I'm still shocked at how thoroughly the United States betrayed the groups like YPG that we were working with months ago.
Destroying fortifications on the Syrian border [1], providing intel to Turkey.
There's an official denial of a "green light", but it's pretty clear that that's exactly what it was -- a surprise withdrawal and support ahead of Turkey's offensive. U.S. hardware, support, and consent.
It might as well be U.S. troops slaughtering them now, but the U.S. press seems to be treating it as something that the U.S. was not deeply involved in, or something deeply shameful for the U.S.
We have some precedents in our own history, especially in the beginning of the WW II, and a lot of people are shaking their heads - we consider ourselves as important US allies but it's clearly interpreted as the sign that you can only count on yourself in this world.
I remember hearing that on the news regularly since at least the invasion of Iraq, and I still don't understand why our politicians keep repeating it. It's bullshit. To the US, we barely register on the map.
Poland and Turkey are both NATO allies. That should count for a bit more than being incidental pawns for CIA / State Dept. interventionism, no?
In fact, the reputation of those latter arms of our government is so deep in the dumpster at this point that I cannot believe anyone who becomes entangled with them can claim naivety.
This idea that the USA has a deep obligation to a handful of communist ethnic militias in the Middle East is an intel psyop, and you're falling for it.
This is a Syrian civil war. Do you expect the military to take and hold territory on behalf of the Kurds? They were a partner of convenience because we happened to have a common enemy. Turkey is also an ally (like it or not), and has border issues of their own they'd like to handle.
Turkey was an ally. I love Turks as people, spent significant time in Turkey. But it's clear that as a government, Erdogan has turned Turkey away from the West, from America, from democratic values, and decidedly toward Russia (and not just ideologically).
Turkey's NATO membership is now just a vestigial momento of the cold war.
The agreement was supposed to protect the Kurdish groups from a Turkish offensive by de-escalating the areas that the US had deemed "safe", while providing an umbrella of US control.
Trump then disgustingly yanked the umbrella away and let the Turks have at it.
Its a CIVIL war that has been raging for the last 200 years. It won't stop anytime soon until there is diplomacy. Real diplomacy and HARD diplomacy is needed here. It can't be stopped unless people sit down and talk things out.
This is a very inaccurate and misleading characterization, there was no one single war, and the warring sides have changed alliances and some were wiped out completely.
Until about 1920s kurds were mostly on the same side as turkish government, and were helping turks to quell rare rebellions of non-muslim population (mostly armenians, greeks, assyrians) who were treated as second class citizens. Only in 1920s after most of the non-muslim population was killed in genocide, or displaced during population exchange with greece, Turkey started using their honed ethnic cleansing skills against Kurds.
There is as much reason for Kurdistan to be part of Turkey, as for African countries to be part of France, but Turkey not only doesn't agree to this but also fights against kurds in neighbouring countries. It can be stopped either when Turkey becomes civilized (1) country, like european countries did, or when stronger countries force it to behave in a civilized manner, like US was doing until now.
(1) denying genocide, having laws against "insulting Turkishness", oppressing minorities are not things that civilized countries do
In a war situation you don't have access to facts until after the dust has settled and the bad things have happened, so two years from now I will revise my assessment of the situation based on "the facts". The facts we do have available are historical record of what happens when self-interested, oppression happy Turkish dictators decide that a group of people are terrorists https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide
We don't know the facts. This absolutely might be leading to genocide. The fact that they are cutting social media is even more evidence it might go in that direction.
I see a pro-Turkey bias. They let a guy go on there from the Turkish government and push his propaganda, mostly unchecked. They didn't have anyone from the YPG giving their side.
There was a similar operation last year, was it genocide? Please, that is not a light word you should throw around without any evidence. I am always disgusted by censorship, but thankfully there are many other channels of information out there. Also you know that Turkey is home of at least 15 million Kurds already.
Many of the estimated 500,000 people displaced from their homes in areas under the curfews across the southeast of Turkey in 2015 and 2016 lacked access to adequate housing and livelihoods. Many were unable to return to their homes that had been destroyed during or after military operations during which state security forces clashed with armed individuals affiliated to the PKK.
Many times? During the US Civil War, Great Britain gave serious thought to intervening on behalf of the Confederacy on whom they depended for cotton supplies (India at the time was still experimenting with cotton horticulture), and gave tacit financial support throughout the war. Virtually all of the Latin American civil wars of the second half of the last century saw the US give material or military support to anti-communist forces.
The mental gymnastics in this thread, yeesh. "The U.S. should leave and stop interfering!" and "The U.S. should stay and help the Kurds!" are not simultaneously possible.
I don't see how betrayal comes into play, that is the function Kurds chose as mercenaries in Middle East. They essentially play "Red Communist State" vs American brand of "Nationalist" Turkey/Syria.. etc. They did in Iraq and got themselves a semi-independent feudal state, this time Syria held on with Russia and they are getting nothing.
Have you considered the possibility that a green light was, in fact, not given, and that Putin has simply outmanoeuvred America in this case? I think the evidence points towards Russian intel backing Turkey's latest operation.
America completely failed to implement her interests in the region partly due the absolute mess of her internal politics, e.g. a still completely dysfunctional and understaffed State Department: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/11/state-d...
Three pieces of evidence that Turkey is drifting towards the Russian sphere of influence:
1. The nonchalance with which Turkey exited the F-35 program preferring the purchase of Russian made S-400 air defence systems.
2. The recent agreement between Turkey and Russia to use the Russian MIR payment system and to settle sovereign debts in Liras/Rubles instead of US dollars.
3. This latest incursion into Syria, which serves no American interest, but clearly serves Putin by taking an American ally out of the equation (the Kurds).
edit: perhaps Trump greenlit it, but America didn't.
Oil, just like everyone else on the planet for the last century. The Tethys Sea ran from the Persian Gulf across central Europe and the Mediterranean hundreds of millions of years ago, deposited massive oil reserves, and cursed the region and its people.
I think the idea that US tax payers funding a military effort that isn’t involved in actually protecting the US should be considered here too, especially since we’ve probably endured more actual American deaths because of such activity.
Spending money not protecting the people who are funding it is bad enough but putting the people funding it in more danger than they were before is really bad, that’s the opposite of what the military is for.
And so you sell out and instantly betray your allies against ISIS the second they're not immediately useful anymore?
Aside from the deeply troubling morality expressed there, you're setting yourself up to never have local allies in any future conflicts as we can all see just how well that's worked out in the past.
The answer to "how do we not fund and die in foreign wars?" isn't "go to war in foreign countries over and over again and then abandon our allies as soon as our immediate objectives are apparently met", it's gotta be more like "stop picking fights in foreign countries".
these loyalty types seem to suffer from classic irrational doubling-down syndrome where because the US made various mistakes in the past, we must atone for them by supporting our "allies" (often complicated, not-so-nice groups who contribute to regional instability even more once armed with latest US gadgets) in perpetuity. after all, what's a couple more military outposts given 100s already exist across the world?
the best time to bring all US troops home was 74 years ago. the second best time is today. perpetual atonement for mistakes made in the past is really just air cover for maintain tentacles across the world, which are tantalizingly useful for continued regime change/provocation/etc.
I understand this point of view and am sympathetic to it, but that's not what is happening here. This isn't an overture of non-interventionism from a Changed America, it's Erdogan calling in a favor in order to extend his human rights abuses from an increasingly authoritarian USA; there isn't some concomitant immediate pulling out of troops in Afghanistan or any of our many other foreign footholds. Framing it as such is mistaken, and maybe disingenuous.
So, to the sentiment you express, I agree! But still think this specific incident is not an example of that sentiment, and I still think it's really, really shitty.
The source you posted seems to support my point, that America was outmanoeuvred. Even if Trump did greenlight the operation, it seems that he was forced to. Trump saying that he did in fact greenlight it is the easiest way to save face.
I'm more shocked at comments like yours that get echoed and promoted without any context whatsoever, but then again "Anti-Turkishism" is a thing.
What I'm shocked about is how a so called ally can side and arm a vowed terrorist group for years and expect there to be no fallout, but then "Pro-Kurdishism" is a thing.
I do love however the narrative that the Kurds are this angelic force that helped us when no other would for no benefit at all. Why don't you and the west just come out and say you want Turkey broken up? It would save us a lot of time instead of being constantly gas lit.
First of all, not all Kurds = PKK (the terrorist organization you are referencing) and not all arms of the PKK commit acts of terrorism. Second, the atrocities committed by Turkey are on the same scale as terrorism, the difference is only in the semantics.
There are families and civilians living in the regions being bombed by Turkey right now and they are defenseless because the Kurds dismantled their battle stations under the recent Turkey-US agreement.
The Kurds have been massacred numerous times throughout recent history by Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. It would be naive to think a militant organization wouldn't form out of the atrocities committed onto them by these various nations as a means to protect themselves. Not to say this excuses acts of terrorism and corruption committed by the PKK, but a blanket bombing campaign is the worst possible answer.
There has been clashes with the governments(both pre and post revolution), but nothing like what you see in Turkey and Iraq where government targets civilians en masse based on their Kurdish ethnicity.
Destroying fortifications on the Syrian border [1], providing intel to Turkey.
There's an official denial of a "green light", but it's pretty clear that that's exactly what it was -- a surprise withdrawal and support ahead of Turkey's offensive. U.S. hardware, support, and consent.
It might as well be U.S. troops slaughtering them now, but the U.S. press seems to be treating it as something that the U.S. was not deeply involved in, or something deeply shameful for the U.S.
[1] https://twitter.com/sojtfoir/status/1175869891305451522
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/09/world/middleeast/turkey-a... ("Because of an American counterterrorism partnership with Turkey, Turkish aircraft were given access to a suite of American battlefield intelligence in northeast Syria.")