Abandoning the Kurds
- Thread starter indy35
- Start date
What control does the Senate hold over military deployments or foreign policy? They control the money.....as far as I know this deployment was funded.
It's important to keep in mind that the borders of many nations were drawn up in the Sykes-Picot agreement after the fall of the Ottoman Empire in WWI. The people in these "borders" were not solicited for their input, and once colonial rule inevitably collapsed, those borders became the biggest reason for continued instability today (alongside the continued cold war between Iran & SA).
With the collapse of Hussein's Iraq and partial collapse of Asad's Syria, traditional Kurdish territory came under their governance - A defacto Kurdish state has been establishing in northern Iraq for decades, and NE Syria is the presumptive evolution of additional territory.
Given all the qualities (democratic, secular, gender equality, etc.) of Kurdish society, we're fools not to support this evolution.
It was a surprise last December, it was a surprise now .
What do you think the Senate can do about it? Veto proof? That would mean legislation. Does the Congress legislate military deployments? Do they legislate foreign policy? You just said earlier that the CIC controls this action. Now you want to say the Senate should do something about it. They can't. You were right the first time.
They can put forth a resolution or they can vote for sanctions on Turkey.......which the president can block.
Sounds to me like you think the Congress should somehow be responsible for stopping the president from making a mistake.
cmon man. congress is supposed to be the main body that authorizes military action. How can you know all these details on impeachment and not this? Article 1. Presidents have some limited powers. but the reality has been abdication of responsibility from our pathetic congress, letting presidents run free.
Congress declares war. Is that want you want them to do here? Did they declare war on Isis?
Presidents gave been going around Congress for military actions for a long time. If Congress could legally stop this withdrawal they would. They can't.
i don't even know what to say anymore...congress could authorize action. it's just fact.
Some people equate constructivism in education with higher level or critical thinking. It is important to recognize that it is only possible when a person has relevant knowledge in the “appropriate” domain for that to exist. Truth is none of us have all the info needed to fully meet that process, but do in fact have enough knowledge to have concerns based upon the information any of us could obtain and could end up 100% correct in our concerns. Nothing against anything you wrote…higher level thinking just strikes me funny in most forum posts...and I include myself in that
That is fair, but I am not looking for people to be right all the time or wait for 100% information, that is not realistic and not everything is black and white. What I am seeking is for people to be more thoughtful about how they approach debate.Some people equate constructivism in education with higher level or critical thinking. It is important to recognize that it is only possible when a person has relevant knowledge in the “appropriate” domain for that to exist. Truth is none of us have all the info needed to fully meet that process, but do in fact have enough knowledge to have concerns based upon the information any of us could obtain and could end up 100% correct in our concerns. Nothing against anything you wrote…higher level thinking just strikes me funny in most forum posts...and I include myself in that
Trump back in 2015 campaigned on less deployments and bringing troops home. The US has amped up talks with the Taliban and wants to pull out of Afghanistan. Right or wrong, not the point-the point is his overall policy position is known. Like others have said, Mattis resigned over this 9 months ago. And Turkey has been building up on Syrian border for years. If this was a surprise to the American public, I get it. If this was a surprise to DC/Pentagon they had not been paying attention.
The legislature can impose sanctions on Turkey and make them veto proof. They have a chance to back up their criticism-lets see if they do it. It is veto proof with 2/3 of each chamber voting for it. They need to put up or shut up at this point.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/senato...-introduce-plan-for-sanctions-against-turkey/
I think it was the early talks Treaty of Sevres where Kurds were originally promised their own state from the UK/France and it never happened. It was promised but never fulfilled when new maps were drawn.
I would like to see an official Kurdish state. They have been a good ally and deserve a state IMO. At the same time I realize having another "Israel" in the ME will bring more/other issues. For lack of a better term, the US needs to do business or get off the pot with them. That applies to geopolitics everywhere IMO. The world keeps using them and then forgetting them and then they get worked over. Make them an official state and support them, or let the area alone to develop on its own.
Obama declared ISIS the " JV " team WHEN THEY ACTUALLY WERE THE JV TEAM.
Check the date of that pronouncement. At that time, ISIS had not been big enough or mobilized enough to be considered an immediate threat to the Region. True enough, in time they became the formidable force that was capable of controlling large portions of Iraq, while terrorizing millions of innocent people.
" Cleaning up that mess" is something that Donald Trump can claim as HIS accomplishment like he can claim how he "saved" auto manufacturing jobs in the Midwest.
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That's not what the post implied, and you know it.
Go back to claiming the Trump Administration was 95% responsible for the eventual reclamation of ISIS-held lands.
You know,...….your comfort zone. 95% BS.
In other words, you’re saying Obama allowed ISIS to become the formidable terrorist group it did due to his dithering, red lines in the sand, and overall inaction.
Get real. Syria was a real quagmire under Obama. Trump took the handcuffs off the US military and with a lot of hard work by the Kurds on the ground, essentially removed ISIS from the map in that region. That’s the truth.
Syria was a quagmire "UNDER OBAMA " ??
WTF, exactly, did Obama have at his disposal, for some time, to navigate the almost impossible task of choosing between ISIS and other Sunni terrorists and the murderous Shia regime of Bashar al-Assad ????!!!!
HUH ?
Would you care to estimate the total number of US COMBAT TROOPS that were deployed for the purpose of
combat operations in Syria , by Trump ?????
ZERO
The Trump Administration continued to provide assistance to the Kurds, and others, in the form of intelligence, logistics, equipment, armaments, air support etc. Continuing what was operative under the Pentagon in the previous administration.
Trump the military genius/Obama the weak quagmire-producer...
Can always count on SD.....
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I fully understand, but everyone that posts does not have all the info and although they may be correct and certainly have the right to state their thoughts we should remember that most of our info is the opinion of another and filtered in some way. Again, someone's opinion might be dead on center, but that opinion was probably made with some information...maybe a lot of information...maybe some personal experience and a lot of information and entirely possible that the poster knows more than 99.99% of the population of 350,000,000 leaving 35 that still know more. It's just that...we can only form our opinions on what info we have and nothing wrong with that...we just need to remember our info is limited.
There is a rather famous painting...and I can't recall the name (wish I could), but it is a little girl in the meadow laying down in the grass with an old barn in the background on a hill where those objects close to her are magnified in size, because that is her world...that is what she sees and touches. Her view would be different had she been close to the barn. Now I can't recall if she was crippled because this painting is taking me back to over 4 decades ago.
Since I'm on a tangential thought, I think it may have been beazelbub that mentioned I hope we don't go into an isolation approach and in a book I'm currently reading it talks about all the different regions, countries that fell from greatness when isolated for a decade or so thinking there was nothing they could learn in the future from those behind at the moment. The other countries as a result of an emphasis on knowledge grew and passed them. I'm not sure a couple of years is a problem and think with the net, isolation is impossible.
Just as an absolutely PERFECT example of the neverending fact-deprived posts of our guy, SD...here's this:
" Obama allowed ISIS.....due to...….."
" Red Lines in the sand"
Is THAT right ????
In August, 2012 Obama made his "red line in the sand" comment regarding the use of chemical weapons in Syria.
A year later, chemical weapons WERE used in Syria, killing 1,400 or so.
So, in part DUE TO - your words - DUE TO......this event that -your words- "ALLOWED ISIS TO BECOME THE FORMIDABLE TERRORIST GROUP...."
One problem.
It WASN'T ISIS that used chemical weapons.
It was Bashar al-Assad Syria's Shia dictator, using them against Sunni civilians.
ISIS = Sunni.
Uh-oh.
Multiply this example x 5,000...….and we have your posting history record.
This board reminds me of my science class when I was little. I said cats eyes don't glow in the dark. The teacher didn't know, so she made the class take a vote. Everyone raised their hand and said cats eyes glow in the dark.
probably not an interest to many, but I surprised myself in how quickly I could find something having some things to put in a string to search...
The Painting I mentioned is Christina's World.
Who is the woman in Andrew Wyeth's striking painting Christina's World, and why is she sprawled in a field, looking longingly toward a far-off farmhouse? For decades, these questions have drawn in viewers, but the true story behind Christina's World makes the 1948 painting even more intriguing.
1. There Was a real Christina.
The 31-year-old Wyeth modeled the painting's frail-looking brunette after his neighbor in South Cushing, Maine. Anna Christina Olson suffered from a degenerative muscular disorder that prevented her from walking. Rather than using a wheelchair, Olson crawled around her home and the surrounding grounds, as seen in Christina's World.
2. Olson's spirit inspired Wyeth's most popular piece.
The neighbors first met in 1939 when Wyeth was just 22 and courting 17-year-old Betsy James, who would later become his wife and muse. It was James who introduced to Wyeth to the 45-year-old Olson, kicking off a friendship that would last the rest of their lives. The sight of Olson picking blueberries while crawling through her fields “like a crab on a New England shore” inspired Wyeth to paint Christina’s World.
"The challenge to me was to do justice to her extraordinary conquest of a life which most people would consider hopeless," he wrote. "If in some small way I have been able in paint to make the viewer sense that her world may be limited physically but by no means spiritually, then I have achieved what I set out to do." snip...snip...
Now, I must get off of here and get my mind on a letter I need to write. I just got word late last night that a father I know...maybe 1990 HS grad lost his son around 1:30 AM Tuesday due to a self inflicted gun shot and apparently the shock of that was enough that the father lost his mother who had some declining health issues the same day. The sister of the deceased is a Purdue junior??? Jessica Jordan...
One kid obviously stood out as someone who was aware of a truth.
All the rest were unaware of this truth.
Did your teacher then inform the class of the veracity of your response ?
One would hope so.
At such time as inaccuracy seems to you to rule by majority......feel free to set the record straight.
This record-straightening requires but one thing: truth.
Just like the one kid had in that science class.
.
I never said ISIS gassed anyone. You made that ridiculous leap. And you’re being disingenuous. Obama did allow ISIS to become a formidable terrorist group. You yourself said that they were the JV team early in Obama’s Administration. Obama’s poor handling of Al-Assad, his lack of acknowledgement of the threat ISIS posed even when he had intelligence that showed they were getting stronger as he continued to dither, and his reticence to use US assets to stop ISIS from expanding in Syria and Iraq emboldened them. ISIS expanded as Assad weakened and Obama did almost nothing about it. In 18 months or so, Trump had ISIS cornered in a small sliver of land - a tiny piece compared to what they controlled under Obama. And guess who paid the price for Obama’s poor handling of the situation - Syrians, Yazidi, Kurds, and wait for it....the EU, which took the brunt of mass migrations from that area.
well the teacher didn't know. this was pre internet days. and I didn't have a cat at that moment...so I "lost".
In this modern era, we're able to engage with "fact-checkers ".
We don't have to hope, like the kid who had the cat eye-glow question nailed, that truth wouldn't be sorta like some popularity contest.
We can check.
Reading your post....starting to formulate the rebuttal..
Then I see " Trump had ISIS cornered..."
Like seeing a dead cockroach in your restaurant salad...…….lost my appetite.
One thing we must be careful of is that when a fact checker give an opinion on an issue and the question is anything but yes or no the door is open to supply a personal interpretation...and most things are qualified in some manner. Still, although not perfect it is much better than years ago AND generally quite helpful.
and for perspective & the different narrative at the time contrary to that campaign promise...
in trumps first year, the u.s. had increased personnel in:
Egypt
Israel
Lebanon
Syria
Turkey
Jordan
Iraq
Kuwait
Saudi Arabia
Yemen
Oman
United Arab Emirates
Qatar
Bahrain
Afghanistan
Somalia.... etc
that year marked:
-more u.s. troops killed in action overseas than the prior year, the first occurance in 6 years
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Love that GIF, my ol' bird dog is getting old, spends most of her time laying next to me when I'm home, but in her day she would make Usain Bolt look like a clumsy OL when she heard the word "squirrel." It will still bring her trotting but today she can't catch them.
Hold the line! Remember when you said...
"I think the four to five people that can go in and talk to the President to settle him down are Coats, Pompeo, Mattis, Pence, and Kelly. Really do not want to see any of them gone."
Well, two are left! Pompeo was letting Trump use his personal lawyer to do work on behalf of his department, and Pence is just in la la land somewhere trying not to get caught up in anything.
So, what does that have to do with anything?
Totally irrelevant to 2017 uptick in troops which was related to ousting ISIS.
I believe he's saying that you were on the record as not trusting Trump's ability to make commander-in-chief level decisions on his own, and previously credited Coats, Pompeo, Mattis, Pence, and Kelly with keeping him in line and making sure he didn't screwup too bad.
Now those guys are essentially gone.
And as you previously predicted, Trump's questionable decision making has come back to the surface.
However, instead of acknowledging that fact -- you instead are "holding the line" and protecting/crediting Trump now -- even though you previously are on the record having your own doubts about Trump.
Well, I will have to be shown that part where I did not trust Trump. I did say that the aforementioned could go in and talk to him and I thought he would at least listen to them. Maybe not so much Like him or not he has shown some remarkable constraint with military use.
BoilerBiker made a post that seemed to indicate Trump was not holding his campaign promise of no more wars and bring soldiers home-by showing increased troop deployment in 2017. The issue is, Trump also said he would defeat ISIS, which required more troops, esp in first year. Which is why people were in said countries. I was based out of Jordan for awhile. That is what my post responded too.
So again, like it or not, ISIS, the military portion was defeated, and troops are not getting involved and in process of scaling back.
Now, if one goes back through the thread one can see that I generally support bringing troops back, and wish that Trump would have made this statement/move in a different geopolitical area.
Wait, I thought the whole argument of the Trump cult is that it was ok that Trump was letting the Kurds get slaughtered because it was "bringing our troops home"? Guess that was just another one in the long line of complete bs from those folks.
I kinda thought Esper was just another Trump yes man. Guess I was right.
Very disappointing to see the Pentagon take this position.
"To be clear," Esper said, "we are not abandoning our Kurdish partner forces, and U.S. troops remain with them in other parts of Syria. The impulsive action of President Erdogan to invade northern Syria has put the United States in a tough situation."
Very disappointing to see the Pentagon take this position.
"To be clear," Esper said, "we are not abandoning our Kurdish partner forces, and U.S. troops remain with them in other parts of Syria. The impulsive action of President Erdogan to invade northern Syria has put the United States in a tough situation."
