Posted on 10/08/2019 7:46:52 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Sure, our fighter jets can take off from Incirlik in Turkey, fly across Turkish airspace, bomb the Turkish soldiers, turn around and just fly back to their base in Turkey. And Turkey won't do anything.
I'm glad we have sophisticated military strategists here on Free Republic.
How exactly would it work for the US airmen who are currently stationed in Turkey if the US and Turkey get into a war with each other?
RE: Just like that, huh?
Should have done that when we were planning to leave.
You don’t think like a billionaire. There is a good option. “Wallet Warfare” Trump used it on Mexico and bam... 27000 troops defending our Southern border. China has lost $23 trillion in wealth. Not a single shot fired. If Turkey pisses Trump off the result will be an economic crash in Turkey and Erdogan’s head on a pike by his own people. A single tweet could crash their market. The root of our power is economic. We have the mightiest military because we can afford it. Trump is just choosing to use economic muscle instead of kinetic muscle.
Bullshit! This is not the old analog days when you had a compass and map. The Kurds can run their own missions with liaison that does not need to be "boots on the ground".
It would be very reassuring to know that the nucs stored at Incirlik were quietly removed since the change in leadership n Turkey.
I don't think they were planning to leave till yesterday.
I understand the US forces have developed the Kurds into a fine-tuned fighting force with all the weaponry they need, plenty of ammunition which the US will continue supplying and everything needed except for an air force - antiaircraft weapons, yes!
They should be able to take care of themselves considering the rest of the President’s plan for the region.
Those Americans volunteered, so, who cares about putting them at risk?
DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND !!! WE'RE GOING TO ABANDON THE KURDS !!! /sarc
"Incirlik Air Base has a U.S. Air Force complement of about five thousand airmen, with several hundred airmen from the Royal Air Force and Turkish Air Force also present, as of late 2002. The primary unit stationed at Incirlik Air Base is the 39th Air Base Wing (39 ABW) of the U.S. Air Force. Incirlik Air Base has one 3,048 m (10,000 ft)-long runway,[6][7] located among about 57 hardened aircraft shelters. Tactical nuclear weapons are stored at the base.[8]"
I presume all the lets have a war with Turkey hawks have a plan for moving the nuclear weapons and our 5,000 airmen out of harms way as the war unfolds. That sounds like a pretty complicated task.
“ If Erdogan’s forces come blasting into the border region this week and begin slaughtering the Kurds wholesale, the disaster will land squarely on the plate of Donald Trump and nobody else.“
Except, maybe, Erdogan, you idiot author.
Just let they Kurds go their own way.
Actually not. Having tactical nuclear weapons readily available would make it easier to protect the Kurds and our base at Incirlik. We could just threaten to nuke the capital of Turkey if they bothered our friends in Syria. We could use the tactical nuclear weapons on the area surrounding the air base to protect the air base.
It doesn't take much thinking to realize that starting a war with Turkey would be crazy. Trump is smart enough to realize that. His critics are only claiming what he is doing is reckless in order to promote their own careers. If Trump actually engaged Turkey in any kind of military conflict, or even just threatened them we would here all the same voices criticizing Trump for being a war monger and starting trouble with a NATO ally.
They have their own region of Iraq and they are known as the toughest fighters in the region. Somehow they’ve survived all this and their neighbors consider them a threat.
Except, maybe, Erdogan, you idiot author.
Agreed. If Erdogan does that; I hope we drop a damn MOAB on Erdogan's head and Administration.
Some tribes of mooselimbs killing another tribe of mooselimbs, it's a start, and I'm all for it.
Eradicate the islam curse on the world.
Turkey is and for a long time has been a real mess. We have strategic air bases in Turkey we’d like to not lose and yet we can trust them as an ally.
Trump has big cajones but I don’t think he is bold enough to light off a B-61 without a national consensus on such an action... That would probably get him impeached for sure.
RE: Just let they Kurds go their own way.
I feel very uneasy about this.
They were our loyal allies. They fought courageously beside us against ISIS and fought well ( even their women ). Besides, the Kurds are one of the few Muslim groups in that area who are not anti-Semitic.
Think about the repercussions if we simply abandon them. Who is going to want to be an American ally? Who is going to believe any American assurance or promise in the future?
There is a way of solving this — If we’re going to leave, we don’t simply up and leave immediately. We provide them with arms, weapons, train them to use these to defend themselves.
You have to look at a map of the area involved in these decisions regarding a Turkish incursion into Syria.
It is less than a full pull out of U.S. forces, but it is still a giant gift to Erdogan that has zero to do with fighing ISIS or even keeping it under control in Syria.
Erdogan’s move is not about Russia, Assad or ISIS & Al Queda in Syria, it is 100% about the Kurds, and 100% about setting things up for a squeeze play involving Russia and Assad from the south, Turkey on the north and the Kurds to be squeezed out of the middle between them.
Erdogan says he seeks a “safe zone” and yes it is only about twenty miles in width. But where? It would be only twenty miles wide but is to stretch the entire length of Turkey’s boder with Syria. Erdogan contols only a bit of the eastern end of that area, around the city of Afrin. The entire rest of it is under the control of the Syrian and Kurdish forces led by the Kurds own militias.
So what is the true meaning of the “safe zone”?
It is to cut off the Kurds in Syria from ease of access to the Kurds in Turkey and Iraq. It is to make the Kurds in Syria caught, bound up, between the Turks to the north and Assad to the south.
To do it, Erdogan will have to take the major cities in northern Syria that the Kurds now hold - peacefully other than continued clashes with ISIS remnants - which are all in what Erdogan lyingly calls his “safe zone”.
Once he can hold that “safe zone” he will fill it with “Syrian refugees” from Turkey and anyone who knows the history of Erdogan and the extremist groups we and Assad have been defeating in Syria, then you know what that “ssfe zone” will become. It will become a sanctuary for Erodgan supplied extremists to continue to pursue Kurds south of the so called “safe zone”, just as the extremist “refugees” in Afrin do today.
“How is it that the Kurds survived for centuries and in the recent decades without us having any troops in Syria? “
From their point of view they would call their situation one of “existed” but hardly one of “survived”.
Since the end of the Ottoman empire, most of the nation state history in the region has been, collectively, (1) ignoring Kurd’s interests, (2) supressing Kurd’s interests, (3) state sponsored cultural genocide of Kurd’s interests by Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria, (4) direct attacks on the Kurds to diminish their interests and force them out of areas the officials of a state wanted to repopulate with Turks, Arabs, Syrians or Iranians.
Such actions did not happen for centuries under the Ottomans because all they sought from local officials was that they allow the Ottoman’s rule to keep the peace and they not rebel against that rule. Beyond that most people had a lot of local control over their own affairs. That made the Kurds in the Ottoman’s area more free than they have been under any of the modern state’s in the area today.
From the Kurd’s point of view, their demand for their own province in Iraq, their fights inside Turkey with its rulers, their gains (regains) in Syria are all collectively about fighting for their very identity as a people, a people that are not Arabs, not Turks, not Syrian and not Iranian; regardless of how their, Kurdish, lands got divided up into those other nations today.
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