Did you know that we have 2,000 troops embedded with the Kurds in northern Syria? I didn't, until Georgie Anne Geyer told me this morning.
Either the American public doesn't care about things like this, or our media gatekeepers think we don't care, or both. My supposition is that one factor in this curious public ignorance is that the women and men who fight our un-wars tend to come from small towns or urban downscale communities - the places that our college-educated elites tend to stay away from.
Is it really a new war or a continuation of the old one? I realize that's like asking if a cancer is a metastasis or a secondary cancer resulting from the chemo and radiation for the first one. To me the operative word in the Georgie Anne Geyer link is "quicksand". I don't think it's that the public doesn't care. We've developed crisis fatigue. War has become the not-so-new normal. Another hot-spot? It's Saturday. We have to fight against that malaise.
ReplyDeleteIt is a continuation of the war in Syria. And in many respects it is a continuation of the U.S.'s effort to keep Assad from regaining control of Syria. President Erdogan of Turkey has sent troops along with Syrian rebels, some of whom we originally supported and funded. The Kurds fought more successfully against ISIS than most of the rebels, hence the territory they now control. Does the U.S. military think they deserve our support against Turkey? Or do they really think the Kurds will be more successful at taking out the remaining ISIS militants?
Delete[And I throw in for history buffs that after WW1 (1919), the Kurds were promised their own country. Never happened, but they haven't given up. That is why Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran (all with territory on the promised state) are opposed to anything that looks like autonomy. Maybe the 100th anniversary of the promise coming up, the Kurds are trying to hold onto what they have, or what they have freed from ISIS.]
The war in Syria continues:
Delete"Russian warplane shot down in northwest Syria."
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/03/russian-warplane-shot-down-in-north-west-syria-opposition-activists-say
P.S. The Guardian offers open access with a plea now and again for contriubtions.
Actually, Secretary of State Tillerson announced this some weeks ago. It was reported in the NYTimes.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/17/world/middleeast/tillerson-troops-syria-islamic-state.html
And I assume the Turkish press has been all over this for weeks...alas I have no link.
"Either the American public doesn't care about things like this, or our media gatekeepers think we don't care, or both. My supposition is that one factor in this curious public ignorance is that the women and men who fight our un-wars tend to come from small towns or urban downscale communities - the places that our college-educated elites tend to stay away from."
ReplyDeleteSorry Jim, wrong. Use one of your 10 freebies at the NYTimes. The Washington Post has a similar story, Jan. 17.
Finally got to Georgie Anne Geyer, who, as I recall, used to be a foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune...last century perhaps. She mentions the Tillerson announcement btw...
ReplyDeleteAnd asks some good questions:
1. Why are we, month after month and year after year, getting more deeply involved in the quicksand of military politics in the Middle East when we have no immediate need of our own to do so?
2. Why, when we DO get involved, do we so often leave ourselves open to enemy analysis and attack?
3. Why have we forgotten that our great nation has the best of natural protections, two great oceans, but we have wantonly sacrificed those defenses as we constantly intervene in other countries and increase our military expenses?
I am a bit surprised at the isolationist tone, even more surprised that she doesn't mention Israel as one of the big reasons we are in the Middle East in military mode. To that add Trump's crusade against Iran.
Margaret, thanks for the links.
ReplyDeleteMy understanding is that we threw in with the Kurds to thwart Assad ... and that has been construed by the Turks as helping "Kurdistan."
Apparently we don't care too much what the Turks think, because our objective is to defeat ISIS, which operates in the borderlands, which would be Kurdistan, if there were a Kurdistan.
Trump said some time ago that we are no longer in the business of nation-building, only looking out for our own interests, which are, apparently rooting out terrorist organizations like ISIS and the Taliban. To do this, we might cooperate with various countries or factions within countries, such as the Kurds, without regard to diplomatic repercussions with the ruling government.
The problem is that ISIS and the Taliban are less "organizations" than ideas. It's like trying to defeat communism by bombing Cuba to smithereens.
I am not confident Trump can distinguish between a Muslim and a terrorist--or if he can, it's moot because his base conflates them, and that's his audience.
We will also support Israel because they have to be converted before the End Times come. I doubt Trump believes that, but, again, that's what the morons in his base believe. (Get woke, Catholics: this same base of fun dies also believes the Pope will sell Israel down the river.)
Christian fundies control our foreign policy to a remarkable degree.