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Rally to support the Kurds the US is officially abandoning to their death
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Interesting
The left now supports perpetual war.
AOC ran on ending the conflict. As of today she is a globalist chickenhawk.
Simple minded twit
Says simple-minded dumbass things.
Maybe you should talk to the Armenian community or the Albanian community about the glory and wonder of a Turkish genocide.
And get your facts straight - oh, wait. No facts to be found!
Facts are hard to find
Particularly amount the left.
50-100 military members are be relocated not removed from Syria.
https://www.militarytimes.com/flashpoints/2019/10/07/how-the-us-troop-wi...
This is nothing more than another orange man bad movement.
quantity does not equal quality
those soldiers also came with air support
your argument is ignoring many factors
but you know that already...
while you lambaste the left
you employ classic right wing tactics of shifting the argument
"winning" an argument based on the QUANTITY of troops proves that youve already lost
5, 10, 15, 10k troops. None of that is relevant
its a variable that has absolutely zero pertinence to the topic
you lose, or as the kids say the young republicans say these days;
"Facts dont care about your feelings."
Seems like you didn't read the rest of the article
Which is why people are upset. They have been strong US allies in this conflict.
Further:
People who say "Orange man bad" to criticize liberals are, as fate would have it, the actual people who suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome, as they'll bend over backwards to prove Trump is doing the "right" thing in every scenario just because they think they're dunking on liberals/leftists. It's a pretty blatant self-own.
I mean, even Lindsey fucking Graham is telling you this move is bad. Again, FTA you linked:
Foreign policy discussion is best when it's not dumbed down to stupid partisan, bad faith arguments from folks like you.
And it's on
Daesh (ISIS) attacked overnight, Turkey is rolling towards the border. The democratic Kurds are trapped between the Turkish dictatorship and Islamic terrorists.
https://www.kmov.com/news/turkey-begins-military-offensive-in-syria-days...
"...are trapped between the Turkish dictatorship..."
"...are trapped between the Turkish dictatorship and Islamic terrorists."
Maybe not.
Looking at this map, it almost looks like the Turks are taking over territory (the 'safe zone') that borders on Turkish backed military near the border, thus solidifying their control of the Syrian side of the border for security and refugee reasons. The Islamic terrorists (not that Turkey isn't Islamist or anything...) appear to be surrounded by the Russian backed Syrian government and the Turks. There is a small area of Kurds apparently caught between Syrian and Turkish forces. The map is dated October 7, 2019. It's from the BBC.
It's a little optimistic
The Kurdish forces nominally control all that green area. But they don't control everybody in it, and there are still ISIS terrorists there. Some of them just attacked Raqqa last night, which is in the green area by the edge to the green area, straight south of Tal Abyad. Tal Abyad was one of the major supply routes for ISIS (yes, from Turkey). So if the Turks take that whole shaded area, we can expect supply of the ISIS terrorists who remain there to recommence. That, and about 10,000 ISIS terrorists are being held by the Kurds, who might have to flee and leave them unguarded if the Turks get close.
In short, the Kurds barely got the cork in the bottle of the ISIS terrorist insurgency in the green area, and the Turks might pop it back out again. That cork is the SDF, and the Turks are trying to kill them all as we speak.
You need to learn the difference...
...between "Muslim" and "Islamist".
Bombing civilian areas
Turkey started off by bombing, including civilian areas. People are panicking. Prisons containing ISIS fighters may be left unguarded.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-49983357
Fake news
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2019/10/wow-abc-news-uses-2017-gun-rang...
ABC caught fabricating news again.
It must be embarrassing to get caught using a United States gun range video to fake a report in Syria.
The title of your comment is apt
Because you’re linking to gateway pundit. Really nice of you to save us all time by labeling it accurately like that.
Not only the left, also the
Not only the left, also the right ! Howboutdat
While I avoid smashing cars
While I avoid smashing cars in general. I do not vacate said car already smashed because "responsibility".
It IS interesting that two very different political wings believe in the same sort of thing but for two very different reasons though. That does sometimes happen in the chaos.
honestly i envy you
and i’m saying this without snark — i would love to live in such a simplistic world.
...okay maybe just a little snark, but really it must be nice to never have to think critically about.. well, anything.
Memories
You are all missing Obama's drone strikes on women and children, huh?
Sheesh. 20 years of opposing war and a few words from a master negotiator have you all bloodlusting and peeling off the anti-war bumper stickers.
President Trump is trolling you, btw. He does this all the time and whole Charlie Brown football thing never gets old. You gotta learn to watch what the other hand is doing. Talk about simplistic.
This may help.... How many troops are we withdrawing?
again, you're super dumb
The point of the troops is that their mere presence deters Turkish action, not the local power they provide on the ground. Removing them immediately after a phone call where your master was no doubt furiously polishing Erdogan's taint likely means he simply bailed on our close allies when asked by a strongman.
You know it was the Kurds who defeated ISIS largely right? Not the Trumps?
How many
How many troops are we withdrawing?
We are withdrawing 1,000 US
We are withdrawing 1,000 US troops who have been supporting our allies, 60,000 SDF troops.
Bzzzt
Wrong.
We have no plans to remove 1000 troops from Syria.
We are removing 30
again..
https://www.apnews.com/ac3115b4eb564288a03a5b8be868d2e5
critical thinking
what does this statement mean to you?
how does the number of troops being withdrawn — 30 or 1000 or 1,000,000 — change the meaning of that statement?
are you suggesting that the president can’t be taken at his word?
Duh
First off, that it is not a statement. It is a third-hand report, and a vague tortured one at that.
yikes
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/statement-press-secretar...
Yikes indeed
I now go on record that it is twice as vague and twice as tortured as I previously deemed it.
It is by definition a statement, though. You are correct.
It's a White House statement
It's a White House statement, you blithering apologist for the deranged shitgibbon who inhabits it.
interesting
this is the first time a trumpist has taken the word of the news over that of his leader.
i know you’re trolling btw, it just doesn’t land as solidly when you started off the conversation attempting to make a point in earnest.
Let me be absolutely clear
It is not me who is trolling you. It is President Trump.
Let me break it down for you.....
Back in April. Ocasio-Cortex and some Republicans DEMAND that we pull out of Syria and end this endless war. Trump administration says OK. We will move 1000 troops now and 1000 troops in October.
Ocasio-Cortex realizes that Google and has a search function and immediately flip flops when she realizes she demanded "genocide" so now she is all like "War! YES! Fuck, yeah! Some wars are really good!".
I am just having fun watching and getting a few quotes. I leave the trolling to the pros. This little pullout, being long overdue,has been signed off on long ago and the press is trying very hard to staple it to President Donald Trump, but the Googles show different. The Googles show Cortex getting a boner for bugging out NOW then flipflopping to a total war machine cheerleader.
Intellectually dishonest paraphrasing...
...is bullshit. And you know it.
You're a liar. Provide direct quotes that support what you say, or stand branded as a liar.
again
you are showing your incapability of understanding nuance.
the progressive left is for a calculated withdrawal of troops from Syria, as you correctly deduced in your search.
what the left is NOT for is a withdrawal without pretense, which is obviously what has happened here. trump took a call with ergodan and got finessed, plain and simple. you tell me how that's okay?
Timeline
AOC begged for a COMPLETE Syria pullout in April and got many GOP on board to end the endless war.
Trump administration said OK. 1000 relocated in April and 1000 in October.
In October, AOC flip flops and begs for war because that sly Trump did exactly what she asked for.
read
keywords: calculated, pretense.
furthermore, you are mischaracterizing her opposition to the move as support for war. this is why our conversation is going absolutely nowhere. let’s look at something she actually said:
SEALED in INK
Here is her demand... sealed forever in ink and on teh googles
https://static.politico.com/a9/36/ed9e984444208ce4cc0b02b091a5/bipartisa...
WITHIN
THE
NEXT
SIX
MONTHS
That was in April. Trump administration moved 1000 troops in April and is moving 1000 more soon.
what aren't you getting?
i've said over and over that the progressive position is to leave Syria - just not without pretense. which is what happened here. you keep doubling down on a contradiction you're making up. opposing HOW we leave syria doesn't mean she wants war with turkey.
Wish granted
In April she demanded all 2000 troops be out in SIX months
1000 troops were moved nearby within six months and soon the other 1000 troops will be moved nearby.
Now she flip flops and wants the endless war back.
She must love war that much to miss it so quick.
Read her letter. She demanded pullout in SIX MONTHS. Wish granted.
god damn
you’re dense man honestly. and that’s exactly my point.
the american moderate needn’t concern himself with nuance because his life is comfortable enough that pointing out superficial inconsistencies in the rhetoric of politicians he doesn’t like counts as an academic venture.
donald trump isn’t playing 5 dimensional chess here. he got rolled by ergodan and everyone knows it, because he got rolled by kim jong-un, vladimir putin, and every other dictator he looks up to.
Demand
So Ocassional cortex and Rand and Cruz DEMANDED we pull out in six months.
Not Ergodan
Perhaps Cotex should be writing letters to Ergodan... nah... she don't care.
Are you suggesting we start a war with Turkey
On behalf of the Kurds?
Please
Are you really so out of it that you don't understand what the word "deterrent" means?
US troops in a region means that Turkey's less likely to start shit because then they're not just whipping on some Kurds, they're potentially indulging in an act of war against the US.
"...indulging in an act of war against the US."
That's where it gets interesting. Our good friend, historical enemy of Russia and member of NATO is supposedly cooperating with the US in setting up a 20 kilometer buffer zone.
Let's see if they are as good as their word. If not, well, it could backfire on them greatly. They saw what happened to Assad when the current President drew a red line.
This could work, but it would have a better chance if the media was at least a bit unbiased.
You need to catch up
You need to catch up.
"...Mr. Erdogan, in the second half of the conversation, complained that the United States was not fully complying with an agreement struck with Turkey in September to jointly create such a safe zone. Mr. Erdogan said he intended to unilaterally establish one immediately.
"Mr. Trump demurred, evidently believing that Mr. Erdogan would not be willing to risk the president’s ire. But Mr. Erdogan effectively “called the president’s bluff,” the person said. What followed was a scramble to move American personnel from harm’s way in northern Syria."
Google "unilaterally" if that helps. Compare and contrast with "cooperating". Show your work.
here we have an good example
of the Magatus Americanus in the wild
he will obfuscate and ignore reality while twisting himself into pretzels to defend his Dear Orange Leader
in this comment, he decides to narrow his focus onto the "quantity" of troops in order to deflect and shift your focus onto something not directly related to the point
it is an amazing inbred talent that most of the species displays quite regularly
this comment has been brought to you by Mutual of Omaha
Not quite
Like it or not, it was mostly the SAA and the Russians. US has been "fighting" ISIS for years but nothing was getting done until Russia go involved.
again
imagine a life wherein you can laugh about sending the people who did your dirty work for you to death and write it off as “trolling”
PrEsiDent tRUmP iS TrOlliNG YoU
Enabling genocide to own the libs. Cool, man!
That word
I don't think that word means what you think it means.
The job of the US is not to go around interfering in tribal wars unless there is something in our interest. Let the UN handle tribal conflicts. If one or two thousand US troops handled it, then surely the UN can..... or else it is far past time to disband them.
Enjoy being trolled by the President. Next time we revisit this Kurdish thing, the Russians will be more involved and President Trump will have all sorts of quotes from the left begging us to go to war. Remember when Bush Jr had Bill Clinton and Ted Kennedy begging for Iraq to be invaded? Then the leftists were all embarrassed when the football was yanked.
LOL at thinking Ted Kennedy
LOL at thinking Ted Kennedy and Bill fucking Clinton of all people are leftists.
I understand.
What are you kids calling them nowadays?
I tried to think of a word that encompassed the fact that they would cozy up to and sell out the US to the scummiest socialists and commies on the planet for a handful of votes.
Leftist is still the best word I got.
Your knowledge of the
Your knowledge of the political landscape is obviously very broad and nuanced. The center-right president responsible for creating "The Third Way" is clearly a revolutionary communist.
this is the American moderate
this is the American moderate: wildly uninformed on the most basic of political topics, yet willing to bloviate about geopolitical conflict at length.
when he is called on his ignorance, he attempts to save face by alternating between obfuscation and insisting that he never took the conversation seriously to begin with.
He can see Boston ...
from his house in Russia.
When Obama left office the military had fewer ammunition
...well several fewer bullets, discounting those in Bin Laden's head. President Trump, a true War hero as he was never captured, was against the Iraq invasion as a democrat. Even though he was at Ground Zero with "some men" after 911 and after being in New Jersey with a bunch of muslims celebrating, he was against fighting in Afghanistan. He is the greatest president we've had and he's smarter than everyone because he's a stable genius.
Stable
"A stable genius." That may explain where all the horseshit comes from ...
So you're an absolute pacifist?
Very few people are opposed to *all* war. The question is what the United States should do in *this* situation, not whether a Congresswoman from New York will look bad if we do what would otherwise be the right thing.
Is Ocasio-Cortez's mere existence really so offensive to you that you'd let innocent people be murdered because saving them might make her look good? You're not even letting your opposition choose your policies, you're letting your imagined opponents under your bed choose your policies.
Answer
Downsize the operation.
What do you mean now?
They supported it in 2002, too.
https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/107-2002/s237
"The left now supports perpetual war."
"The left now supports perpetual war."
Let me simplify that for you...the ctrl-left is always against war, unless the narrative benefits them. Obama drones people? Crickets. Further back...Hitler sign a pact with Stalin? Great, let's keep out of Europe's business. Pete Seeger, member of the Commie Youth, was against war...until Hitler invaded the USSR in 1941.
Now? The left is against war...unless it might look like President Trump is walking into one, then they're all for it, might get Trump into a war and hurt him in 2020.
More light, less heat...truth of the matter is that it's more than was going on over there, but a lot less than the warmongering/Friends of the Kurds/Does no one remember the Armenians? crew of suddenly pro-war leftie progressives believe.
https://strategypage.com/qnd/russia/20191008.aspx
From Col. Austin Bay:
A good read, touches on Chinese attempted purchases in the Ukraine as well as Russian (and Iranian) problems in Syria. Scroll down to the paragraphs labelled 'Syria'.
"... reality is that the fighting is far from over and the Assad government only controls about half the country. Everyone agrees that Islamic terrorist rebels still control most of Idlib province in the northwest and that the Kurdish led SDF separatists control Hasaka province in the northwest, as well as parts of Deir Ezzor and Aleppo provinces .
Many of the Idlib rebels are backed by Turkey while the SDF is backed by the United States, even if American troops are leaving soon. The Assads control the Mediterranean coast ..."
Scroll down beyond 'Venezuela' (warning lefty triggers...) to the dateline October 6. "...[US] pulling its troops out of northwest Syria. This has been the plan since early 2019,..."
...the Kurds have some leverage with the Assads, the Turks and Russia. '
You want to know what the hell is going on over there and cut through partisan political bullshit? Follow the links.
No, the Kurds aren't getting slaughtered. No, the Kurds aren't getting thrown under the bus. It took several years to defeat ISIS, in spite of their being the 'jayvee'. President Trump's willingness to act when Syria crossed the red line of chemical warfare, bombing a Syrian airbase after politely informing Vladimir Putin that he had little time to get his people the hell out of harm's way, sent a message. The message was reinforced when the actual jets used in the chemical raid were destroyed in their hardened bunkers. The message was doubly reinforced when Putin sent mercenaries (so he would have plauseable deniability) against an outpost that had American troops stationed there. It probably looked like the Charge of the Light Brigade, only with American air support.
The Russians understand. The Turks understand. They don't like it, but most of the Middle East is an historic train wreck of clashing cultures and tribes. There are several different factions of Kurds and they don't always play well together. Turkey has been fighting the PPK for about thirty years. They consider them a terroristic crew.
https://thekurdishproject.org/history-and-culture/...
The Kurds want their own place. The reality is that place is either in Turkey, Iraq or Syria. The Turks want a buffer zone between them and Syria to contain Syrian refugees from Assad as well as pissed off Kurds.
So, what to do? Create a buffer zone. Will it work? Maybe. It depends on how our erstwhile Nato ally behaves. Trump doesn't want a shooting war with Turkey, Russia doesn't want a shooting war and Hunny Bunny over there definitely doesn't want to get in a war with the US. It won't last long. So...is there hope? Create a buffer zone, Turks have a lot to lose and little to gain by screwing it up. Sure, why not? It could work.
From Richard Fernandez:
https://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/the-fate-of-t...
"With the Arab Spring and political opposition to OIF ending the hope of "bringing democracy to the Middle East," some sort of repartition of the region, a redrawing of boundaries, seems the sole alternative. In fact, the Obama administration considered this option but failed. In early 2016 Foreign Policy wrote:
'Syria’s borders, of course, were famously drawn in the early part of the last century, as the “sick man of Europe” — the Ottoman Empire — collapsed after World War I..."
So, calm down, take a deep breath, maybe do some reading on the subject before you start clutching your pearls for ethnic groups you don't give a damn about except if it's Orange Man Bad. Oh, just for the hell of it...they have the most thoroughly female integrated army around. Their women are tough, serious fighters.
Given some luck, backing and bargaining skill, there could be an independent Kurdistan over there.
Beeb maps...there are a LOT of ISIS fighters and family in the areas:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-49973218
This map courtesy The Kurdish Project:
If you legitimately don't
If you legitimately don't think Obama's drone program has been criticized relentlessly by the left then you have your head in the sand. There are a lot of people in these comments making the mistake of identifying anybody who isn't a Republican as a leftist. In reality, the vast majority of the Democratic party is made up of neoliberals, not leftists. We have no major political party on the left in this country.
nuance
nuance is not the american moderate’s strong point.
nonsense
Democrats are on record advocating a strategic withdrawal from Syria - not one without pretense, which is what has happened here despite MASSIVE leverage on the part of the US. Your favorite President is already backtracking on Twitter saying this isn’t what he agreed to, despite his own statement saying he was allowing Turkey to invade Syria.
*fixed formatting
Rember the Ukraine
In a treaty we signed with the Ukraine we agreed that if they gave up their nuclear weapons we would back them if they were attacked. Putin attacked and we did nothing breaking our word to defend them.
Perhaps this will help
I am against war. However, sometimes it is necessary to take military action. GW Bush was right to attack Al Qaeda in Afghanistan following 9/11. (He was wrong to go into Iraq after that, but that's another story.) The widespread atrocities of ISIS called for action. We mainly supported others in that fight, rather than sending in an overwhelming US force. Our Allies in that fight were the Kurds. Have you ever met a Kurdish person? I have. My former neighbor was a Kurd who fled to the US and was a productive member of society. (I think he worked with the CIA a bit, although he was always cagey about that.) The Kurds are a society of people who simply want a homeland. The Iraqis want them to be part of Iraq and the Turks think they want to take parts of Turkey, so they hate the Kurds. History lesson aside, the bottom line is that the Kurds, with our backing, did most of the bloody work of defeating ISIS. They are our friends. If we abandon them now, they will be massacred by the Turks. We have a moral obligation to protect them. This is not endless war, but a necessary follow-through of past conflicts.
thank you, Gary
unfortunately however, those of us here who need to read this will avoid it at all costs
"If we abandon them now, they will be massacred by the Turks."
I agree wholeheartedly that the Kurds must be protected. I think what the issue here is that most folks are voicing simple political opinions, rather than at least trying to study the problem.
First, the 'massacre of the Kurds like the Armenians' is a totally not real. The Armenians, maybe a million and a half, were driven into the desert to die. This is not happening in Syria. One of them shows the area Turkey is interested in controlling. Most of the area held in eastern Syria is not included, just the twenty kilometer strip near the border.
Nobody wants war, but the Turks could bring a problem to themselves if they get out of hand. Maybe we should send in the Europeans...after all, they drew up the current maps...after World War One. Map courtesy the Beeb.
Turkey invaded Afrin, Syria
Turkey invaded Afrin, Syria last year and perpetrated ethnic cleansing against the Kurds, Yazidis, and Christians there. Why do you think this situation will be any different?
Unlike the Greeks, Armenians
Unlike the Greeks, Armenians and the Assyrians, the Kurds were not massacred directly after WW1 but since then Turkey has been massacring them. We should be defending them.
anyone
who thinks trump is just trolling the libs, like capecoddahpiece, about the Ukraine quid pro quo has no heart, mind, genitals, guts, or common sense. just an empty athletic supporter
America is probably finished. Collectively we are too sick to govern ourselves, and we uncritically accept pure bullshit at every opportunity , and for decades now, our corporations have much preferred the top-down style governments of other countries. Russian "technology", in the form of bizarre sociopathic blunt force social philiosphies+ Facebook, have been our undoing. And we might as well admit, we were pretty easily undone. It really didn't take much, did it? To think of all the hullabaloo about Freedom and the Wars we fought, to come down to this--being demolished by Russian nerds. This is exactly what we are going to get. I mean, you could fight about whether the left or the right caused it, and you probably would, cuz you are dumb.
More to it
He isn't *just* trolling the leftists.
The leftists are easily triggered and react threefold.
When you need perception to appear as reality to the masses, they are quite predictable and unsurpassed as useful idiots.
The real trolling is the obfuscation and misdirection that will always be above the heads of the useful idiots.
cowering behind a facade
of flowery verbosity is no way to go through life, son
You don't get the "more" in "more to it"
trump did something with Ukraine that is not trolling the libs, but is in fact an impeachable offense. What the fuck??--the only obfuscations I can see are within your brain
Yes, trump would like to democrats to try to impeach him narrowly on obstruction of Congress. Are they ineffective enough to fuck up this impeachment? Yes for sure they are.
What I can't completely grasp is why you have the wrong dog in this fight though, unless it is just not more complicated than you have that particular blend of disorder that makes you easy prey to fascist strong man bullshit. well, you'll get your wish yet, crapcodpiece. Whatever will you do when all the tropes of your patriotism are reduced to rubble and the republic is finally finished? will you just miraculousy find that your slow digestion into a new fascist order has made final sense of your heretofore totally depraved habits of mind? who will you be when you walked by a WWI monument? Ask yourself this, asshole
I don't really think that anyone is being trolled.
Trump's actually shaking up the board. First, 'Syria' is Russian for Vietnam. Why are they there? Well, they have a warm water port on the Mediterranean. They ain't giving that up. Period. They want Assad's Baathists as a buffer against more radical Islamist sects that would attack them in a heartbeat.
Iran is going broke there. They probably wouldn't mind pulling back a bit.
Viva Turkey. After all, as a Nato member, they should be allied against Russia. And yet, they're buying S-400 missile systems. Odd.
The Russians don't mind a NATO member on their flank in Syria. Interesting.
Not so long ago, the Turks shot down a Russian jet over their territory. They must have known whose plane it was.
Russia and Turkey are historical enemies...
So here we are...
The lefty reaction? 'ORANGE MAN BAD'
Here's the funny thing
You've clearly given this more thought than the president. Which isn't to say you've thought it out well or anything. But it's really remarkable that you're trying to actually credit the guy on this.
Yes I agree the Orange Man is BadTM.
I did vote for the $87 billion, before I voted against it...
How many
dovehawk Democrat flip-flop soundbites are in the making on this issue? Republicans should force a vote on the matter even though nothing will beat Kerry's classic.How?
How are Republicans going to "force a vote on the matter"?
You flunked out of grade school, dummy.
"Republicans should force a vote"
Did you finish high school, big guy?