America’s Betrayal of the Kurds

Kurdistan is a Zionist project to further divide the Middle East, everybody knows about “divide and rule”, support ethnicity groups that are hostile to you rivals in a imperial policy that is old as the Sun.

American and Israeli imperial policy made the Kurds burn their bridges with the Turks, Arabs and even the Persians, it’s time to rebuild their relation with their neighbors without outside interference.

SDF/YPG/PKK does not equal Kurds. Erdogan gets along fine with the KRG and gave Kurds back their civil rights in Turkey after decades of persecution. The PKK is a terrorist organization that kidnaps and recruits Child Soldiers, sex trafficks women, runs a totalitarian police state, engages in drug running, and blows up Turkish Civilians.

Fuck them. They stabbed the FSA in the back, leveled North East Syria with their incompetence and engaged in ethnic cleansing.

Turkey intends to clear them out, rebuild North East Syria, install a North Syrian Government, resettle millions of refugees in North Syria after the rebuilding is done. Half a million of those refugees are Kurds by the way who fled PKK brutality.

Trump is right to hand off to Turkey and pull out. He never wanted in Syria or to take responsibility for rebuilding it, and Turkey was willing to do it only to get stabbed in the back repeatably by the US and EU while caring for 5 million refugees with the EU refusing to honor its promises.

It took a lot of firings to get to this point, but Trump is finally getting Generals and Cabinet Secretaries in place who will follow his orders. Erdogan has been more than patient, always giving an out, trying to de-escalate the fighting, trying to keep NATO alive, all while Neocons did everything to throw gasoline on the fire and get Trump into another war.

This time our attempt to dictate the world’s geopolitical structure to our benefit will work.

This time we know what we’re doing.

Turkey has not been very subservient to the US lately. They bought Russian air defense systems and will soon be buying Russian jet fighters in lieu of our F-35. Us having about 1000 troops in his way is going to make Turkey tolerate a heavily armed Kurdish group, which it regards as terrorist, on its southern border? Not likely.

Turkey has been threatening this move for quite a long time. Even in the face of nothing more than those threats, leaving those troops there would be stupid. And I still do not believe that permission was asked. I have no doubt whatever that Trump was TOLD by Turkey that the invasion is on.

“Trump’s going to let Turkey invade an area of Syria held by the Kurds.” So says the oligarch controlled American media.

But does the U.S. really have any control over Syria? No. Russia (or even Syria with its S300’s) has the ability to impose a no-fly zone any time it sees fit. Without its air power, the U.S. military is a nothingburger. In general, Russia has won the Cold War. Russian weapons are better than ours.

What the headline should say is “U.S. FORCED TO RETREAT AFTER LOSING COLD WAR.” Our guys lost, and Russia won. When you lose a war, you have to retreat. It’s that simple.

But you won’t see any such headline in the U.S., outside a few small blogs that hardly anyone reads. Americans still believe they are king of the hill. For someone who accepts that delusional world view, Trump’s decision to retreat can only be viewed as treason or cowardice.

Ian said “Erdogan would not invade if there were US troops there. That would be committing national suicide. Turkey is exactly the sort of country the US military is designed to completely wreck. The Turkish president doesn’t tell the American president anything.”

Ian, you are overlooking the S400’s that Turkey recently acquired, and that Russia and Turkey now have an alliance of sorts. Once again, Russia won the Cold War. The U.S. is a has-been. So no, there’s not much the U.S. can do.

The Turkish military is large but has been severely weakened by Erdogan’s purges of it. US weapons are considerably better than their Russian counterparts. We have seen the difference in Syria. The Russians carpet bombed. The US hit whatever it aimed at. The only time US and Russian forces brushed up against each other in Syria, the result was a hundred plus dead Russian “mercenaries”. And let us not waste any tears over Assad’s Syria. It is and was a police state. Police states are inherently illegitimate. Ditto dictatorships.

Rarely agree with Ponderer but, I’ll take his POV over Ian’s on this issue.

Also Raqqa.

i have watched little snippets of MSNBC, Fox News, CNN and glanced at the NY Times and I despair.

even the commentary here disappoints me.

Ian made the excellent point that America’s conduct is neither moral (we are not keeping faith with the Kurds for sure — whether “we” should have cynically offered them aid in the first place is a question that simply brings into further question whether the U.S. is, as they say, “agreement capable” — nor is America’s foreign policy such as it is reflective of national interests. America’s foreign policy is completely hijacked by lobby groups and cynical political operatives pursuing careers and paydays in foreign adventures of various kinds.

the way several commenters here have reduced the drama to narratives featuring one or more parties in the role of “good guy” or “bad guy” is just feeding the pathology of American foreign policy, which is frequently hijacked by such tissue-thin narratives, narratives that lend themselves to cynical gambits offering superficial moral cover, where a realistic analysis would look to interests and stable end games.

Hugh, perhaps, disappoints me most. Yes, Hugh, America is the biggest, strongest bully on the Mashriq playground. What good does it do anyone?

The Russians have demonstrated what a realistic, calculated intervention with minimal but focused commitment of resources can accomplish. And, yes, it is perfectly reasonable to think that Assad’s regime surviving is, among the alternatives, a “good outcome”. It is the stupid Americans, who are sure that overthrowing Assad is going to lead to the sudden outbreak of liberal (capitalist) democracy and not a descent into some Islamic fundamentalist hell on earth for Syria’s several minorities, not to mention the economic and human costs of continuing the on-going fighting indefinitely. (Only American defense contractors think a policy of perpetual war is a good thing.)

Really, Russian diplomacy has been nothing short of amazing. The Russians have an alliance with Syria and an alliance with Israel (don’t hold your breath waiting for American cable news to mention the extent to which Putin cultivates Russia’s relationship with Israel) — that’s got to be tricky. The Russian relationships with both Turkey and Iran have been, shall we say, troubled, for centuries even. Getting the leaders of Iran and Turkey on the same stage as the Russian President was a neat trick. And, I can scarcely imagine how the Russians approach Hezbollah.

In the actual military operations inside Syria, the Russians have been clever and focused and methodical. They have limited resources, it is true. Their interest is a naval base for which they barely have the navy. They have forced the Turks and Israelis to respect their air operations and even the Americans to cooperate with them in “de-confliction”. Whether the Russians had a hand in shooting down Hillary Clinton’s idiotic 2016 campaign proposal for a “no-fly zone” is rarely mentioned as a possible example of “election interference”. And, they responded in an exactly measured way to the Israeli violation of air conflict rules, supplying the S-400 (under Russian control) to Syria in a way that demonstrated the Russian willingness to tip the balance of power in a precise but decisive way when Israel does not play by the agreed rules.

One can decry the policy result: survival of the Assad regime, but it isn’t clear to me that that is not the least bad possibility. If we were serious about understanding what is practically possible instead of invested in entertaining fairy tales, we would inquire into the bases of support for the Assad regime — what elements of a very complex political society either actively support the regime as protecting their interests or resign themselves to it as indifferent to their religious or cultural preferences or economic pursuits. And, just what is the character of the insurrection? Maybe, we could be adult enough to recognize that violently angry people are unlikely candidates for democratic deliberation and tolerance — even if they are good at producing propaganda made-for-television about ‘white hats’ and gas attacks. (Really, “white hats”?)

Never to my knowledge have the Russians felt the need to direct expensive missiles to blowing up largely empty desert to prove their machismo. Meanwhile, the U.S. finds itself repeatedly “allied” with forces openly hostile to American interests and not infrequently on both sides of a direct military confrontation — as in the case of the Kurds and the Turks. The betrayal of the Kurds is rooted in the inability or unwillingness to see that the Turks and Kurds are locked in conflict and were likely to come to blows — an inability or unwillingness rooted in turn in the corruption of U.S. foreign policy.

Of course, elsewhere the U.S. is “allied” with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, countries actively hostile to the U.S. and malevolent regimes to boot. Good guy / bad guy analysis there might actually be an improvement, but don’t hold your breath.

The way they talk on cable teevee, one would think the “experts” peopling the Blob and the Pentagon were selfless patriots with an unblemished record of achievement for their country, instead of a bunch of bumbling war criminals seeking career opportunities in perpetual war and arms sales.

The scary thing about Trump is that he might actually be the smartest guy in the room.

Anecdotes may not be data, but maybe one anecdote is a datum, so for what it’s worth:

A Kurdish refugee, Zubair Rushk, spoke to our local Amnesty International USA chapter on his book Escape from Hell: Based on the True Story of a Syrian Political Prisoner. He lived in a predominately Kurdish neighborhood in Syria. He was arrested for teaching classes in the Kurdish language and history to children. Syrian law forbids it. He was tortured. He escaped to Jordan and eventually got entry to the U.S.

We asked, “What would you like to see happen?” He said, “Ideally, a Kurdish state. But of the realistic possibilities, Assad winning the war. He is a very bad man, but the Islamic rebels would be worse for us.”

1. How many times will the United States sell out the Kurds before they finally get wise?

2. How many times does this need to happen to the Kurds and others before Poland finally gets wise?

Who is this “Deep State”, p, flying ‘neath the algorithmic radar? Why not say the names. Or are we avoiding unwanted attention from “certain parties” who scan for the use of “certain terms”. A winks as good as a nod to blind horse and yer uncle Bob” . . . ? Because if we all knew, we could all participate. But if you and a few are the only people who get to know, then the rest of us are left helpless to understand, and receive zero intellectual or informational benefit from the discussion. It’s like listening to a wall.

I’m not denying there’s a sinister state out there intent upon global domination. Like talking about Fascism, it took a long time to get over the taboo and call it what it is, what is happening, but once that rubicon was crossed and it is generally recognized that that is what it is, what is happening it’s not so difficult to say. So too I am sure with this “Deep State” – it’s taboo to talk about it now but you know just as soon as we do talk about it, just as soon as we identify it so we can talk about it, then it’ll be that much easier to talk about.

I’m looking forward to it.

The Left will never be taken seriously on foreign affairs, and will deserve not to be, until it comes up with a world view that is persuasive, coherent, and realistic. Currently, I see little difference between the Right and the Left in foreign policy. The Right is filled with its collection of dogma, sacred cows, and delusional conspiracy theories. Instead of countering this with a rational, critically thought out alternative based on American interests and values and an awareness of the existential issues of climate change and overpopulation, it embraces its own assortment of doctrinal idiocies and generally carries on with all the lucidity of a six year old having a temper tantrum.

I do not understand the Left’s love affair with Vladimir Putin. He’s a thug, a dictator sitting atop a group of rapaciously thieving oligarchs. The Left has no problem with him killing off journalists and anyone he deems an opponent. What a clever politician! Or it’s really the US deep state running some kind of false flag op. He invades his neighbors but that’s OK if you’re Russian because Russian irredentism, unlike Nazi irredentism, is good. Well, isn’t self-determination good? How does this square with Russia being a dictatorship, as in what part of the oxymoron of democratic self-determination and dictatorship don’t you understand? And why is self-determination only acceptable when it furthers Putin’s imperial ambitions? Why was self-determination not good for the Chechens? Or any of a couple hundred other groups in Russia? Why was self-determination good for Crimean Russians, but not the Crimean Tatars? At least, those Crimean Russians can now join the quarter of Russians without an indoor toilet and the third without hot water. Well, at least they can look forward to their pensions, although Putin has been doing his best to gut those too because foreign adventures, the international sanctions they bring on, lackluster oil prices (a big part of the Russian economy also think climate change), and of course looting Russian oligarchs have nothing to do with this.

The Middle East is a poisonous mixture of dictatorships, police states, and theocracies where whichever sect/ethnic group, majority or minority, in power uses that power to oppress and lord it over everyone else. They are all willing to use us, the Russians, each other just as long as it’s in their short term interests to do so. And they will turn on us or anyone else the minute those interests change. So all this talk of alliances is poppycock. As I have written before, the Middle East is already gone with regard to climate change and overpopulation. About the best, the US as hegemon can do is manage the collapse, for a while. It doesn’t help that our current President Donald Trump turns everything he touches into a fucking disaster.

As for the difference between Aleppo and Mosul, the modern city of Mosul was liberated fairly quickly. It was the old town with its winding streets that ISIS turned into a stronghold. Even so, considerable efforts were made to reduce casualties and let those fleeing the fighting out. In Aleppo and Syria generally, civilians were specifically targeted and their neighborhoods carpet bombed.

“Deep State” is simply a code for “Anyone we don’t like who has ever been involved, however periferally, with previous governments and the Federal Bureaucracy.” It is a ploy straight out of Know-Nothingism, a way to dismiss anything the rubes dislike when they can’t complain about their target’s race, gender, religion, or politics.

As to US foreign policy, it has always ever been run out of corporate offices, never the actual government itself. The problem is that corporations often disagree on goals, and so the Senator from Standard Oil might push one agenda, the Representative from Dole Banana another, and the Senator from Ford yet a third. Sometimes they work in harmony, but often not.

Right now Trump wants peace, as he profits from tourists visiting his network of hotels and properties. If he is able to cut a deal with Erdogan for his Istanbul towers and keep a promise to his base, so much the better. If he was a war profiteer like Bush and Cheney had been, he’d have pushed for a full military solution to line his pockets.

All his decisions are predicated on how he personally and sometimes his family and allies will profit. If it keeps a campaign promise, that’s gravy. But his decisions are never, ever based on what is good for the country or the people, it is all what is best and most profitable for him. Always, always follow the money. He has no ideology or dogma beyond his own profit and self aggrandizement.

Walls at the border? Follow the money.

Detention of undocumented immigrants? Follow the money.

Destruction of limits on corporate regulation? Follow the money.

Demand for the Fed to lower the rate? Follow the money.

Everything he does is about making money, directly through improving his position in his investments, or even more directly through payoffs for positions in his cabinet, or quid pro quo with foreign leaders (the Biden thing is the least damning thing he has done, look what his family is getting from China for ignoring the Higher genocide).

Every. Thing. He. Does. Is. About. Making. Himself. Richer.

Follow the money, save the world.

Initial reports coming in. The joint TSK/SNA (FSA merger under SNC Defense Ministry) has advanced 8 kilometers so far towards Suluk at their furthest point.

So far the TSK/SNA Offensive is working to isolate Tal Abyad and Rasulayn, these border cities are the gateways into Raqqa and Hasakah respectively and seizure of both Cities in the second phase will effectively break the YPG terrorists forever more.

No solid causality numbers yet. TSK and SNA are going slow to minimize destruction and draw the YPG out into the open to be crushed. Unlike the US, they want the place intact as much as possible so refugees can swiftly return to functioning cities and receive assistance from AFAD which has mobilized large amounts of equipment and supplies to provide aid and do reconstruction work.

It seems to me that Trump can’t win this one with the commentariat: if he doesn’t withdraw the troops he is is warmonger but if he does then a betrayer of the Kurds.

Olivier, the US could have given the Kurds a security guarantee, done what it was doing keeping a few troops in the area, and made it clear it wasn’t leaving until both the Turks and Syrians had cut acceptable security deals with it the US and the Kurds.

What we have is the spectacle of two leaders, Trump and Erdogan, both seeking to divert attention away from their domestic problems: the Trump impeachment and the tanking Turkish economy –by dumping on the Kurds.

A recurring theme of the Trump Presidency is that even when he addresses a policy that needs addressing he does it in the most ham-fisted, destructive, and ineffective manner possible. His border obsession is another example of this. For economic migrants, you go after those who employ them, fining them heavily. It is not exactly a secret which industries have a lot of illegals working in them. You work with Mexico to limit migration across its southern border. And finally you give aid to and work with the Central American states to alleviate the conditions, like gang violence, that are creating the migrant flows.

Bone spurs, S, glass houses, all that. Show us your green card, gringo.

1st US, 5th Cav, AAA, Ranger, 1972-3

And here is a prime example of how a anti-war, USA – EVIL kind of pundit suddenly supports them mingling in all of this shire once again. Oh the irony. always some new reason to get involved in warring, but this time it’s different!!! Reminds me of the circus elections when every time there is a new clownish artistic show to get people to vote..

Shorter Hugh; Yeah, you clocked me but…here are some ad hominems to distract the feeble minded.

Hugh, “left” is a term to describe everything and nothing. I don’t care about what this “left” might or might not do. I’m talking about the concrete case on our hands and Ian’s position of once again finding a reason for the US to get involved. It’s just that you think your reasons are better than when others call for US to get involved in wars when we remember other situations. I would even dare to say that I have heard better justifications before.

Sic Semper Tyrannis has just run a post by guest-poster TTG ( The Twisted Genius). It describes some very good and hopeful developments getting under way in Syria. Perhaps every CLEJ ( Cannibal Liver Eating Jihadi) in Syria may be eliminated from existence and deleted from the face of the earth. Perhaps the GAJ ( Global Axis of Jihad) will suffer a serious defeat. Here is the link.

https://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2019/10/jubilation-ttg.html