Accomplished”?
With social media and people rising up and organizing, like the kids in Hong Kong, it may be up to the citizens of Turkey to decide how they want to live – I read the the Kurds wanted to annex and have their own country – so it’s complicated.
A little more background:
How Obama’s Team Set Up Trump’s Syrian Dilemma
The Kurds aren’t allies. They are partner forces.
We did not train and fund them to “keep our hands clean”.
Since they haven’t done that (support kurds against Turks) it didn’t even have a beginning.
Go look at the Website. It even has the campaign plan outline.
https://www.inherentresolve.mil/
How many troops are we moving? According to one of the President’s National Security Advisors the answer is 50. Is that all that really stood between the Kurds and the Turks? 50?
Probably about right. Particuarly if we stay true to form and only move them out of the way of where the Turks are.
When Turkey invaded the Kurdish areas of Syria in late 2017, early 2018 we didn’t have to move many people.
It isn’t like this hasn’t happened before in the fight against ISIS, where we have to suspend our support to SDF fighting against ISIS (or where the SDF has to suspend the fight against ISIS) because the Turks got froggy.
I don’t much care. Our time to help the Kurds was in 2003 through 2006. That time has passed. We gave them plenty of help. It’s time for them to help themselves.
But I thought diversity/multiculturism was our strength?
Do our nukes still work? It’s been a while. Has anybody checked?
I tried, but the Marines got all fussy.
Their presence was a deterrent. Turkey is very wary of killing US soldiers by mistake. Hence the phone call and the delay.
Here’s my take (and I’m prepared to be vilified over it.)
Trump doesn’t have this grand 4D chess geopolitical strategy. I don’t think any of his supporters think that. He does, however, have an instinctual sense that he doesn’t want to get American servicemen killed for a cause that he couldn’t look the parents in the eyes and explain it to them in their grief.
When we went to war 18 years ago that wasn’t an issue. We sent the most powerful and technologically advanced fighting force the world has ever known to go kick the asses of some goat herders with an 8th Century outlook on life, and we’re still there. Eighteen frickin’ years later.
Papa Bush screwed the Kurds and so did W. And along with Clinton and Obama they all sold a treatied ally, Turkey, weapons that they’ve used multiple times to kill ethnic Kurds. Then we get all the snarky tweets and holier-than-thou pronouncements on how Trump is the worst EVAH. Erick Erickson tweeting out that he reckoned that Trump can no longer be considered “pro life” as if the first concern of the American President is not the lives of Americans.
We have a lot of vets here, and the fellow mothers and fathers of current members of the armed forces. Maybe you can tell me if I’m out of line here, but I think my son is willing to die for his country if that’s what’s needed for the preservation of our liberty. I’m not sure policing the mess of ancient ethnic hatred half way around the world or “sending the right message” or jockeying with Vladimir Putin is high on anyone’s list. (Putin’s Russia, however mischievous, is not on par with the Soviets.)
IMHO the objectives seem to be:
Keep Turkey and Syria locked in low level conflict qua occupation – keep Syria from getting too stable but also keep it from falling apart – keep the Kurds destabilising (but not too much) Syria, Iraq and Turkey.
I don’t think the objectives include strong, stable states or a stable and peaceful Middle East.
Why did we do it then? Because from the outside looking in it appears that we found a cheaper way to get someone else to fight ISIS in Syria while minimizing the risk to American soldiers.
Don’t those Kurds live there?
Can someone get Ron Paul over here a map?
They’re not technically an “ally” if you don’t have a signed treaty. In that case, they’re merely a proxy.
That was in 1915. None of the Kurds now living was involved in that any more than any person alive today was a slave owner in the antebellum South.
Did I tell about the time in 1987 when I was put in charge of delivering a nuke to a squadron for a QAST (Quality Assurance Subject Test, or something like that)? They would take a nuclear weapon from the inventory, remove the fissable material, and drop it on a target to test everything along the process, but mostly to test if the darn thing would have gone boom.
My job was to guard the weapon during delivery from Coronado to El Toro and from the ordinance crews at Headquarters and Maintenance Squadron 11 to prep the bomb, and then to VMA(AW)-242 (an A-6E TRAM squadron) for hanging it on an aircraft before it took off. The pilot would fly as fast as he could and then make a steep climb as he released the weapon, slinging it miles ahead of his plane. He was graded on accuracy, I think he had to hit within 100 feet or some such crazy number.
My guard crew had to fly to Coronado in helos, provide a security perimeter while taking delivery of the weapon, reboard the helos, etc. We were escorted by armed AH-1T Cobras, and I think some fixed wing aircraft were also along.
This was a big deal, as any commander with the nuke mission could tell you. Except we had recently transitioned from being part of an attack air group to a fighter air group, and fighter guys hated bombing. They were quite snobbish and wanted nothing to do with the headache of nukes.
Well, long story short, after weeks of intense training despite lack of support from most of the group headquarters, I was told on the day of the mission that they sent a guy to pick up our small arms ammo that didn’t have an ammo license, so we had no bullets.
The adjutant rummaged in his desk and strangely came up with 15 rounds of .45 and 30 rounds of 5.56mm. I gave a bullet to each rifleman, and my SNCO and I split the pistol ammo.
I’m really glad Khaddafi didn’t attack that day.