COLLUSION! IMPEACH!!!
The neocons are furious that for all intents and purposes, the Syrian Arab spring is over, the partitioning of Syria is over, Syrians can rebuild their country
Sorry.....Syria and Russia have been allies for 50 years.
This is such a complicated situation. The Kurds had actually pushed out Syrians from that region because they wanted to make it their “homeland.” The result was that there was mass flight - most of the “migrants” or illegal immigrants flooding Europe now are Syrians - and also that ISIS got a toe-hold by representing itself as the protector of the remaining Syrians.
All these groups are Muslims, of one variety or another, although many of the Kurds are Communists of a particularly severe stripe who have been attacking Turkey for years. They were also very hard on the few remaining Christian Syrians.
Turkey originally claimed that it wanted to clear the Kurds so that it could return the Syrian refugees to it. This was in response to increasing EU resistance to the Syrian refugees, and the demand that Turkey actually take all the refugees in its own territory. This was because most of them were passing through TUrkey to get to Europe and Turkey was thus the first country to which they should have applied for asylum and where they should have remained. Naturally, the Turks didn’t want an infusion of thousands of Syrians.
Add to that historic animosities, Erdogan’s Islamic dictatorship aspirations, and - who knows what’s going on over there? I think Trump was right to extricate us from this.
Which Kurds,,,the good Kurds or the bad Kurds??
I don’t understand then what the problem is.
I am a Cold Warrior. Spent 22 years of my life serving the United States.
I hated the Soviets and still hate communists.
But I don’t hate Russians. They’re still the largest country in Europe, and own a huge amount of land in Asia. We need to deal with them fairly and honestly, like any other country. And yes, we deal with dictators all the time. That’s not new nor makes Putin special.
The 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union was an awesome thing. I really believed our clash would end in Nuclear War and my death (and everyone I knew). I remember watching the Missile Warning screens in Cheyenne Mountain as they played the Mass Attack scenario and telling another, “Someday, some lunatic is going to get this all going for real.” I believed it.
So when they threw off Communism, well, that should be a holy day for all of us.
I don’t think even the dictator Putin is as bad as the Communists. I do think he wants to push Russian influence around the world.
However, this is not a tit for tat situation like we had with the Soviets.
An American withdrawal does not mean an automatic Russian victory. This is Cold War thinking. I understand it, but ask those others who believe it to step away from the precipice that could bring us back to nuclear brinkmanship.
It is not necessary.
American interest in the Middle East are not bound to keeping our guys as a tripwire like they’re were in the 1970s Fulda Gap.
Back away. Realize that Russia is a minor adversary who we can make deals with without losing and actually gaining a lot.
It is no secret that President Trump OK’d anyone who wanted to support the Syrian Kurds from the Turkish assault.
He tweeted it out to the whole world.
Syrian Kurds and the Syrian regime have been dancing around the details of how they would get along after the war for years. The Kurds have always known they would need protection from Turkey. They have just been using US support to leverage more autonomy from the regime, in their negotiations. If the don’t need to pay anything for continued American subsidies and military protection, they would be foolish not to use as much as they could.
The President is driving those negotiations to a close, rather than an endless stalemate that relies on unending American subsidies.
Since when does “Trump approved deal” with Russia, Damascus; equal U.S. President Donald “Trump did not oppose a deal”. In AP land, I guess?
Kurdish Syrians fighting along side of Arab Syrians against Turkish invaders.
Most likely the agreement was a result of General Mazloum’s offer of concessions to the Turks that Trump relayed to Erdogen in his letter, and not something conceived later as implied.