Captdon (10-15-2019),The Sage of Main Street (10-14-2019)
Absolutely, the Iran-Iraq war, the Kuwait invasion, the many wars in Lebanon and Palestine, Egypt and Jordan. The eruption of al-Qaeda, the slaughter of the Kurds.....you people think today is a crisis for Kurds......Saddam's atrocities on the Kurds well recorded it did include chemical attacks.
Sheer madness and chaos as far as balance of power. You had the 1979 Revolution in Iran, the 1967 and 1973 wars against Israel. Amd you had the Iraqi invasion of 2001....where we should have taken Saddam Hussein out then.....rather than realpolitik our way using sanctions, Resolutions, no fly zones, and blockades.
History not everyone's game.
I doubt there will ever be peace in the middle east in the future for any extended time period. Were talking a area populated by terriosts relgious zelots they tend to not only hate eachother but the rest of the world.
We're now a week into the Turkish invasion of SDF territory. The United Nations estimates that more than 160,000 (including some 70,000 children) have now been displaced. Over the weekend, the Trump Administration ordered the withdrawal of remaining U.S. troops from Northern Syria and on yesterday fabricated a claim that Kurdish forces had released 10,000 ISIS prisoners as justification; a claim that was immediately contradicted by another member of his own White House.
So far the U.S. government has taken essentially no action against Turkey in response to this operation. That includes the supposedly angered U.S. Congress, which has yet to vote on economic sanctions against Turkey despite its rhetorical condemnations. It's notable that the Congressional Republicans and military personnel seem to be angrier about our betrayal of the Kurds than do the Democrats writ large. I'm just pointing it out.
In response to the inaction of the United States, the SDF over the weekend struck a replacement protection deal with Bashir Al Assad's government that saw Syrian central government troops re-enter key Kurdish towns yet to be captured by Turkey to scenes of local jubilation, the consequences of which are highlighted in the OP.
(Regular updates can be found here.)
Turkey's stated aim is create a "safe zone" in northern Syria to send somewhere between 2 and 3 million Syrian refugees currently located in Turkey. The key thing to understand about that is that the current total Kurdish population in the "safe zone" that's being created is 2 million. In other words, this appears to the Kurds as an exercise in organized, systematic population replacement, which lends itself to fears of impending genocidal action against them by Turkish forces.
There are a multitude of ways that all of these developments could have been prevented. For example, had we simply done what the Kurds asked of us all along, which was to sell them not only small arms, but also tanks and planes for their fight against ISIS (since ISIS had captured plenty of those implements from the Syrian government) they might not remain so dependent on foreign military support at this point. Likewise, had our government not persuaded the SDF to abandon key defensive positions along the border with Turkey in order to appease the latter in vain over this last summer (the positions were handed over to U.S. forces, which were ordered to stand down last week by President Trump), there might have been a more potent resistance available. Or had we just simply remained until the SDF had built up sufficient armed forces of their own, this also most likely would never have happened. Following the onset of the Turkish invasion, we might have swiftly imposed economic sanctions on Turkey and imposed the no-fly zone over SDF-held territory in northern Syria as requested by the Kurdish military leaders. We chose to do none of those things. And at this point I say "we" because at this point, looking at the total inaction of Congress to date as well, it's no longer just the Trump White House that is implicated in this betrayal, it's America that is responsible.
Any action that our government may take against Turkey and/or in defense of the Kurds at this point is too little too late. We have already sold them out. The damage is done and the relationship cannot be repaired. Nor should it be, frankly. They're clearly better off without us.
Peter1469 (10-15-2019)
i do agree we should of sold more substantial weapins but we can protect every group in the world
I fail to see how repatriating 3 million Syrians to Syria is population replacement. What democrats are doing here with the third world is population replacement
bulletbob (10-15-2019),MisterVeritis (10-15-2019)
Last edited by MisterVeritis; 10-15-2019 at 11:37 AM.
Call your state legislators and insist they approve the Article V convention of States to propose amendments.
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