Article

2018-12-22 Syria-Lebanon-Iran

'Triumph for Erdogan' as US announces Syria pull-out

Archived material is restricted to Rantburg regulars and members. If you need access email fred.pruitt=at=gmail.com with your nick to be added to the members list. There is no charge to join Rantburg as a member.

Posted by Fred 2018-12-22 00:00|| || Front Page|| [10325 views ] Top
File under: Sublime Porte

#1 Who cares? It's a win for America getting the troops home. I relish the tears of these globalist scum who want eternal war.

Posted by Phaigum Elmavimble9218 2018-12-22 08:15|| 2018-12-22 08:15|| Front Page Top

#2 Will you be saying the same thing when the Turks and Iranians destabilize the entire region and we end up forced to go back in?

I don't understand attitudes like this. Its not "globalists" (go sell that line of paranoid conspiratorial horseshit to Alex Jones), its called supporting our allies in the region and slowing the roll of Islamic fundamentalists in Iran and Turkey in the region.

Or maybe you want a Sultan in Turkey, and the Ayatollahs dominating the middle east (with nukes)?

Posted by Injun Bucket8891 2018-12-22 08:58|| 2018-12-22 08:58|| Front Page Top

#3 Why should the US care if the entire middle east is destabilized? I say stir the anthill and let all the players kill each other off with hopefully none of our people in harms way.

Posted by jpal 2018-12-22 10:34|| 2018-12-22 10:34|| Front Page Top

#4 The Middle East has never been *stabilized*. The people who live there don't want it that way; they want the chance to murder everyone they hate -- which is everyone not directly related to them.

Posted by Rob Crawford 2018-12-22 12:25|| 2018-12-22 12:25|| Front Page Top

#5 The Middle East has never been *stabilized*.

DING-DING-DING! Winner behind door number 4!

Posted by M. Murcek 2018-12-22 12:38|| 2018-12-22 12:38|| Front Page Top

#6 And to M.Murcek jpal and others like you who seem to have turned this place, philosophically, into InfoWars isolationism with your talking of globalists elites and warmongering cabals & conspiracies:

You have forgotten the most important lesson of history. There will always be war as long as free men exist. To remain free you must fight and be willing to fight. If you think otherwise you are gravely mistaken. Its a matter of when and where, not if.

Islam as it exists in its current form will always be waging war (jihad) on us either overtly or covertly. Its in their book. Submit or die. So you're dead wrong when you place the "blame" for war on some imaginary cabal in the west. Its not us that wants war, or an eternal struggle. Totalitarians, evil men, and Islam (redundant) do. So they made their choice.

Our choice is surrender or fight.

I ask you this: Where? Over there with allies helping versus fighting alone with our homes at our backs.

I ask you this: When? Sooner is better than later, so they do not get stronger.

I have fought - and I say fight. You are apparently choosing surrender (walking away) until your back is against the wall.

In the words of Sam Adams:

"If ye love wealth better than liberty,
the tranquility of servitude
better than the animating contest of freedom,
go home from us in peace.
We ask not your counsels or your arms.
Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you.
May your chains set lightly upon you,
and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen."

Posted by OldSpook 2018-12-22 13:01|| 2018-12-22 13:01|| Front Page Top

#7 Yes. Because the way it's been run since, oh, the end of WW II has been just dandy.

Posted by M. Murcek 2018-12-22 13:05|| 2018-12-22 13:05|| Front Page Top

#8 It's better to let the Muslim fight among themselves, and have free men not insert themselves in the crossfire.

Posted by Regular joe 2018-12-22 13:52|| 2018-12-22 13:52|| Front Page Top

#9 "If you don't agree with me, you're... you're... you're Alex Jones!"

That argument, right there, that's going to make me seriously re-evaluate every single thing I have ever thought.

LOL

Posted by M. Murcek 2018-12-22 13:54|| 2018-12-22 13:54|| Front Page Top

#10 OS: The problem I have is not fighting over there, it's we aren't fighting to WIN. If we're over there, we need to be committed all the way. I want a clear goal, I want a path to achieve victory for our nation! I don't want a second Afghanistan we're we constantly have troops over there for maintaining the "Status Quo".

That isn't winning, it's just choosing which of our Citizens to use as human shields. Too often the BEST of our Citizens.

Posted by Charles 2018-12-22 14:25|| 2018-12-22 14:25|| Front Page Top

#11 Every policy has limits. No policy should be viewed as beyond criticism.

Every proposed or continued forward deployment of US troops needs to pass some basic tests:

1. What outcome are we are trying to prevent with this force?

2. Can that outcome be achieved without a US forward deployment - either through non-military means or via other nations' military forces?

3. If the answer to #2 is No, then what is the opportunity cost of this forward deployment of US troops, and is the objective worth that cost?

Re. #1, the goal in Syria was never made clear by Obama or his people.

In this, Obama was continuing the American tradition since Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan of asserting half a dozen muddled and contradictory Mideast goals, and ending in strategic incoherence. (After the Marine barracks bombing in 1983, Reagan's people told the public that our Marines were there to "defend themselves," to which Kissinger responded by noting "they can do that more effectively at Camp Lejeune.")

Obama's successor introduced - for the first time anyone can remember - CLARITY and SIMPLICITY to our Middle East policy. The goal is simply to neutralize ISIS. Toward that end, he approved a small US force engaged in what appears to be a very a limited - in scope and duration - hammer/anvil operation.

That operation appears to be 95% or more complete. Perhaps he's withdrawing a few months too early, but that's a minor quibble. There is no reason that the Russians cannot mop up the remaining ISIS hard boys.

This would spare us the risk of a war with Russia - note that we have already engaged Russia's "little green men" on the ground in Syria - and allow us to get our policy toward Russia back on a sane and manageable footing.

Trump, buffoon that he is, has restored clear focus and limited, sensible aims to our Mideast policy for the first time since Nixon. He deserves our gratitude.

Posted by Lex 2018-12-22 16:22|| 2018-12-22 16:22|| Front Page Top

#12 There is a far far greater risk on the horizon than that posed by ISIS: the very real risk of a war with Russia.

Unnoticed amid all the absurd and unhinged conspiracy theories about Russia and Trump, back in the real world, we and the Russians have escalated our confrontation on every front and at every possible flashpoint.

We are inches away from an utterly pointless confrontation with a nuclear-armed rival that does not threaten us in the slightest.

Trump is probably the only person in Washington - aside from the left-liberal journalist Tom Frank and a few journalists of Russian birth - who recognizes the insanity of ratcheting up our confrontation with Russia. Our relations could not get worse.

Now is the time to get out of Syria, find an accommodation over Ukraine (the Cold War solution of "Finlandization" would work fine), scale back the buzzing and other saber-rattling stunts, and find a way to give Russia the space and respect they deserve as a great power with legitimate interests on their periphery.

The cyber version of the Great Game will continue. But we must not have a war with Russia. This is the broader context of Trump's wise and bold moves.

Posted by Lex 2018-12-22 16:34|| 2018-12-22 16:34|| Front Page Top

#13 Comments 11 and 12 are solid gold.

Posted by M. Murcek 2018-12-22 16:42|| 2018-12-22 16:42|| Front Page Top

#14 Yes, Lex nailed. Hopefully he will share more of his insights.

Posted by Besoeker 2018-12-22 17:52|| 2018-12-22 17:52|| Front Page Top

#15 I don't agree with each and every one (Ukraine/Russia as a great power again) of his points, but I see the logic/observation. Civil, well-reasoned discourse

Posted by Frank G 2018-12-22 18:04|| 2018-12-22 18:04|| Front Page Top

#16 I'm an old student of history.

Been watching this movie for going on 50 years.

The US does not understand the Middle East. It is an anarchic state of nature where none of our liberal internationalist assumptions applies.

Consider this oddity: The only US presidents that have ever had a clue about how to make sense of and make decent predictions about the behavior of mideastern nations have been our two most erratic, emotionally unbalanced presidents: Richard M Nixon and Donald J Trump. Why do you think that is?

Posted by Lex 2018-12-22 18:06|| 2018-12-22 18:06|| Front Page Top

#17 two most erratic, emotionally unbalanced presidents

I would offer that that was the establishment/MSM take on both. Strategic unpredictability can be misused but often yields results

Posted by Frank G 2018-12-22 18:15|| 2018-12-22 18:15|| Front Page Top

#18 MMck, apparently me calling you out on "globalists" and "eternal war" (which is an Alex Jones special, which he stole from the left) is too close to the mark for you.

I've said when, and I've said why. Lets see your answers. And lets look at the cost.

By the way, how many casualties has the US taken in the ops in Syria? You talk as if there had been mass casualties.

Here are all five (5) of them.

U.S. pilot 00 November 2014, F-16 crashed in Jordan after a mission against ISIS. Also November U.S. special forces team member was taken by an IED while advising Kurdish-led forces ISIL in Raqqa. A US servicemen died on 30 March 2018 by an IED explosion.

Two other service members died due to non-combat causes in northern Syria in 2017.

Thats 5 total. And 3 combat deaths in a bit over 2 years. The allies have been and still are doing the dying and bleeding over there.

I bet you didnt know that.

And I also bet that whatever delayed actions you advocate will result in eventually more US casualties, as well as large amount of casualties among our allies.

I know many of these people. They deserve our support. Ask nearly (legal) foreign Western combatant who has been to the Kurdish areas. They will tell you the same.

Yet you want to abandon them, and you don't even have a good reason other than the usual leftist cry of "Bring our boys home", and "these people arent worth fighting for". Did you realize you now sound more like the anti-war left did back in 2006-7? Those who have been there think they are worth it.

Shameful. Just shameful.

The one hope I have is that President Trump will realize he has made a mistake because good people will let him know, and he will change his mind on the sudden and total withdrawal. Instead slow-roll any pullback of regular troops, put in special ops to train and advise like we are already doing, and keep resupplying these fighters via Kurdish areas of Iraq.

Leave a framework and a fighting force of locals so we are not forced to come back again in 2-3 years to fight the Turks, the MB, the Iranians, and ISIS, all entrenched and rearmed.

That's what he should have done to begin with.

Posted by OldSpook 2018-12-22 18:49|| 2018-12-22 18:49|| Front Page Top

23:33 746
23:29 Omereth Sneng4351
23:27 JohnQC
23:21 Spanky Whuter1088
23:21 trailing wife
23:19 JohnQC
22:36 Herman Fillmore1371
22:13 Clem
22:09 Beau
22:04 trailing wife
21:43 Beau
21:11 Lex
21:07 Lex
21:05 Knuckles Phager3497
20:14 Alaska Paul
20:12 Knuckles Phager3497
19:57 Procopius2k
19:55 Procopius2k
19:30 ruprecht
19:29 magpie
19:22 Frank G
19:07 gorb
19:04 gorb
18:59 gorb