Which is more than likely, what prompted this announcement. It pretty effectively puts and end to Turkish aggression against Kurds in northern Syria. Doesn’t make them particularly happy, but unless they want to withdraw from NATO and dissolve their relationship with us, there isn’t much they can do about it now.
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I agree, they don’t know and they don’t care. They just want out of the region.
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And so it begins . . .
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Putin really isn’t expending much effort on fighting ISIS to my understanding. He is focusing his efforts in securing the Russian port and bombing rebel positions in western Syria as an aid to Assad (where most of the fighting between Assad and rebel forces is occurring).
Basically, Putin is propping up Assad and trying to bring an end to that part of the war, so he can prance out on the international stage and broker a peace deal. ISIS however, is another problem entirely, and he is leaving that one to us. What would happened between Assad-Syria and ISIS after the civil war is brought to an end is an open question, however.
And from a bigger picture, that’s probably in our best interests anyway. Get that part of the conflict resolved, so we can focus the world on the ISIS problem. And Putin is in a much better position to get Assad to a successful peace that brings an end to the civil war than we our.
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Of course they can’t say that so we get an endless, mindless, superficial debate over the meaning of the phrase “boots on the ground.”
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So what do we do when one or some of these U.S. troops is killed or beheaded by ISIS?
“A multi-sided civil war? - Where we don’t have any identifiable ally, just a mixed bag of poorly-known enemies?”
Looks a lot like Lebanon 1983, doesn’t it?
My concern is that SpecOp forces get purposely targeted by the Sovie, er, I mean Russians. SpecOps floating around the region from unacknowledged task to unacknowledged task against ISIS is fine. Assigning them to work with various anti-Assad Syrian faction puts them more in harm’s way.
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One was already been killed in the rescue mission last week in Iraq/Kurdistan.
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Just more of Bush;s mess that Obama has to deal with. GWB ruined the fucking world with his wars
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well there was this story of a little Dutch boy and one day, he had to use all ten fingers to prevent a dam from busting…
just transpose and that’s the current Syrian situation.
up to a point…
Nobody said that WW3, Clash of Civilizations, would be rational to understand, explain, or conduct.
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I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say that this situation is potentially ripe for WW3. I think too many things could go very wrong and escalate to the point of no return. Especially - especially - if a Rethug were to capture the WH.
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The Great Game was played between European powers seeking to build and extend empires through colonial acquisition/exploitation. Later it was played by the US and USSR during the Cold War looking for proxy allys and influence throughout the second and third worlds. Is that what you think is still going on here? If so, our strategy violates President Obama’s First Rule of Governance: Don’t do stupid shit!
I disagree with SoS Kerry when he says that US regional interests are not bound up in the survival of the Assad regime. Were the Assad-led Baath Party secular government to collapse, then violent chaos will expand in territory, to and through the recognized borders of Jordan, a perpetually uneasy Lebanon, Israel and its occupied territorys. Ironically, Hezbollah is fighting hard to support the Syrian State which indirectly preserves the present relatively peaceful State of Israel.
In 1973, non-Likud Prime Minister Golda Meir wanted to use nuclear weapons to repel the successfully attacking Egyptian and Syrian armys; fortunately, calmer heads in her cabinet and the IDF prevailed against her. Are you confident that such voices would prevail in a contemporary Likud coalition government if an adjacent ISIS state were to attack Greater Israel and murder Jewish inhabitants?
A better way to prevent a future much worse the unsatisfactory present is to assure that Syria’s Baath government and territorial integrity prevails in its existential war against ISIS and other armed groups. Remember that the non-sectarian and secular Baath Party under Assad leadership took control of the Syrian government about the same time that Baath under Saddam’s leadership took control in Iraq. Freedom to worship was extended to nearly all minority religions and sects; religious and ethnic violence was quashed; stability within these pluralist states was the norm. America should work with Russia grudgingly, Iran tacitly, and Hezbollah surreptitiously to restore the Assad/Baathist status ante quo; then use the favors owed to negotiate with Assad about reforms demanded by legitimate Syrian opposition groups.