Turkey set to invade northern Syria, White House says, raising concerns for Kurdish fighters

You would be creating another Korea...

 

Or Israel?

 

Not really. The palestinian aren't backed by a major power like the USA or Russia.
North Korea has chinese and russian protection and the south have the USA. This means if something goes wrong it will quickly escalate.
Syria is backed by Russia and the Kurds, in your scenario, would be back by the west. Bingo! you've just created another korea where WW3 could flare up.

 

2000 ground troops too, general

And Turkey wouldn't attack while they were there

And I thought battling ISIS was a good use of our troops

 

I know, @Margot2
I watch Euronews and CNN... your and European press are one-sided, reporting events from the eyes of PYD. Yesterday we lost 9 civilians and today we lost 2 civilians due to PYD rocket attacks from border. No foreign media reported.

We don't approve any demographic change, we don't approve PKK/PYD ruled so-called Kurdistan. 3.7 million Syrians fled to my country they have right for repatriation. Their homes, lands have been stolen by PYD terrorists. We will rebuild hospitals and residential areas for them bu ourselves alone.

 

I don't think so...

United States should act as negotiator(neutrally), then you can still be ally with we,Turks and Kurds.
- no demographic change
- respecting for Syrian territorial integrity

These are our red lines.

 

So your answer to my question is the US should continue forever fighting in the ME. Rediculous.

 

If @Starjet comes Istanbul I can welcome him, he can eat our various types of Turkish kebabs and he can drink Turkish coffee. Then I can change his mind. Send him here

 

Your response is mind boggling to say the least.

 

I'm sure you'll be glad to know that President Trump has effectively told Senator Graham to shut up - we're bringing our men and women home whether he likes it or not. When Trump was running for president, he made a campaign pledge to wipe out ISIS and it's "caliphate" and then bring our troops home as soon as the job was finished, and that's what he's doing. Getting involved in your feud with the Kurds and entangled in other local disputes was never part of that bargain.

Permit me to give you some insight into the Americans who are opposing President Trump's decision to withdraw from Syria. Most of them are either neoconservative warhawks or Leftists who complain about anything and everything Trump does. Graham is one of those neocons who thinks it's America's job to play world police, and Trump thinks otherwise. I like Lindsay Graham, but his mindset is stuck in the bipolar geostrategic dimensions and calculus of the post-WWII/Cold War 20th Century while Trump's mindset is more consistent with the evolving and increasingly multipolar geostrategic realities of the post-Cold War 21st Century. Right now, there's an internal tension and debate between these two forces in our country - one that wants the U.S. to continue to play the role of the global superpower that is constantly intervening in foreign affairs all around the world and one that wants to reduce our role in international affairs and the high cost in American blood and treasure associated with it.

As for the Leftists who just want to complain, they don't care about the Kurds. The only thing they care about is their opposition to Trump. If the president walked on water they would complain he can't swim.

If you're asking me to make sense of Obama's policy decisions I can't. I can remember Erdogan sending out feelers years ago suggesting that he might be willing to take care of the mess in Syria if Obama was willing to support him but obviously that support never came. If Erdogan was really willing to stick his neck out and unleash Turkey's military into Syria, Obama should have encouraged and supported such a move to the fullest, not just politically but militarily as well. Either way, Obama's bumbling in Syria (and Iraq) only made matters worse, and Trump is wise to put an end to our involvement in that country. Moving forward I hope he can set his differences with Erdogan aside, get our mutual interests into alignment and work together, otherwise we should just get out of the way. It's your neighborhood, not ours, and America's policies moving forward should reflect that fact. If the U.S. want to reduce its role overseas and act in accordance with the changing multipolar power dynamics of the 21st Century we have to trust and rely on our allies more, and your country is one of those powers and allies. It's going to be interesting to see how this works out - both of our governments are being put to that test.

 

Doin't forget the lokum

 

Actual divisions in American foreign policy since the end of the cold war, and the military down-sizing that took place briefly, can be summarized more accurately as follows:

1- Proponents of a multi-lateral, 'neo-liberal', world order where the US tries to act as an arm of the UN and other institutions which it would influence in that direction.
2- Proponents of the Project for a New American Century, a group comprised of the military industrial complex, Christian Zionists and the pro Israel lobby. This group's agenda was to basically unseat anti-Israeli/anti-US type regimes in the Middle East, while also tackling any institutions, states and voices favoring multilateralism (which they saw as a break on their ability to advance their agenda), including undermining the UN, EU, while also working towards weakening states like China and Russia.
3- Proponents of what I have termed the "Moscow Project", a vision peddled by certain Russian Jewish oligarchs and such figures, with close contacts in both Israel and the US, with the idea of forging a partnership between the US, Russia and Israel. These folks have a long history of dealing with Trump and had close contacts with some of his associates. Much of the Mueller investigation, ostensibly to find 'collusion' in the US election, was an investigation into the ties and contacts between these figures and the Trump administration. These people have already ceded Syria to Russia and view Russia as the primary actor to find a solution with the Turks in Syria, with their main focus on making sure Iran is kicked out of Syria.
4- The old isolationist wing of the Republican party, which in the post cold war period was first represented mainly by Pat Buchanan and which also has many voices and its influence on Trump and his approach to not just foreign policy, but trade issues. Unlike traditional Republicans (who were the main proponents of neo-liberal free trade policies) these folks are protectionist in the trade policy they prefer, while they aren't too keen to see the US entangled in military or foreign adventures that don't relate directly to an actual threat to the United States.

Under the surface, there of course all sorts of dissenting and divergent voices, including from "leftists" and such, but their actual say in US foreign policy has never been substantial whether during the Obama years (where you had neo-liberal voices mingle with some remnants of the neocons and their agenda as peddled, particularly during Obama's first term, by the pro Israel lobby), the Bush years (neocons were dominant), or the Clinton years (neo-liberal dominance).

 

I like how Trumpty Dumpty claims he is getting us out of endless wars to justify his betrayal of the Kurds in Syria, but is deploying US forces to Saudi Arabia.

 

Actually, it's not more accurate. It's shallow propaganda that projects your own narrow fixation with the Middle East, Israel, Jews, etc., and completely ignores, amongst many other things, centuries of American history and currents of philosophical and political thought.

 

It reflects all of it, as the isolationist wing of the Republican party can trace its roots to pre WWII divisions while the neo-liberal wing is also not a product of any "pro Israel" agenda per se (even if all American politics is affected by the special interest groups and lobbies that influence it).

 

I would suggest that we should be there to protect our friends, the Kurds.

In the future, I simply cannot imagine that others will take seriously the word of the US, following this...

 

I like how the Great Pumpkin's opponents, who would complain he can't swim if he walked on water, are suddenly pretending they care about the Kurds.

It won't last...

 

Not even close to reflecting all of it.

 

It reflected much more than your description, which omitted one of the major forces affecting American foreign policy and pretended it doesn't exist.

 

I care more about the greater impacts of this sudden and incredibly weak action on our part. We've abandoned our allies, and we've also backed down once again before Putin in the region. He and his friend in Syria will be taking control. It sends a strong signal and makes us look weaker and more irrelevant than ever. It's not necessarily the Kurds that matter to me, but what they represent and how the rest of the world will look at us because of it.

And this comes after Trump's betrayal of the Iranians when he pulled us out of that agreement for no good reason, again weakening our nation. Everything he does weakens and harms this country, specifically our "soft power" abroad. He is simultaneously wreaking havoc with the economy, but he doesn't care as long as the stupid stock market is going up and he can point to a low BS unemployment number (he himself said it was a BS number before he was POTUS).

And, oh yeah, we're now sending forces to Saudi ****ing Arabia. Why? Oh yeah, because the Saudis have made Trump very rich and he bends over backwards to please them, even after campaigning that he would do the opposite. Like how he is sending the national debt soaring after he campaigned to do the opposite.

There is no point trying to defend Trump personally when he makes so many great big blunders. We all need to be critical of him for his failures. That's the only way we're going to have competent leadership in this country - having all Americans be critical of all of our leaders. We can't afford this tribal approach where half the country loves the current president no matter what and half the country hates him/her no matter what. We've seen the result, and it's two bad presidents in a row, the second one being far worse than the first.

 

Nope. All that is needed is a President who does not offer genocide in return for political favors. Doesn't even take a bullet, just a rational mind.

 

I don't think the Kurds were fighting based on some US promise, we were a convenient ally and they got weaponry from us for their everlasting fight for autonomy. They served their interests and we serve our own. they were always going to be left on their own with the Turks.

 

They were enough, and now they're gone. Wives, lovers, children, babies, fathers, husbands, sisters and brothers; human beings with hopes, and dreams, and ambitions, and laughter, and joy, are now being bombed into extinction so Trump can get a political favor from a tyrant. How much horror do the good have to tolerate before they remove this imbecile?

 

So, you believe that our partnership with the Kurds were always nothing more than a matter of "convenien[ce]"?

Do you see everything as a mere matter of national "interests"--and nothing at all as a matter of national morality?

 

National interests override your sense of morality and that is how it should be. We put our military lives on the line for national interests, that is a tangible reason. Morality is not always universal. I'm a fan of the Kurds too based on what we have seen since we went into Iraq but I still think our national policy is based on what's good for us as a nation.