The Military Thread

We're not playing "global mommy", we're there helping people who have explicitly asked us to be there and have stuck their necks out for us for years.

What are we supposed to tell them? "We know we promised to help you build the democracy you've been fighting for but we're tired of you now so get fucked."?

It should be noted that Democracy (and even US intervention) is a bit more popular in the Middle East than many people suspect. Groups like the Taliban or ISIS, for example, are actually very unpopular overall and a lot of groups did volunteer to help the US fight them. They don't represent the views of the average citizen. To put it simply, this really isn't a case where Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters

According to my father (who was deployed there), the average Afghan really didn't hate the US or the US military. They usually are on some level sympathetic to the US to some degree, their criticisms are usually more about methodology, collateral damage, and various inconveniences that come with living in proximity to a war. The US is viewed as The Republic rather than The Empire, but tanks crushing the fields are a nuisance no matter whose tanks they are.

Technically that is being Global Mommy

But who said that being Global Mommy is wrong?

The idea of global mommy is that it doesn’t matter to the US security wise what happens in these places.

It does, it does a hell of a lot.

The nightmare scenario here for the US isn’t Turkey committing genocide against the Kurds, it’s the escaped ISIS prisoners working with Turkey’s rebel groups to set up a proxy state of radical Islamists, a new Taliban, with Turkey taking on the role of Pakistan.

Then the cycle completes, and we get another highly damaging terrorist attack against the US, with the terrorists being found to have had safe harbour in an Islamist proxy state set up by a US ally that while nominally democratic is far from anything of the sort.

Furthermore, this is teaching the world a very obvious lesson: DC cannot be trusted.

"The nightmare scenario here for the US isn’t Turkey committing genocide against the Kurds"

Oh, yes it is. That would mean Kurdish terrorists gunning for us (because we are the ones who let Turkey get away with it), and believe me, we don't want that (you thought ISUS was hardcore? These are the guys who beat them).

Mind you, I dont actually think that's the most likely outcome here.

Edited by DeMarquis on Oct 14th 2019 at 6:25:15 AM

I don’t think that’s a likely outcome at all. The Kurds don’t gain anything by attacking the West, and they don’t have any ideological disagreement either.

It’s actually surprising hard to radicalise a large ideological group, even after the US abandoned it’s Cold War allies in Afghanistan (the US’s ones, not Pakistan’s ones) said groups didn’t turn on the US, they stuck to their more moderate ideology fought the good fight and even tried to warn the US about 9/11, even after all the US had done to them.

We’re not going to see these Kurds act against the US, but if it ever comes to a choice between Assad and the US they may well now pick Assad just for reliability reasons.

Edited by Silasw on Oct 14th 2019 at 11:03:14 AM

The Taliban appeared in the aftermath of the Soviet withdrawal, and most of the original mujahideen groups went to the Northern Alliance. Tragically, the Taliban murdered one of the finest and most moderate mujahideen leaders, Ahmad Shah Massoud, prior to getting routed by the Alliance.

The Northern Alliance also benefited from being backed by other Western governments, namely Britain and France, and this softened the blow from the US' initial withdrawal after the Soviets left.

Hopefully the same will apply to the Kurds.

The UK is kinda busy right now, please try again in a year or so when we have decided if we want to get our shit together or rolls round it in for eternity.

Guess it’s up to the Frogs, plus maybe the Greeks?

Would be the ultimate power move if the Greeks bought some F-35s and offered to host the B-61s at Incirlik.

I love Turkey in many ways, but this is what happens when a society spends a century refusing to come to terms with its violent imperial past.

And what's worse, the UK has refused to cancel arms deals with Turkey, unlike most of Europe.

Interesting "contradictions".

Honestly, I'm not even surprised.

I'm not worried about the Kurds radicalizing. I do worry about their annihilation, at least within the Jazira plain of Syria. Yeah, they've been at this for 100 years...since the fall of the Empire. But Erdogan seems intent on reviving at least some version of that Empire, and that includes Northeast Syria.

Also, looks like the SDF's gambit with Assad isn't stopping the offensive just yet. The Syrian Civil War map websites are reporting contact between Assad's forces and the Turkish Army north of Manbij.

There's also ISIS fighters who escaped from SDF-managed prisons now that most of them were forced to leave.

Clip of Russian PMC exploring an abandoned US base in Manbij.

Can I say that's... surreal to look at?

Update: The guy in the clip, Oleg Blokhin, is a journalist attached to Wagner (no idea from which agency), and he found some more stuff inside (possibly NSFW).

So, in summary -

• The Cheeto fucked over a reliable and steadfast ally for reasons best known only to him.

• That former reliable ally is now deciding to join hands with the ex-KGB sociopath and the Syrian Madcap out of pragmatism.

• (Almost) All the murderous ISIL psychos are now on the loose, and there's a very real threat that they'll be able to pull shenanigans like before.

• The Ersatz-Sultan of Turkey is hellbent on screwing the whole world over because fuck the former reliable ally of the United States.

• The Middle East is about to enter a shitpile and go back to square one as it was on the last day of the US Offensive in Saddam's crib.

• NATO (Fancypants name for Cannon Fodder for the United States) is doing precisely jack shit to stop it beyond feeble protests. And Perfidious Albion is still busy having a fit about the European Union because apparently arguing about whether "British" counts as European is more important than everything else, with an English Cheeto to complement the American Cheeto.

Times like this, you can't write fiction - reality beats it hollow for being nuts. It's a tragic farce - you don't know whether you should laugh like a lunatic, or cry your eyes out. Probably both.

Add on that Turkey has deliberately shelled American positions and killed French special forces and you're right on

The Assad regime has retaken more territory in a week than it did in the last few years, at basically no cost, because of an operation acquiesced to by one ostensible regime opponent, led by another, and backed by anti-regime rebels.

You can't make it up.

Washington announced that sanction on Ankara is already in place.

Although I'm sure that it won't stop them.

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DOD with damage control with the lines "The US is not leaving the Kurds."

Edited by Ominae on Oct 15th 2019 at 7:11:40 AM

Incirlik AB nukes are "held hostage".