Category Archives: War

Turkey’s Erdogan: Now Here Is A True Evil Aggressor

Donald Trump, Foreign Policy, Middle East, War

“American leaders have been clueless about Recep Tayyip Erdogan. George W. Bush facilitated his becoming prime minister. Barack Obama proudly called him a friend. Donald Trump invited the invasion of Syria. The Department of Defense deludes itself into thinking the NATO ally of old one day will return. The State Department relies on its traditional instinct to appease”:

Warns Daniel Pipes:

Foreign policy poses the other great danger. Abducting dissident Turkish citizens, drilling in Cyprus’ exclusive economic zone, and invading a neighbor point to an arrogance that, given Erdogan’s isolated position, leaves him highly exposed. Some foreign misadventure – perhaps the Syrian one – could lead to his political demise as well as that of the AKP.

But why no mention of the massacre and ethnic cleansing of the Kurds? Come to think of it, Erdogan’s “foreign misadventures” are reminiscent of another super power. Hmmm.

UPDATED (1/1/021): Syrians, Kurdish, Turkish Realignment: Regional Conflicts Require Regional Solutions

America, Donald Trump, Foreign Policy, Middle East, Military, War

The Syrian, Kurdish, Turkish realignment is not “a moment of geopolitical whiplash.” But rather, a return—we hope—to regional politics in the Middle East.

America thinks that it must and can be a decisive force for good in the Middle East. However, the region’s players march to their own drumbeat. Always have.

in fact, the move had been in the works for more than a year. Fearing U.S. abandonment, the Kurds opened a back channel to the Syrian government and the Russians in 2018, and those talks ramped up significantly in recent weeks, American, Kurdish and Russian officials told The Associated Press.

[Via AP]

In Empires of the Sand: The Struggle for Mastery in the Middle East 1789-1923, Efraim and Inari Karsh marshal prodigious scholarship to show that, “Twentieth-century Middle Eastern history is essentially the culmination of long-standing indigenous trends, passions, and patterns of behavior rather than an externally imposed dictate.” The trend continues.

Keep it regional. The Kurds are safest aligning with regional power players against Turkey.

* Image courtesy of VOA.

UPDATED (1/1/021):  Bashar al-Assad is one wise Alawite traditionalist. But America’s foreign policy and Pentagon primitives are forever striving to remove him and install a less traditional, more democratic man of the people (namely an Islamist Jihadi).

Assad on neoliberalism:

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POTUS On Heartbreak At The Dover Air Force Base

Donald Trump, Foreign Policy, Military, War

President Trump spoke movingly and poignantly today about comforting families waiting on the bodies of their dead boys at the Dover Air Force Base. POTUS mentioned Eisenhower’s prophetic warning against the power of the military-industrial-complex to launch and sustain wars.

In 2013, I wrote about the achingly beautiful ceremonies at Dover:

Watch this ceremony at the Dover Air Force Base. Soldiers receive the coffined body of a slain comrade on its arrival in Dover. They handle it with exquisite care, hands clad in white gloves. What a stark, pathos-filled, sad ceremony, every move so tender and respectful.

Yes, “every move so tender and respectful.”
And every death so futile.

UPDATED (10/9/019): Tucker On Withdrawing Troops From Syria

Foreign Policy, Middle East, Nationhood, War

Tucker Carson gets it mostly right. He’s wrong about who the Kurds are as a people; they are just about the only inspiring, proper nation in the region. But Tucker inches closer to the truth regarding the need for the Kurds to align with Syria (or, hint-hint, other regional powers).

There is no longer a mission in Syria, says Tucker. ISIS no longer controls major cities in Syria, which remains a dangerous place for Americans. Yet in Washington they declare it immoral and tantamount to a betrayal to leave Syria, because of the Kurds, about whom the cable cretins know nothing.

Republicans like Ben Sass, Pat Toomey, Mitch and Mitt united with the left—and with professorial neocons like David Frum, Lindsey Graham, and Nikki Haley (who were all especially apoplectic)—to hammer home the message: American troops belong in Syria in perpetuity.

“Tucker: You’d think withdrawing troops from Syria would be celebrated”

UPDATE (10/9/019):

As I wrote in “Masada On Mount Sinjar,” in 2014, “The Kurds have been loyal to Israel and vice versa. Unlike the US, Israel has long since been vested in an independent Kurdistan.” Let Israelis pick up the slack in their neighborhood. We’re effing tired.