If you go after oil, you should support Azerbaijan. It will be more clever action. Armenia occupied their Karabakh region, support them and gain their hearts. They cannot do anything, because Russia threats oil and gas rich Azerbaijan. Save them from hands of Russians.
Always check the links to other sources in Wiki articles. Some are far more credible than the actual articles - especially if there is an obvious political angle, and dead links tell a tale.
That was a hell of a war. I did not expect the Armenians to win. Pay back is a bitch. Which is why the USG needs to get out of the endless war business. BTW, your idea of carving an independent Kurdistan out of the EU does have a certain appeal. I doubt that the EU would make much of a fuss.
The Saudis and Qataris are enemies.. and Saudi built their East-West pipeline over 20 years ago. They don't need or want a pipeline thru Syria. If Qatar gets one, they'll regret it … too much sabotage in Syria and NOTHING has changed ...
The map below shows the distribution of the different sects in Islam beyond just the 'Sunni' v 'Shia' division. These divisions sometimes reflect ethno-cultural differences, although religious divides often also follow political divisions arising from historical events.
And some muslim nations like Malaysia forbids the other Islamic sect from immigrating into that nation due to this problem between the 2 sects. An intelligent policy given the age old problem.
To expand on the meaning of the divisions within Islam, let me focus on the schools of Islamic though which predominate outside of Arabia, on the one hand the Hanafi school (which predominates in Turkey and former territories of the Ottoman empire), and on the other hand, the Jaffari branch which predominates in Iran (more specifically, the Jaffari Usuli school). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ja'fari_jurisprudence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanafi
It is public record both funded and helped assad opposition. I cannot force you to accept the truth. And it is also public record assad would not allow that pipeline cross syria . Denying facts does not change reality. It ignores reality . But I will assume you are not aware of the reporting of facts. Your news source just didnt report it.
The Shia-Sunni divide itself has many other subdivisions. Despite its initial Arab origins, Shia Islam became attractive in Iran (and was subsequently infused by Iranian notions, in particular in the Shia school adopted by Iran) mainly as a vehicle to deny legitimacy to Arab caliphs, since Shia Islam saw them as 'usurpers' -- something that fit Iranian historiography which saw the Arabs who had defeated and conquered Iran in that light. But on a jurisprudential or philosophical level, the particular school of Shia Islam which is adopted by Iran is one that is actually quite flexible in allowing many avenues to escape from any literal reading of scripture. Nor is the system tied to any past interpretation, whereas Sunni schools of thought ultimately looks to past interpretations. Basically, under the Jaffari usuli Shia school of jurisprudence, reason itself is an independent source of law (for some, the most direct system of communication from God to man now that no other prophets will be sent by God to communicate his views and as educated scholars, if not laymen, have evolved and developed the faculties of reasoning required to understand his message). On top of that, the Jaffari Usuli school is not tied to any past interpretation of religion either. Unlike in most Sunni denominations, "Ijma" (or consensus of the prophets companions) on the meaning of any particular verse isn't binding in this school of Shia Islam. Rather, the consensus that matters is the current consensus between properly trained Shia scholars (high ranking 'mujtaheds' called Ayatollahs these days). Among the Sunnis, the Hanafi school is the one that has the most avenues for a less than literal interpretation of scripture. The one that has the least avenue for such an approach is the school of thought practiced among the people in Saudi Arabia.
Perhaps one good thing, anyway, may come from all this: It appears that Turkey is drawing itself even closer to the Russian orbit. And I would be quite sanguine--in fact, almost gleeful--if Turkey were to leave NATO (or even be kicked out of it), and align itself fully, and unequivocally, with Russia. That way, we would feel no need to continue pretending that it is an ally.
Thanks man! You are a good educator for someone like mr who only learned about islam in the past few years . I read once where pres bush and cheney were ignorant when it came to the two sects of islam. What is important is that it was arab sunnis that flew planes into buildings on 911 and not Iranian shia.
"[P]erpetual is President Trump's word. And you have now co-opted it. The desire for "perpetual peace"--while seemingly a good thing--is really not so good, if there are no qualifiers. Remember, Neville Chamberlain, in the late 1930s, was also in favor of that...
The assertion that Turkey "needed" to invade near the Turkey-Syria border sounds like mere propaganda. Apparently, you view it as "impossible" for the Kurds to ever have a genuine Kurdistan...
Gore Vidal was the first person to use that term but you may not have heard him use it. So before trump was president I used that term many times on forums. So I didnt borrow it from him but from Vidal in the 60s. Comparing any nation in the MR to nazi germany is a really inaccurate analogy . In so much as being a threat to Europe or the US. Most of the wars we have waged have not been in defense of americans. OrO None of the nations in the ME were out to destroy America . Not Iraq, Libya or Syria What they had in common was they were in the list to be taken down found in that foreign policy paper from a neocon think tank titled PNAC .. It is probably still online if you care to read it. It was in the interest of american hegemony for the 21st century. It was not in the interest of peace but war. Costing trillions when sll the bills are paid and many lives. And for what? What nation has waged the number of wars that we have since ww2 that had nothing to do with some nation attacking us? Perpetual war for perpetual peace seems to describe us very well as Vidal coined it. With all of the war protests with the vietnam war our govt .saw that future wars not in self defense would be harder to wage if people were drafted as the parents of dead draftees might raise hell with their reps in DC and might vote for someone else. So the draft ended and if americand .raised hell about deaths in wars not in self defense they would say these americans volunteered and knrw what they were getting into. Politicians would be safe and wage as much war as they wanted to. Bring back the draft and end the kind of wars we wage these days.
So we either keep on waging regime change wars or we become isolationists . We can stop waging such wars without being isolationists. Raising the bar on waging war isnt isolationism. It is called being intelligent. What we have done in the ME looks like what an idiot does. I call them Neocons.
A Kurdistan that supports terrorists in Turkey is impossible. Just as the USA would not stand for a hostile terrorist supporting country to carve itself out of Texas and Mexico. As for propaganda, just do a little reading from the local sources and you will see that the Arab majority in those areas (Kurds only make up 10%) were not so hip to the idea of a Kurdistan either. Which is why often times the Kurds would drive those people out and herd them into Turkey.
Interesting. But (1) this seems to suggest that any war that is not the result of a direct attack upon our shores is...well, illegitimate. (2) The reference to "[A]merican hegemony" is surely straight out of the far left's dictionary. (3) I am, indeed, a neoconservative--and proud of it--but not a "neocon" (which is, of course, a pejorative term--something akin to using the odious "N" word to describe black people). (4) To make the analogy that I did is quite valid, in this important respect: Projecting weakness, instead of strength--uncertainty, rather than resolve--gives all our enemies, around the world, reason to question the backbone of America. And that is certainly not good.
Not precisely. Either we keep our commitment to other groups of people--say, the Kurds--or we pull back to our own shores, throw up our hands, and declare, plaintively, that we just prefer not to get involved. That, I think, is a pretty good working definition of isolationism...
Why do we require "US-occupation and regime-change wars," as the only alternative to neo-isolationism? Why not just help the Kurds, as we had promised--without any American boots on the ground?
Protect the oil fields from who? The only people that the oil fields in Syria need to be protected from right now are the Americans. The land east of the Euphrates is part of Syria, and Russia unlike the US, was invited to protect and secure Syria's sovereignty and territorial integrity not only from the terrorists, but from the incursions of the US, UK, Fr, KSA, Turkey, and Israel. But wasn't ISIS attacking the Kurds and hindering the American plan for a Kurdistan, so I don't see your logic? Besides I have a long memory, and other than tales of ISIS fighters being taken to hospitals in Turkey, as well as entering Turkey to kill some Kurds before Erdogan's election, I also recall reading in a Turkish paper that when ISIS took over a large part of Syria, Fidan wanted to open a consulate for them in Istanbul. This doesn't mean that the US wasn't using ISIS and especially Al Nusra to topple Assad - which was their main purpose. Of course they were. If there is anything the US hates, it's secular and duly elected leaders that do the will of their own people and not what Washington wants. The US was fighting ISIS only in the oil and gas rich area they wanted for the Kurds, that way Syria wouldn't have the money it needed to rebuild its country. In other parts of Syria, Washington was supporting terrorists to keep the war against Assad and the Syrian people going on and on and on... We'll go now and free them all to show them that we're standing tall besides them, as they fight and kill each other. But never think that the melee will make us go away. When what it does is stir us on for more each passing day.- Jeannette
It is certainly true that the US would not cede Texas--or even a part thereof--to another group. But to describe the Kurds as "a hostile terrorist[-]supporting country" is to beg the question. Even if that is correct, why should that have anything to do with the matter? In the 1960s--when the civil-rights movement was in full sway--blacks did not make up much more of the population than 10 percent. Should we reason, therefore, that their push for normal rights was invalid?
