Trump abandons our ally against ISIS, the Kurds to be wiped out by Turkey
- Thread starter Pokeabear
- Start date
WE were/ are protecting America's interests......The Kurds have been our staunch ally for many, many years. They have taken the brunt of the ground fighting against ISIS....defeating ISIS and keeping them down is 100% in our interest and security. I have spent a lot of time in Eastern Turkey , and other countries in that area which I cannot say, I have worked with both the Kurds and the Turks. The Kurds are some of the strongest allies we have ever had, and to abandon them is disgraceful.
Wow, that's a bold revision to history. You are either clueless or willfully lying. The PKK/YPG is not synonymous with the Kurds. The PKK was established by a group of students seeking to form a communist state within Turkey. They have waged a full scale insurgency against Turkey since 1984. The vast majority of Kurds are integrated into Turkish society and even serve in Turkey's military. Turkey is not attacking the "Kurds."
The PPU (YPG) is the military arm of the PKK who the US classifies as a terrorist group. The US didn't get involved with the YPG until 2014, and in order to do so, the Obama administration had to rework the group to skirt the group's affiliation to the PKK terrorist group. They urged the YPG to incorporate other groups of Syrian opposition in order to alleviate Turkey's concerns about the US backing a known terrorist group. The YPG and about 5 other ethic Arab groups formed the Syrian Democratic Forces in October of 2015.
The US cooperation with the YPG put a serious strain on the US relationship with our actual longtime ally Turkey. Turkey was never going to allow the YPG to set up an autonomous area on the border. The PKK gets training and arms from the YPG to carry out terrorist attacks against Turkey's civilian population.
How would the US feel about Canada being allied with al Qaeda and supporting and arming a large al Qaeda group along the US/Canada border that provides training and weapons to al Qaeda cells across the US? I'm inclined to say the US would swiftly wipe the border group off the map. What do you think the US would do?
Let me ask you the same questions I asked of Syskatine, which he was unable and/or unwilling to answer.
1) You want us to keep a force in the region to protect the Kurds, which you perceive as our staunch allies. What's the mission? What are they expected to accomplish while there?
2) Define success. What must be done in order for the mission to be considered accomplished?
3) What's the time line? How long must our troops be stationed in the region working toward accomplishment of the mission?
4) What's the cost? How many American lives must be sacrificed to the mission? Is there a specific number you have in mind? Also, what will be the cost in treasure? How much American tax revenue must be expended before you declare mission accomplished?
Failure to answer any or all of these questions is evidence that yours is nothing more than a knee-jerk emotional reaction centered around your utter hatred of Donald Trump. Hatred of Donald Trump is not sufficient reason to ask our young men and women in uniform to sacrifice life and limb for something that has absolutely no bearing on protecting our homeland or constitution. You say you are retired military. As such you should know better than to utter such blather. I suspect you are not a combat veteran. A combat veteran would be much less gung-ho to put his fellow men and women in arms into such an obvious no-win situation.
You pretendong this had anything to.do with withdrawing from the ME is laughable. They announced more troops to Saudi yesterday.
It's a crazy time of year at work. Got a few projects that we're wrapping up and launching a few more. I've been reading all of the leftist bed shitting but haven't had much time to respond. It's a glorious time in the Republic.
In what way have I shown pretense this has anything to do with withdrawing from the ME? The entire thread is about withdrawing the troops from Syria (who were there illegally in the first place). You seem to have trouble staying on point. Is your demeanor as an attorney this scattershot?
I'm amazed that Tom Fitton and John Solomon haven't joined Vince Foster in "suicide".
I agree with you and I dont. US should never have been in mideast,American troops should not have invaded Iraq,should not be in Saudi and Qatar.America should not be fighting proxy war in Yemen.
But you have done all that,now does it make sense to leave a group alone who supported you in Iraq and Syria
What? Yes, in this thread you defended the withdrawal and have advocated for bringing the troops home for quite some time. So you have NOT wanted to withdraw from the ME?
dan, you need some cognitive intervention. You've been advocating generally bringing them all home, and plainly advocated getting us out of this deal, timing of the request be damned and obvious humanitarian crisis it would trigger be damned. Was that some coherent, good twin of yours that pops up now and then? IN THIS THREAD.
Apologies to pokeabear for plagiarizing his tweet, this needs published a second time. Dan, marinate in the chickenshit values of the leading american libertarian:
Gee, Sys, I have gone back and reread every comment I made in this thread and not once did I mention anything about pulling out of the ME. The subject of this thread is troop removal from Syria, and I have stayed on point throughout.
Granted I advocate withdrawing troops from the ME (actually more places in the world than that), and have said so in other threads.
But the subject country at hand in this thread is Syria, only Syria. Your attempt to expand the scope of the inquiry strikes me as a feeble attempt for you to avoid the embarrassment you might feel that you can’t define what the Syrian mission ought to be.
I think you have sysderangement syndrome. Syria is part of the ME and the world. You're kind of flailing, trying to find some inconsistency.
You're not anti-war. Biff basically just green lit a war, and "war" is euphemistic for what's happening there right now - "slaughter" is more apt. Lining up kurds and shooting them in the head now. Killing kids. You defend it -- it's exactly what was anticipated and intended, and Biff contemplated this happing from is first tweet. This is where you cut and past some broad libertarian tome to retreat away from real world.
I dgaf what the stated objective was 1 or 5 or 20 years ago for purposes of making current decisions, the facts are what they are and you can't hide behind mission statements to avoid the slaughter Biff just enabled to help, at the end of the day, Russia. So well done, if slaughter is the intended result.
Now you’re behaving in a more lawyer-like fashion: always bring the conversation back to what you want to highlight. But the sad fact is you can’t say what mission you want our teenage boys in uniform to perform. You’re fine with little Willy Smith from Stillwater, OK, getting shot in the head, but you can’t really say why he should, beyond suggesting that is preferable to a Kurd being harmed.
I’ll make you a deal. You give a specific definition of the mission, define what would be “mission accomplished,” give us a time frame of how long you think it will take, and throw out the numbers of lost American lives, what would be the acceptable number of wounded, what you believe would be the acceptable collateral damage (innocent civilians) and a rough estimate of how much it will cost the taxpayers for your mission to be carried out. You do that and I’ll reconsider my opposition to continued warfare.
You keep bringing up your concern for helpless innocent Kurds, and to be honest I feel for them. I also feel badly for the helpless innocent Turks who have been slaughtered by Kurdish terrorists, about 10,000 of them by some accounts. But for some strange reason you remain silent in your concern for them. The point being Trump has not invited a war as you so desperately want to believe. It’s going on all around the region. In your hatred for the president you have blinded yourself to reality.
And consider this. Our “alliance” with the Kurds involved our using them as our surrogates in the Syrian fight against ISIS. We agreed to arm them and train them in exchange for their agreement to bear the brunt of the dying. We have been told for years that the Kurds are rugged mountainous warriors, vicious fighters not to be messed with. They took out the insanely murderous fighters for ISIS when nobody else could, that’s how tough they are. But now they’re poor helpless peace loving goat herders that just want to live quietly in their villages. They can’t be both things at the same time. Somebody is playing us for fools, spinning the story to fit their personal (profitable) narrative, and you’re biting hook, lone and sinker.
You make an excellent (albeit fundamentally emotional) argument. Let me ask you: how long should the American taxpayer and the American soldier be obligated to the Kurds? The Kurds joined with America out of self preservation, not because they hold some endearment to our country. We armed them and trained them in how to protect themselves from attack, in exchange for them standing in for us on the battlefield. Both side agreed it was a fair deal. The question now becomes what is the deadline for the end of the deal? Is it your position that America should keep its troops in the region in perpetuity? If not, what is the acceptable timeframe for when our military can stand down?
This is where I have to set you down. You have no opposition to continuous Warfare. Our pull-out enabled warfare. Our presence stopped it. Slaughter is the more accurate term.
Americans were not getting shot in the head by stopping this. I decline to argue with your imagination.
So did Biden just checkmate? Same logic apply, my disloyal little cult member?
How many soldiers died in Afghanistan in the last 12 months? Did we have time to do this better or were our guys on their heels before this debacle version of a pull out was put into motion
