What the fuck just happened?
Trump pulls out of Syria and seemingly green lights Erdoğan’s favourite geographical revenge fantasy to once and for all deal to the Kurds. This was Erdoğan at the UN less than a week ago arguing for a mass invasion of Syria to establish a ‘safe zone’…
…today we see Turkey invading Syria using this as a model barely days after Trump bewilderingly pulled American troops out.
The Kurds are American allies who helped defeat ISIS, for Trump to dump them after he’s used them is breath taking. This has the real possibility of becoming a massacre of enormous scale and there doesn’t seem to be any reason why.
At this stage, based on the transactional nature of Trump, you almost get the feeling Erdoğan has found the dirt on Biden and handed it to Trump in return for the freedom to butcher as many Kurds as he can.
Trump is either remarkably ignorant of the geopolitics here or he is nakedly corrupt and is getting some type of unseen quid pro quo out of Erdoğan.
Or both.
With ‘allies’ like Trump, who the Christ needs ISIS?
Not sure how accurate this is but Ben Rhodes, former Obama staffer claims Trump convinced the Kurds to dismantle their defences facing turkey before abandoning them https://mobile.twitter.com/brhodes/status/1181216981938098179
The former administration didn’t exactly have a super duper attitude towards the Kurds either…..
Sam: “….Ben Rhodes, former Obama staffer….”
Oh dear. We should take at face value anything said by him? I don’t think so.
Obama: as awful as every other US president in my lifetime. As awful as his successor. Remember Sarah Palin asking him how all that hopey, changey stuff was working out for him? Heh: she was right.
This could work out all right. The Kurds need to come to a resolution with Damascus . Their hope that the US would establish a country for them in Northern Syria is now dashed. They will probably get a degree of autonomy granted within Syria and now is the time to talk.
D J S
Brokered by the Russians, David, that might be their best options
A Kurdish semiautonomous homeland, under Russian protection? That would seriously undermine US power in the Middle East
Maybe no bad thing
Mjolnir: “A Kurdish semiautonomous homeland, under Russian protection? That would seriously undermine US power in the Middle East
Maybe no bad thing”
Syrian protection more likely, I suspect. Not sure that Russia sees that sort of enterprise as being its role. Long term involvement of this nature in another polity isn’t the way it does things. Putin is known to have a Westphalian perspective.
But either way, you’re right: it’d give uncle Sam a black eye. And that’d be no bad thing.
Realty is the US could not stay in Syria for ever and in fact they are not even there legally under international law as they were not invited by the standing Syrian government. Indeed what has happened has not helped matters and has delayed an inevitable need for some sort of resolution with Turkey.
Sean: “…in fact they are not even there legally under international law as they were not invited by the standing Syrian government.”
Indeed. An inconvenient fact that seems to have been forgotten by many commentators. And most of the US; including Hollywood.
David Stone: “The Kurds need to come to a resolution with Damascus.”
That they do. Their best option in the current environment. I read somewhere recently (not sure where, will try to find it) that Assad had already offered them the protection of the SAA, but they’d turned down the offer. This latest development may well cause a rethink on their part.
Nothing new in this. The US have a long track record of letting down allies…..
https://www.redstate.com/streiff/2014/10/08/obama-betrayal-kurds/
As we all know ‘death and destruction’ only becomes uber bad when it occurs under Trumps watch..
https://theintercept.com/2019/10/07/kurds-syria-turkey-trump-betrayal/
So it would seem Siobhan……LOL
Tell that to the Kurds, Siobhan.
Indeed, Siobhan. Some of us have noticed…
What a cheer germ you are David Stone. The Kurds are the people that Turkey and everyone in the Middle East seem to love to hate, as unpopular as the Palestinians. Trying to talk to stone sculptures is madness surely, and suggesting it is ironic, even malicious or contemptuous. The leaders of quite a few nations have had their plugs pulled out, and can only operate with a limited memory chip that has never been updated.
The trouble started as with Palestine with the British making arrangements for other people. They forgot to include Kurdistan when they drew the map of the middle east.
Are you likening Assad to a stone statue? I don’t quite understand your comment.
D J S
“This has the real possibility of becoming a massacre of enormous scale and there doesn’t seem to be any reason why.”
David Swanson sees it as yet another step in foiling the impeachment process.
He wrote: “The Democrats are after their own principle diet, namely time. They eat up time until they starve… They may push us over the edge to nuclear Armageddon as well. But they will at least have eaten up some time.”
“Next [following the Ukraine debacle] Trump pulled troops out of Syria, and warmongers joined up with partisans to oppose any troop withdrawals ever from anywhere, just as they’d done on Korea.
But not one voice said Trump should have sent in unarmed nonviolent protectors and actual humanitarian aid. Nobody questioned the unmatched wisdom of selling weapons to Turkey with which to attack all variety of U.S.-armed fighters in Syria. Nobody proposed any diplomacy or disarmament. Withdrawing troops is always bad, and selling weapons is always good.
“But, there’s a catch. Withdrawing troops is legal, and generally popular. Perhaps Trump was corrupted by Turkish money. But creating the standard that one must prove a corrupting influence is actually a way to block an impeachment on emoluments. In reality, no such proof is required for an impeachment on violation of emoluments clauses. And failing to continue a criminal and murderous enterprise is not an abuse of power at all, even if purchased by Turkey.
“So, in the end, Syria is a perfect angle for the destruction of the impeachment process…”
Trumps Opponents Have Him Beat When it comes to Incompetence
I don’t agree with that Kheala. Impeachment is not in the end a trial based on a president breaking any law. That part of it is only for public perception. It comes down simply to whether or not the congress is prepared to dump him in the first instance , and whether the senate is prepared to dump him in the second. Up until he let Erdogan have his head the senate being majority Republican would not have supported his impeachment , but so many are pissed at him pulling out on the Kurds (not that any of them would not have done so when it suited them), and weakening US position in Syria , that he might well be rejected by the senate as well.
I think it’s more like he has stopped trying to appease the warmongers as with the impeachment looming he no longer has anything to loose by doing what he always wanted to do.
D J S
DJS – You may be right.
He sounds quite deranged to me: ” if Turkey does anything that I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be off limits, I will totally destroy and obliterate ..”
Colbert addresses this here 🙂
It would certainly sound like derangement if he doesn’t have his tongue in his cheek. It’s hard to know isn’t it! I wonder if it will ever become clear whether he has a plan that the deep state is making it impossible for him to implement , or he really is in a world of his own.
D J S
David Stone: “I wonder if it will ever become clear whether he has a plan that the deep state is making it impossible for him to implement…”
In our view, what he was saying before the election suggests the above. It’s worth remembering that Obama came to power with what Palin called “all that hopey, changey stuff”. And the deep state similarly hornswoggled him. But he was better than Trump at sounding like a pollie (because he had been one) and making fancy speeches. And putting a virtuous face on his defeats at the hands of the deep state.
Kheala: “…. I, in my great and unmatched wisdom…”
I’d put money on that being a piss-take. Nobody has said that Trump has no sense of humour. It looks to me as if – as the Poms would say – ‘e’s ‘avin’ a larf at the msm’s and critics’ expense.
Trump is a strong man groupie, someone who sees the exercise (read unaccountable) of power as a sign of worth and status (in this similar to the fascist strongman axis in 1930’s Europe).
Turkey annexing northern Syria, to deposit the Syrian refugees (many secular and or Christian) now in Turkey, will result in their oppression by Islamists. Also more extensive suppression of political activism by Kurds in Turkey and ultimately Turkish forces being placed in Iraq to secure Mosul oil, protect Turkmen – all supposedly as a NATO ally against Iran.
In actuality, Turkey will work with Russia and Iran to extend the reach of their power into and over the Arab world. Carving out what they want for themselves – it’s their re-write of the earlier European design for the region at the end of WW1.
Trump’s isolationism allows him to go along with it, domestic politics requires being pro Israel and economic interests preserving the petrodollar. However in even this – the hard-line economic sanctions approach to Iran risks a Gulf conflict that plays into Putin’s hands by precipitating a higher oil and gas price.
One wonders if USA will veto any condemnation at the UNSC of Turkey’s actions (or subsequent annexation – it would be consistent with supporting Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights). If this does happen one hopes the UN SG notes the irony of a nation that does not make its payments to the UN seeking to exercise their vote all the same.
Trump is either uitterly mad or thoroughly corrupt. Both I suspect
Its like some graphic novel super villain hasd seized control of the White House. But no Avengers or Justice League to defeat the evil villain bent on underming the planet’s defences to pave the way for alien invasion
Don’t laugh its a saner scenario than the one we are facing now
This is the most illustrative reason why NZ must withdraw from all military alliances. With friends like the US, who the fuck needs enemies. The Russians wpould be more honourable
No military alliances now or evert
Agreed, we cannot maintain any alliances with the Americans.
We could be next to be thriown under a bus.
he USA have already wormed their way into our police and defence forces. The Defence Forces are in a cleft stick – they are up against modern weapons in any conflict. They need to know how to use them. So they have practice mock maneouvres every year, or more often, and the USA is large in these and other international units join in. They work out a scenario where they might have to fight in NZ which sounds scarily possible, and go to it. Have guns, want to know how to fire them, and how much damage they will do. We are small, dispensable and disposable. Think of Bikini and the Marshall Islands being used as a living laboratory for a bomb explosion. Muroroa has the radioactive detritus still left to deal with. (Perhaps they can feed its emissions into a machine that turns it into electricity? That would be the recycling and environmental triumph of the century so far.)
We can make bold and intelligent statements, but up against the money-hungry, power -oving, cult-raised people at the top (cult of greed and acquisition, desire for domination, control and monopoly and searching for new scientific discoveries to be utilised for profit) – the ordinary citizen has to think around the obstacles and try to build a life with others of goodwill, thoughtful consideration and commitment to community with bounded freedoms, trust and respect, kindness and practicality ruling attributes. And take note of the book Affluenza which tells a story of our age where the myth is displayed that getting better living conditions, better education, will result in a happier and sharing society. We just become competitive and mean, and want more exponentially – so like a mental and addictive sickness. Simplicity, commitment, respect and trust, kindness and practicality in balance with firmness of character and an understanding of what money is and how ‘isms’ (ie capitalism, communism, fascism, tribalism) must be considered carefully so their precepts can be carefully utilised. These are all needed for a new emergent society of intelligent and good people, and probably totally absent in the power brokers we see around us.
Donald cares about Donald. And that’s pretty much where his interest begins and ends. Once you’re no longer able to “add value”, you’re disposable and can be safely abandoned. America does this. Trump’s just jaw-droppingly brazen about it. But let’s all take comfort in knowing he’s going to “obliterate Turkey’s economy” because that’s bound to make the world a safer and more stable place.
Is it any wonder kids these days are looking at their elders and asking, “What the actual fuck are you doing?!”
Do we need a better reason than this NEVER to ever get involved in another American military adventure again? Nope. No better reason than Trump stabbing The entireKurdish people in the back.
Imagine what he could do to us?
He’s just made 30 million enemies. And the Yanks wonder why most of the human race despise them.
“Trump is either remarkably ignorant of the geopolitics here or he is nakedly corrupt and is getting some type of unseen quid pro quo out of Erdoğan.”
I think that we ourselves are poorly-informed about what’s going on there. We surely cannot depend upon the msm to give us any sort of analysis of what’s happening. See this; note the tweets from so-called “progressive” Hollywood:
https://off-guardian.org/2019/10/10/trumpbetrayedthekurds-progressive-hollywood-calls-for-war/
Nowhere is this seething hatred of Trump, and adoration of the Kurds stronger than Hollywood. A population of ill-informed moralising egos have decided Trump’s “betrayal” of the Kurds is his greatest crime, despite having very little idea who the Kurds are or what (if anything) they have ever done. Jeeze D’Esterre, doesn’t this sum up our bestest buddies murica in a nutshell???
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