Kurds

[NoBodyImportant]

16 minutes ago, Dave-G said:

I'm somewhat curious why its been left to the USA to find and fund finishing the total destruction of Isis - except they're not allowed to totally wipe them out.

As someone else said there are people who don't have their hands tied by politicians or media who are willing and able to do the job more thoroughly.

Sometimes third world people can deal with third world people better.  

America could wipe ISis out in one weekend if we could fight total war.  But liberals aren’t going to like it. 

[chrisjpainter]

5 minutes ago, NoBodyImportant said:

Sometimes third world people can deal with third world people better.  

America could wipe ISis out in one weekend if we could fight total war.  But liberals aren’t going to like it. 

Turkey's actions aren't about IS. Any US involvement other than walking away shouldn't be about IS (directly). It would be about not abandoning allies. It would be about not turning your back on people who've asked for your help in protecting themselves from foreign invaders.

The only IS factor is those thousands of IS prisoners. And where will those IS terrorists want to go if they escape en masse as is risked by the US withdrawal? They'll be looking at targeting the West, including America. 

The US's attitude of 'not my circus, not my monkeys' doesn't really cut it. Neither does trying to justify it by saying the Kurds didn't help 75 years ago, even though they didn't exist as an autonomous region then anyway...

[Retsdon]

1 hour ago, Dave-G said:

I'm somewhat curious why its been left to the USA to find and fund finishing the total destruction of Isis - except they're not allowed to totally wipe them out.

 They were training them!

...Among the rebels that U.S. Special Forces and Turkish Special Forces were training, “A good 95 percent of them were either working in terrorist organizations or were sympathetic to them,” a Green Beret associated with the program said, adding, “A good majority of them admitted that they had no issues with ISIS and that their issue was with the Kurds and the Syrian regime.” ....

 https://sofrep.com/63764/us-special-forces-sabotage-white-house-policy-gone-disastrously-wrong-with-covert-ops-in-syria/

Edited October 12, 2019 by Retsdon

[Raja Clavata]

5 hours ago, Retsdon said:

The legacy of Trump's surprise evacuation will be the reforming of IS. Sorry but I couldn't help correcting it for you. His withdrawal and the resultant fighting and upheavals will create the ideal seedbed for these people to flourish again. 

And possibly drive the creation of a new Kurdish based terror organisation who operate outside the boundaries of "Kurdistan".

[Retsdon]

7 minutes ago, Raja Clavata said:

And possibly drive the creation of a new Kurdish based terror organisation who operate outside the boundaries of "Kurdistan".

I doubt that. 

[NoBodyImportant]

On 12/10/2019 at 07:53, chrisjpainter said:

Turkey's actions aren't about IS. Any US involvement other than walking away shouldn't be about IS (directly). It would be about not abandoning allies. It would be about not turning your back on people who've asked for your help in protecting themselves from foreign invaders.

The only IS factor is those thousands of IS prisoners. And where will those IS terrorists want to go if they escape en masse as is risked by the US withdrawal? They'll be looking at targeting the West, including America. 

The US's attitude of 'not my circus, not my monkeys' doesn't really cut it. Neither does trying to justify it by saying the Kurds didn't help 75 years ago, even though they didn't exist as an autonomous region then anyway...

Trump has warned European countries to take the prisoners.  He ever asked countries to take the ISIS fighters that came from Europe and nobody wants them.  The US isn’t going to house and feed them indefinitely.  Nobody is willing to help but then Bam!  Countries are starting to step uphttps://trib.al/EKNG77F

[chrisjpainter]

28 minutes ago, NoBodyImportant said:

Trump has warned European countries to take the prisoners.  He ever asked countries to take the ISIS fighters that came from Europe and nobody wants them.  The US isn’t going to house and feed them indefinitely.  Nobody is willing to help but then Bam!  Countries are starting to step uphttps://trib.al/EKNG77F

how does that justify the main point, that the US are selling its allies up the river and leaving them to fight a war that the US could have stopped, just by honouring its commitment to its allies? Just because some EU nations have made contingency plans to act on the sideshow, doesn't justify the US's back-stabbing in the main event.

This isn't about the prisons, it's about the Kurds being abandoned and invaded by a foreign aggressor because the US turned its back on them and walked away.

[Fuddster]

so Sky news reports 950 IS prisoners have walked.

I would feel no sympathy if a spare, off  the record ,1000lb had been dropped prior to their escape.

These chaps will be looking for mischief.

f.

[Walker570]

I do believe the Turks have made a bad mistake from what is coming out of Washington at this moment.   Pity we can't build  A WALL  around the whole lot and let them wipe each other out.

[Retsdon]

 And it seems like the biggest winners might well be Moscow and Damascus. https://indianpunchline.com/a-turkish-russian-entente-cordiale-in-the-making/

 The Kurds- to stop the Turkish invasion- have today done a deal with Damascus for SAA troops to re-enter the region and redeploy to the border. https://twitter.com/Dannymakkisyria/status/1183685519764611072, so Damascus has regained a mass of territory without having to fight for it.  And that means that other than a small area around Idlib, and a bit that the Turks will likely hand back in a deal brokered by the Russians, Assad has now got his country back.

Turkey has nullified the threat of trans-border support for Kurdish separatists based in Turkey;  Moscow has become the undisputed chief power-broker in the region; and American troops get to go home.

Winners all round really other than the hapless Kurds. The status quo ante the war is largely restored. But what a terrible, terrible waste of blood and life the whole thing has been. Perhaps in future some people might pause and think before stoking bloody conflict in regions that they don't understand. 

 

[Harnser]

On 12/10/2019 at 04:30, NoBodyImportant said:

America’s liberal left will not let us do what we need to do to win this war.  Turkey doesn’t have to play by the same humanitarian rules the US as to play by.  ISIS will be begging the USA to come back when Turkey gets done.   Muslims have ways to deal with other Muslims that they UN doesn’t like.  The politically incorrect way of putting it is these are 3 world people.  They need to be kept under the Iron Boot of a dictatorship.  We have this noble goal of bringing democracy to this part of the world but they are not ready for it yet. 

The Middle East have never been able to claw its way out of the Stone Age . What with its tribalism and religion it never will . As you say they are not ready for democracy .

harnser

[NoBodyImportant]

Cnn, nsbc used video of the Machine gun festival in Kentucky as video proof of Turkish slaughtering civilians.  I was there man! The horror, the crying children,  $10 dollar hotdogs.  They ran out of blue cotton candy,  I had to get pink,  ******* pink man.  https://www.facebook.com/100000549832687/posts/2887448577950108?sfns=mo

[Zapp]

Not sure this thread is really a joking matter.

[NoBodyImportant]

1 hour ago, Harnser said:

The Middle East have never been able to claw its way out of the Stone Age . What with its tribalism and religion it never will . As you say they are not ready for democracy .

harnser

Truth

[Retsdon]

2 hours ago, Harnser said:

What with its tribalism and religion it never will

A bit like Northern Ireland then. Or the Balkans. Or Ukraine. Or Myanmar, India, most of Africa, etc, etc.

There are chronic tribal (national) and religious conflicts all over the planet. Why single out the Middle East? Two reasons.

1) Because regional oil wealth sucks in outside players whose presence magnifies and exacerbates what would otherwise be bog-standard local quarrels.

2) The Sykes-Picot Agreement created a string of artificial borders that split diverse cultural, ethnical, and religious groupings into arbitrary 'nations', thereby creating the perfect crucible for chronic discord.

Apparently, half of England can't even tolerate living in a very benign and loosly administered EU. Can you imagine what it would be like if a Fenchman like Macron were destined to be Britain's Prime Minister in perpetuity because a couple of ignorant Africans charged with redrawing European borders after a war hadn't known or cared about Franco -British cultural and historical differences, and had lumped Northern France, Southern England and a bit of Wales into one country?  And the next 'country' was southern France, northern Italy, and the Austrians? It would be war without end.

Northern Ireland, the Basque region of Spain, Eastern Ukraine, etc, etc, are all examples of what happens when borders fall in the wrong places. And there's hardly a border in the Middle East that's in the right place.

The people of the Middle East are just normal people, the same as anywhere else. No better, no worse. 

Edited October 15, 2019 by Retsdon

[NoBodyImportant]

2 hours ago, Retsdon said:

A bit like Northern Ireland then. Or the Balkans. Or Ukraine. Or Myanmar, India, most of Africa, etc, etc.

There are chronic tribal (national) and religious conflicts all over the planet. Why single out the Middle East? Two reasons.

1) Because regional oil wealth sucks in outside players whose presence magnifies and exacerbates what would otherwise be bog-standard local quarrels.

2) The Sykes-Picot Agreement created a string of artificial borders that split diverse cultural, ethnical, and religious groupings into arbitrary 'nations', thereby creating the perfect crucible for chronic discord.

Apparently, half of England can't even tolerate living in a very benign and loosly administered EU. Can you imagine what it would be like if a Fenchman like Macron were destined to be Britain's Prime Minister in perpetuity because a couple of ignorant Africans charged with redrawing European borders after a war hadn't known or cared about Franco -British cultural and historical differences, and had lumped Northern France, Southern England and a bit of Wales into one country?  And the next 'country' was southern France, northern Italy, and the Austrians? It would be war without end.

Northern Ireland, the Basque region of Spain, Eastern Ukraine, etc, etc, are all examples of what happens when borders fall in the wrong places. And there's hardly a border in the Middle East that's in the right place.

The people of the Middle East are just normal people, the same as anywhere else. No better, no worse. 

So your saying we should pull out and let them set their own borders?  I’m down with that. 

[oowee]

 

6 hours ago, Retsdon said:

 

The people of the Middle East are just normal people, the same as anywhere else. No better, no worse. 

And after years of interference from all sides it is in all of our interests to do what we can to broker some sort of peace and resolve these differences. If we don't do it others will continue to meddle and the wounds will continue to fester. 

[Hamster]

The Middle East will never find Peace until the "civilised" West (who of course would never even conceive of wars) leave it alone....................and that will never happen until its resources run out. OR it meets a force (or two) able to withstand its gunboat diplomacy. 

Google General Wesley Clark - 7 countries in 5 years starting with Afghanistan and Iraq and finishing orf with Iran. If you're going to comment on a serious subject such as wars at least have the curtesy of researching a fragment of factual, documented information available on video footage ! 

The "problem" of course as I have pointed out several times before is that the savage war profiteers hadn't quite got the sums of their geopolitical, world public awareness via an ultimately uncensorable internet (or even military capabilities as well as proxy allies and available tactics) of their foes right. 

The world is changing and with it we all have to accept new realities, the plan got more than half way but it thankfully appears to have come well and truly unstuck at Syria so the "end of times" peddlers will be busy finding an alternative for reaching Doomsday.  

[Jonno243]

On ‎12‎/‎10‎/‎2019 at 04:30, NoBodyImportant said:

America’s liberal left will not let us do what we need to do to win this war.  Turkey doesn’t have to play by the same humanitarian rules the US as to play by.  ISIS will be begging the USA to come back when Turkey gets done.   Muslims have ways to deal with other Muslims that they UN doesn’t like.  The politically incorrect way of putting it is these are 3 world people.  They need to be kept under the Iron Boot of a dictatorship.  We have this noble goal of bringing democracy to this part of the world but they are not ready for it yet. 

This might actually be the most abhorrent, vile, racist and bigoted thing I have ever had the displeasure to read on this forum.

If that statement truly reflects your world view then you are beneath contempt.

[Retsdon]

23 minutes ago, Jonno243 said:

This might actually be the most abhorrent, vile, racist and bigoted thing I have ever had the displeasure to read on this forum.

But he's maybe kind of right about the democracy thing. I've spent a long time in the Middle East and I like the people here. But in some things they have an utterly different perspective. And one of those things that they view completely differently to how we view things in the west is social harmony. The absolutely worst thing you can do in this part of the world is to set people within a society against each other. It's anathema. The ideal is a harmonious society - and what could be wrong with that? But if you think about the adversarial democratic system that prevails in the west  -a harmonious society is exactly what we do our utmost to bust up. We set democrats against republicans, labour against conservative, remainers against leavers, etc, etc. We can get away with this because, most of the time, we don't take it too seriously. But in the Middle East, politics isn't smart words in the Commons - it's a serious business and it can escalate into outright conflict quite easily.

And we're not immune either. What about the Brexit vote? The first directly 'democratic' vote for 40 years  has polarized the country into a division that looks like being permanent. How's that good for society and the country at large? So viewed objectively democracy is a two-edged sword  - and there are many sophisticated and well-educated people in other regions who question whether or not it's the be all and end all, and whether society as a whole is better or worse served by the constant underlying conflict that drives the democratic system.

But I don't think that was his point

[ordnance]

Quote

Northern Ireland, the Basque region of Spain, Eastern Ukraine, etc, etc, are all examples of what happens when borders fall in the wrong places. And there's hardly a border in the Middle East that's in the right place.

What about the Welsh and Scottish borders are the in the right or wrong place. ?

[chrisjpainter]

On 12/10/2019 at 04:30, NoBodyImportant said:

America’s liberal left will not let us do what we need to do to win this war.  Turkey doesn’t have to play by the same humanitarian rules the US as to play by.  ISIS will be begging the USA to come back when Turkey gets done.   Muslims have ways to deal with other Muslims that they UN doesn’t like.  The politically incorrect way of putting it is these are 3 world people.  They need to be kept under the Iron Boot of a dictatorship.  We have this noble goal of bringing democracy to this part of the world but they are not ready for it yet. 

Would that be the same Liberal Left who has control of your House - the one that's just passed a rebuke of your president's decision to cut and run, to the tune of 354 votes to 60? It will clear the Senate, with Republicans like Senator Lindsey Graham coming out to say Trump's decision "is against all sound military advice". It's not the Liberal Left, it's your President! He's totally ignorant of the situation, yet refuses to listen to the people who aren't. So: 

America's allies think he's wrong to pull out,

America's House thinks he's wrong to pull out.

America's Senate thinks he's wrong to pull out.

America's Republicans think he's wrong to pull out,

America's Democrats think he's wrong to pull out. 

What kind of  narcissistic ego-maniac does a man have to be to ignore all those people and to assume he knows what to do? 

Edited October 17, 2019 by chrisjpainter

[Newbie to this]

4 hours ago, chrisjpainter said:

Would that be the same Liberal Left who has control of your House - the one that's just passed a rebuke of your president's decision to cut and run, to the tune of 354 votes to 60? It will clear the Senate, with Republicans like Senator Lindsey Graham coming out to say Trump's decision "is against all sound military advice". It's not the Liberal Left, it's your President! He's totally ignorant of the situation, yet refuses to listen to the people who aren't. So: 

America's allies think he's wrong to pull out,

America's House thinks he's wrong to pull out.

America's Senate thinks he's wrong to pull out.

America's Republicans think he's wrong to pull out,

America's Democrats think he's wrong to pull out. 

What kind of  narcissistic ego-maniac does a man have to be to ignore all those people and to assume he knows what to do? 

But do the American people think he is wrong?

[chrisjpainter]

46 minutes ago, Newbie to this said:

But do the American people think he is wrong?

Is your question 3 words too long?

Edited October 17, 2019 by chrisjpainter

[NoBodyImportant]

36 minutes ago, Newbie to this said:

But do the American people think he is wrong?

Nope.  In one week Trump caused Syrian Kurds and the Syrian government to forge an alliance.  Kurds need this alliance to live in peace In Syria.   He drug Russia, and Iran into deep conflict taking pressure off of Israel.  Plus,  European countries are already talking about sending troops to the  area to share the burden that the UN should have been doing.  But at the end of the day those problems there need to be handled by Muslims not Europeans.