America can no longer be trusted

lol

 

no it's just that ice has proposed a much greater threat tune on isis members in the middle East so we were doing them a favor.

we really didn't care about the Kurds or the Turkish or various other people that are not isis then we would have just carpet bombed it.

thank you Donald Trump we Nation should be grateful to you for that. Far too many people come back from war zones with severe wounds, and life-altering conditions.

I didn't say that at all sorry to disappoint. Withdrawing our troops from foreign theaters of War it's positive in just about every way. First we don't have to pay for a war that won't benefit us second sons and daughters aren't going over there and getting PTSD coming home and committing suicide. Third I agree with Teddy Roosevelt we should limit our foreign entanglements. If we had practiced that beforehand, there probably wouldn't be a such thing as isis.

 

You're the one who keeps bringing up NATO. If you post it, own it.

And American NATO allies did not support the U.S. because they were part of NATO. They supported the U.S. because of the UN Security Council declaration that authorized UN member states to militarily assist South Korea. Remember that various non NATO nations sent troops to South Korea. Such as Ethiopia, Australia, Nationalist China.

 

It was Seato not NATO that supplied troops for Viet Nam. Soth Korea and Australia both sent a few elite units and entertainers,. You ain't lived til you sat 10 klics South of the DMZ listening to a SK rock band belting out "We Gotta Get outta this place" in an accent so thick you could scarcely understand it.

 

Remember too that it was Turkey that though we had an airbase in Turkey with 5000 of our men there, it refused to allow General Tommy Franks to use Turkey to launch attacks on Saddam Hussein. They protected Saddam in effect.

 

We had the entertainment class also in Germany at the EM club. They seemed to all know the same songs.

 

Speaking of only Iraq ... Why didn't you whine that Obama abandoned Iraq's Kurds?

The issue is not about the Kurds fighting nor their losses to ISIS, it is about Trump pulling some of the troops out of harms way. So tell us all why we owed to our own few soldiers to be in harms way?

 

*

True. And played a major role in the insurgency being born in Iraq as it prevented having a large force moving into the Sunni Triangle early on.

That said, I understand those actions by Turkey. Turkey has always had to walk the line of being a Muslim country in a Christian (well it used to be) world. It isn't Middle Eastern but its still close enough to be heavily influenced by the goings on in the Middle East. And there is the constant worry that their Muslim population might eventually embrace Islamic fundamentalism.

They've had to walk an incredibly fine line of being an ally of a centuries old enemy (Greece), effectively a counter to the atheistic or at least Eastern Orthodox Russians while at the same time an enemy of fellow Muslims like the Kurds.

 

They made operation of the German Tornados next to impossible. Germany relocated its planes to Jordan.
A rather expensive operation.
The question could be asked, is Turkey still a NATO ally, under Erdogan.
I would say no.

 

Before Erdogan Turkey was a secular country/government, with a rather good division of powers. That has changed.
Erdogan has grand dreams.

 

Incredible, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo just made matters worse. Putin has got to be loving this.

He announced a major reversal of the US longstanding policy on Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, rejecting a 1978 State Department legal opinion that deemed the settlements "inconsistent with international law."

"After carefully studying all sides of the legal debate... the establishment of Israeli civilian settlements in the West Bank is not, per se, inconsistent with international law," Pompeo said.

Pompeo just created more distance between ourselves and our European allies. The new US position was swiftly repudiated by the European Union, with diplomats noting Trump's desire to woo evangelical voters and the move reflects his willingness to "give the finger" to international law.

In addition, Pompeo further angered the Palestinians and the Arab republics who are very much a part of Middle East talks. The antagonistic position of the U.S. will undoubtedly cause more unrest in the Middle East.

The U.S. has been thrown out of those talks, replaced by Russia.

 

We allowed this to happen. Trump is a minority President and the least popular President in modern American history. He was elected by 25% of the electorate.

We can never allow this to happen again. We are lucky Trump is downright stupid and his own worst enemy who can't keep his mouth shut. The next time we get apathetic we might not be so lucky.

 

Yup, I did, and that gave Trumpets the opportunity to talk only about NATO and ignore the other 98% of the report that showed how incompetent Trump is.

America's NATO allies supported the U.S. in Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq. Right?

 

Some, not all in Korea.
Some, not all in Iraq.
Virtually none in Vietnam.

 

This got lost in the clutter caused by Trumpets trying desperately to avoid the issues that deal with Trump.

To change the subject from the mounting evidence in the impeachment inquiry with a lot more to come, Trump decided to undermine the U.S. military.

Trump cleared three members of the armed services on Friday who have been accused or convicted of war crimes, overruling military leaders who had sought to punish them.

Trump announced that he was ordering the full pardon of Clint Lorance, a former Army lieutenant, from the military prison at Fort Leavenworth, where he is serving a 19-year sentence for the murder of two civilians.

He ordered the full pardon of Maj. Mathew L. Golsteyn, an Army Special Forces officer who was facing murder charges for killing an unarmed Afghan he believed was a Taliban bomb maker.

And he reversed the demotion of Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher, a Navy SEAL who was acquitted of murder charges but convicted of a lesser offense in a high-profile war crimes case.

Top military leaders have pushed back hard against clearing the three men. Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy have argued that such a move would undermine the military code of justice, and would serve as a bad example to other troops in the field.

"I've heard from our men and women in uniform for years that they felt that they were sidelined because they needed a team of attorneys before they could return fire in the battlefield. I think our troops' morale is much higher — troops that I've heard from — because this has been a concern," House Minority Whip Steve Scalise said.

The first sentence is pure fiction said to support the second sentence which threatens military discipline and the laws of military justice as laid out in the UCMJ.

Like Trump, Scalise has spent no time in the military.

I am a retired Marine officer who served during Vietnam. Unlike Scalise and Trump, I don't think junior officers should be the deciding factor in military justice.

 

Correct yet irrelevant. Even a wildly popular American president only garners about 30% of the electorate at most.

 

So. American military members current or former have no special say in how the country is run.

 

That's an absurd statement.

The point is, Sandy, that we have accomplished the mission. No, we will never wipe out every last ISIS adherent and every last cell in Syria or Iraq. But we have decimated them to a point where they control no territory, and their demented leader is dead.

The conflicts between the Syrian government and the Turks and the Kurds go way back, long before we got our military involved in the region. Those conflicts are for those people to work out. We should offer a positive influence - an honest broker, if you will - to finding peace. But it is not in our interest to put our children in harm's way to police those factions. If we do, we will never leave. NEVER.

And I remind you AGAIN of your own thread you started saying the U.S. should withdraw from the Middle East. In that thread, I agreed with you. But now, because of your blind hatred of Trump, you are against it. That is pure, unadulterated hypocrisy, Sandy. You know it is. I know it is. And so does everyone else on this forum.

 

Same here. I wonder why we think they can be counted on.

 

To make you feel a lot better, have you noticed that unlike Obama, Trump does not apologize to the Muslims or bow and scrape for their leaders? How he looks a situation over and decides to save our troops lives?

 

I think that is what the voting data shows, that Trump won because less people voted. But I think enough people have been charged up that I really doubt Trump could win a second term.

 

Trump managed a brilliant campaign. And he got top people to work for him. And he has more top people working to elect him.

Given the great economy, can Democrats win using pure hate and anger?

 

Trump has pushed our Allies toward Russia and China

What a mess he's made !!

 

Someone thinks China is our bud.

Meanwhile dems are destroying our relationship with Ukraine.

 

To "abandon" the Kurds, we had to be allied to them to begin with. We are not though we have fought common enemies. Y'know who we are allied with? Turkey.

Russia is basically Italy with nukes. Not really an international player the way the USSR had been. And China? Trump is bringing it to them but differently than using clumsy militarism.