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oowee
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Washington's decision to support the Kurds with training and equipment reaped dividends. They proved both reliable and capable and the dismantling of the IS caliphate in Syria owes much to their efforts.

In 1972, partly armed by Washington and urged on by the then Shah of Iran, Iraqi Kurds defied the government in Baghdad. But the Shah subsequently did his own deal with Iraq and the Kurds were brutally suppressed.

Much the same happened in the wake of the US eviction of Iraqi troops from Kuwait in 1991. The then US President George HW Bush called on the Kurds in Iraq to rise up against Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq. Little practical support was offered and the Kurdish revolt was again brutally put down.

It's certainly complicated but it  looks like the US have dropped them in it by stepping aside for attack by Turkey. 

Edited by oowee
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1 minute ago, oowee said:

Washington's decision to support the Kurds with training and equipment reaped dividends. They proved both reliable and capable and the dismantling of the IS caliphate in Syria owes much to their efforts.

In 1972, partly armed by Washington and urged on by the then Shah of Iran, Iraqi Kurds defied the government in Baghdad. But the Shah subsequently did his own deal with Iraq and the Kurds were brutally suppressed.

Much the same happened in the wake of the US eviction of Iraqi troops from Kuwait in 1991. The then US President George HW Bush called on the Kurds in Iraq to rise up against Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq. Little practical support was offered and the Kurdish revolt was again brutally put down.

It's certainly complicated but it certainly looks like the US have dropped them in it by stepping aside for attack by Turkey. 

Yep, that's how I see it also. More or less said the same to OH last night. 

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8 minutes ago, Mighty Ruler said:

I’m not now going to be buying any Turkish guns in protest (not that I was anyway). I can’t think of anything else Turkey produces that I’d be interested in, kitchen appliances maybe?

I am out there next year to see friends in Istanbul on the way to Montenegro. I could spend thousands on some of the decorative household stuff they make. Fortunately not much room in my cabin bag 🙂 

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Must admit the whole thing troubles me greatly. The Kurds appear to have been dealt a bad hand one way or the other since pretty much time immemorial.

As stated above this latest twist is truly shameful.

If they really are the terrorists that Turkey accuse them of being then perhaps the best we can hope for is that they martyr the ISIS detainees before they escape.

Personally I have reluctantly holidayed in both the Turkish mainland and Northern Cyprus in the past but now have the perfect excuse to never go back. I have also used Turkish airlines in the past but will do my very best to avoid doing so in the future.

As for Trump and his administration, I have given up trying to figure them out.

It really is a mad world.

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Yeah, it's utterly disgraceful. Trump justified it today by saying 'they didn't help us in the Second World War, they didn't help us with Normandy.' Pointing out that 'The Kurds' as now understood as a collective, didn't even exist then doesn't seem to matter...

The problem is the PKK and Turkey's complete inability to tell the difference between a Kurd and a PKK member. The fact that it's been the YPG that's done the bulk of the protecting of Turkey's border from the Syrian side doesn't seem to matter. This has the feel of a legalised genocide attempt, even if it's only in its germination.

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1 hour ago, Mighty Ruler said:

I’m not now going to be buying any Turkish guns in protest (not that I was anyway). I can’t think of anything else Turkey produces that I’d be interested in, kitchen appliances maybe?

landrover fuel lift pumps....:unhappy:

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23 minutes ago, chrisjpainter said:

Yeah, it's utterly disgraceful. Trump justified it today by saying 'they didn't help us in the Second World War, they didn't help us with Normandy.' Pointing out that 'The Kurds' as now understood as a collective, didn't even exist then doesn't seem to matter...

The problem is the PKK and Turkey's complete inability to tell the difference between a Kurd and a PKK member. The fact that it's been the YPG that's done the bulk of the protecting of Turkey's border from the Syrian side doesn't seem to matter. This has the feel of a legalised genocide attempt, even if it's only in its germination.

Turkey’s no stranger to genocide, ask the Armenians.

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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. 

Edited by NoBodyImportant
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3 hours ago, NoBodyImportant said:

 ISIS will be begging the USA to come back when Turkey gets done.

Do you actually know who the Turks are fighting? As for ISIS, unless Ankara has a new policy since the seige of Afrin last year, the Turks are more than happy to fight alongside the head-chopping Jihadists. https://www.france24.com/en/20180211-syria-turkey-afrin-propaganda-kurds-video-twitter

 

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5 hours ago, 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 has barely anything to do with IS. The fight against IS as an organised entity has been won. By the Kurds. This is Erdogan using 'security' as a pretext to destroy those same Kurds who held and then defeated IS, when no one else in the area could. This is not about fighting IS, in fact it's more than possible that this incursion will lead to thousands (literally) of IS fighters escaping and rebuilding elsewhere. The Kurds cannot protect their own area and guard the massive prisons that hold the IS fighters no one wants to reclaim. The legacy of Trump's surprise evacuation could be the reforming of IS. 

Edited by chrisjpainter
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7 minutes ago, chrisjpainter said:

The legacy of Trump's surprise evacuation could be the reforming of IS. 

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. 

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13 minutes ago, scouser said:

Is this the same Turkey that want,s to join the E U.

And the same one that gets pardoned by the US president at Thanksgiving I guess

8 minutes 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. 

I fear you're probably justified in your correction. 

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This is how I see it as someone who is actually from that continent and has met both Iraqi and Iranian Kurds in person. Iranian Kurds are mostly proud of being IRANIAN Kurds and against breaking up a part of Iran (there already exists a non autonomous Kurdistan within Iran), Iraqi Kurds have already been handed the oil rich part of Iraq via the murican illegal invasion and peculiarly enough many that I bump into here in the UK not only speak Persian but are very supportive of Iran (to the point that if someones not looking they'll even pretend to be from Iran ) ! Turkish Kurds seem to have a much less amiable relationship with their country of birth and conflicts are much less rare than elsewhere, I know very little about Syrian Kurds other than the fact they fell for murican lies and fought the legitimate sovereign government of their own country in yet another Western proxy war fought mainly for oil, land and assets, they are now paying the price for treachery. The tragedy is the fact innocents will be killed in the process either by Turkey or the remnant terrorists supported by the West.

As an aside Isis was founded, funded and unleashed onto the world by the Sawdi's and their "allies" (you join the dots) they were defeated by Russia, Syria and Iran in that order, murica claiming a part in their demise is an unfunny joke. They and the West in general watched and hoped they (Isis and other assorted heart eating terrorists)  would overrun the Syrian government but when it became clear Russia and Iran had other ideas (AND could make it stick) they changed their tune and tried to save some face. 

FWIW I think Kurds being an ethnic group of people claiming or wanting to steal chunks from several existing countries to make their own one is a bit like Pakistani or Indians here wanting to make their own country in a couple of hundred years ! My answer then would be to soddd off as it is now to the Kurds. 

The reason murica and its allies are so keen to hand Kurds their own country is very simple, they will then arm them to the teeth and use them as yet another satellite "country" from which they'll meddle, launch wars and conflicts in the region.

Edited by Hamster
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This may be controversial but as an American taxpayer I think it’s time to step back and let the UN bare the cost.  Or at least someone that’s not me.  The US contributes 22% of the UN operation budget and 28% of the peace policy budget.  Then we turn around and pay for the wars that the UN should be dealing with.  The UN can deal with it if they don’t like how Turkey handles it.  

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31 minutes ago, NoBodyImportant said:

This may be controversial but as an American taxpayer I think it’s time to step back and let the UN bare the cost.  Or at least someone that’s not me.  The US contributes 22% of the UN operation budget and 28% of the peace policy budget.  Then we turn around and pay for the wars that the UN should be dealing with.  The UN can deal with it if they don’t like how Turkey handles it.  

Around 60% of your annual budget is spent on your military "defence". 

Imagine what those trillions could do for your infrastructure, healthcare, addressing poverty, homeless, education................

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44 minutes ago, NoBodyImportant said:

This may be controversial but as an American taxpayer I think it’s time to step back and let the UN bare the cost.  Or at least someone that’s not me.  The US contributes 22% of the UN operation budget and 28% of the peace policy budget.  Then we turn around and pay for the wars that the UN should be dealing with.  The UN can deal with it if they don’t like how Turkey handles it.  

It should be the UN dealing with stuff like this or at least some coalition of nations if the UN is to weak to make a decision. It's not on looking to the states to sort this out. Put up or shut up comes to mind. 

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45 minutes ago, NoBodyImportant said:

This may be controversial but as an American taxpayer I think it’s time to step back and let the UN bare the cost.  Or at least someone that’s not me.  The US contributes 22% of the UN operation budget and 28% of the peace policy budget.  Then we turn around and pay for the wars that the UN should be dealing with.  The UN can deal with it if they don’t like how Turkey handles it.  

The UN can't get involved. It is fundamentally weakened by its own structure. For the UN to do anything, a resolution by the security council has to be passed to allow military action. That means getting the US, UK, France, China and Russia to agree. That won't happen, because someone will veto. There has to be a conflict where there is not strategic, economic or political advantage to be gained by any one of those countries - although usually Russia and China. In this case, it would probably be Russia, because of its close ties to Syria. So the UN can't do anything. 

The U.S. could, as it constantly tells us is the most powerful nation the world has ev...blah blah blah, but they elected a president who's so ignorant of global politics, foreign policy and military strategy. So they'd rather have their military sitting at home whilst their allies die protecting themselves from invading aggressors and the US's ambition to destroy IS. They could stop a war, but they'd rather not. With friends like those, who needs enemies?

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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.

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