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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
Eh. Before going to Iraq in 2005, a couple of British Royal Marine officers tried to teach us the Iraq was just like North Ireland and that we should listen to them as experts and remove our helmets and armor and preferably our rifles when patrolling in Iraq. Their theory is that if only we looked like friends, then they would treat us as friends.
The Brits see North Ireland everywhere.
Of course it was mostly the Chechens, Somalis, Syrians, etc., that did most of the terrorism in our area of operations.
These guys sound like idiots.
Dudes I worked with weren’t idiots – their point was more on the ‘how to start’ the rapprochement as opposed to ‘what stupid things to do’ while it was going on.
Had your guys actually served in Northern Ireland or did you tune them out when they stopped making sense?
Yes, they were fools but from what you’re saying they were no different from what yours said.
Here’s Trump having his way with Erdogon: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2019/10/12/us-forces-say-turkey-was-deliberately-bracketing-american-forces-with-artillery-fire-syria/
“Akshually, our NATO ally bombing us is a good thing”
What you guys seem to not understand is that you will be required to keep justifying dumber and dumber things the longer this goes on. It starts small, but your fealty requirement grows unabated.
Hmmm “kissing up”. You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.
You neglect to mention that Turkey won’t be getting F-35s and has lost the F-35 engine manufacturing contract.
Dumber and dumber- like the new trade agreement with China? Market seemed to like that one.
My prediction is that Turkey won’t last 2 months and will come out weaker than when they went in.
I also predict that I will not be required to sign an loyalty oath.
Lol trade deal with China.
Moving on to a different theoretical, would you indulge a question for a moment? Let’s say that instead of zero dead Americans, these shellings caused one death. How much of Turkey’s GDP would we need to sheer off as punishment for you to be satisfied? What’s the going rate, in either dollars or a nation’s economic growth, for one American soldier?
What an utterly despicable question.
The real answer to any “if it could save just one life” (or the corollary, “do it for the children”) question is to hold the supplicant as an utter fool.
In reality, we don’t make any decisions (unless it is in Soviet Russia and the death is Stalin) based on the disposition of one person.
The USAF doesn’t go out and change their fitness standards when an Airman drops dead during the run portion of the PT test.
Gun owners in New Zealand don’t magically turn in their weapons because of the Christchurch killings.
So my humble advice to you is stop being an idiot and get checked for your STD, I mean TDS. (Those two are so easy to get confused these days.)
I doubt you will find many here willing to engage in insulting hypotheticals.
Yeah, because either one makes the carrier sound crazy.
It’s a real question. I’m sorry you’re insulted by it, but that doesn’t change its existence. If the administration threatened to destroy their economy—and they did, we do not dispute this—then take it to the next logical step. If there is a single death on our side and the president does indeed crush Turkey with sanctions you would logically ask if it was worth it. You (the administration) would be forced to ask yourself if the outcome was acceptable. So I’ll ask again, how much financial pain is enough for them to endure if they end up killing an American soldier? Because we all agree that economic sanctions are the punishment, and we all agree that this game the Turks are playing could very well lead to an unnecessary death. Just because you didn’t think this through doesn’t mean it’s insulting, Bob. It just means you didn’t think it through. So what’s the dollar amount, ballpark?
Another good example of how certain cool kids are allowed to make up their own codes of conduct here at Amish Bible Camp.
I suppose it’s easier to make lame attempts at an insult than it is to actually face the horrifying reality of how little the government thinks of our soldier’s lives. If a body was coming back to Dover tomorrow because of the Turk’s shelling I doubt the family would take comfort in knowing that they would “come out weaker then they went it”.
You will understand your derangement when you realize you cannot induce engagement by others with questions like you have posed. Come back when you get a response. I know there are veterans here, some who have been in command positions, and they don’t need this trash.
Well, this is getting ugly. It’s time to shut this one down.
You think they’d rather have bombs lobbed at them by an ally? Because that’s what’s actually happening. Go ahead, tell those veterans that “akshually, being bombed by a NATO ally is good”. See how far that gets you. Talk about deranged.
Don’t worry, if it doesn’t get shut down fast enough the Turks will probably start bombing this thread to speed up the process.
Make sure you bookmark it for evidence later.
Unlike some people here I don’t actually care. Being amused by hypocrisy is very different from actively crying to a mod about something insignificant. I’m not Karen and I don’t need to speak with the manager right now.
Asked and answered. Try again.
This is evident.
mote. plank.
I prefer the Megan version
Asked, but not really answered. You danced around it and maybe even cane close to making a reasonably coherent point. But you didn’t answer. If you don’t see the logic behind the question that’s one thing. But you do. You know exactly what was meant by it. You also don’t want to talk about it because it’s grotesque and also a genuine, real possibility. These nitwits could have made one slight miscalculation and instead of sending munitions a few hundred meters away and hitting no one they could have killed Americans. And then what? We crush their economy. Hooray. Bully for us. But that doesn’t bring back the life lost. The life that was lost over nothing. The life taken by an ally whose goal was to shoo us away so he could go do what he wanted. You can dislike me as much as you want, but the scenario I’m talking about isn’t some fantasy; it almost happened today and it could easily happen again, only worse next time.
Is that a picture of a Reformed Yuppie?
?
She’s insufferable. Wonder if she has any thoughts on China and the NBA? She seems to have strong feelings about everything else. Maybe one of our brave firefighters in the press will ask her.
It sure seems that way @bobthompson
Good people have been banned from this site for far less.
Impossible. The democrat party is incapable of honesty. They are in permanent coup status. Bug eyes, foaming out the mouth and screaming. Lots of screaming. And anonymous threats.
Yes, LOL, Democrats! LOL!
Please! What have the produced that supports civilization? Nothing. There is nothing coming out of the Middle East besides oil and terror. They export no science, no new technology, and at best, use Western innovations. Persia has not been a “thing” since before the fall of the Eastern Empire.
Let me clarify:
I don’t care about them. They are not America, they are not Western, they are not peaceful. The Middle East is full of people busy killing each other over crap that happened before America even existed. We don’t need to be there.
I can take a bite. I don’t think we should put troops in the way of an ally as a tripwire in the hopes the ally backs down. That is no different than using human shields. The deaths of our troops would be our fault for getting in the way of an ally acting to secure their border against terrorists.
But, that might be a bit hard for a Yuppie, reformed, or otherwise to understand.
They’re your basket of deplorables.
Or maybe flyover country?