Your wish may be granted:
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so in one tweet he says ISIS is defeated, then he tweets that Russia will have to fight ISIS…wtf?
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Only adds ‘meat’ to the lesson: Putin is a reverse barometer.
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Wait, they’ve had stabilizing forces? Aiiiiiiiieeeeeee!
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Putin also stepped into the Brexit debate saying that Theresa May was doing a good job and that there should be no second referendum to reverse the (idiotic) decision to leave the EU.
May’s proposal is wildly unpopular, whilst backbencher political and public opinion appears to be swinging towards a second referendum against government wishes. Now Putin has stirred the pot.
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Of course the US under Trump will withdraw from Afghanistan.
Russia wants a do over.
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Note that the main threat to the Kurds and others in the DFNS comes from NATO member and US ally Turkey rather than the Syrian government. And the DFNS was only “protected” by the US presence in that there was an assumption that Turkey would not dare invade while there were US troops in Syria.
Given that the US ceased support for the DFNS in 2017 and Turkey has already invaded Afrin, I don’t think that the continued US presence was much of a deterrent anyway.
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OTOH, it appears that they may have been continuing some support for the SDF.
It’s complicated.
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The thing is, there are any number of ways that pulling out of Syria and Afghanistan can be fucked up, causing greater damage than staying in, and I have no doubt that Trump will try his hardest to find those ways.
Doing the whole thing off the cuff, and apparently without proper forewarning or discussion with your actual military commanders, is a great start in that.
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I’m curious, since you seem fairly well informed on the factions of the region, what role would you give the US if you were in charge? Air support? Drop in supplies? Advisers? Humanitarian aid only? Nothing?
Support the Kurds. They are the only democratic players and have been very effective at fighting Daesh.
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That’s more like it. Side note: I mentioned this show to a young’n the other day and the person had no idea what I was talking about. It was a real TZ moment.
TZ? If you must…
Not create/fuel the civil war in the first place.
Without American interference, it is likely that the Syrian Civil War would have never gone beyond street protests. It is certain that the war would have ended years ago in a victory for the Syrian government. Which is what is going to eventually happen anyway, albeit only after a great deal of unnecessary and pointless death and suffering.
However, given that that horse has already bolted, all that is left now for America is to get the fuck out. Go home, stay home. America has no business in Syria and never did.
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Here’s what maintaining the US presence in Syria would continue:
Yes, the pending Turkish invasion of Rojava is evil, tragic and should be opposed.
But the US involvement in Syria (a) does not actually protect Rojava from the Turks (because the USA was never going to militarily oppose its NATO ally on behalf of a group of left-wing Kurds), and (b) created massive death and suffering for the Syrian people.
I don’t know about that. By the end of the Arab Spring phase, parts of the army had joined the revolution. At that time America was as surprised as everyone else, but it didn’t take long for that to change.
Probably true because Russia was propping up Assad long after he should have run out of funds to pay the army.
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On your mark, get set…
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It’s been years since I’ve read that book. Maybe I’ll re-read once I’m done with Frankenstein in Baghdad.
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It’s telling that some people in power would prefer IS to the DFNS. That’s exactly what they don’t want - a workable, democratic alternative to the increasingly authoritarian, capitalist, corporatist world we live in today.
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It’s impossible to know for sure, but it seems likely to me that the CIA would have had some role in making that happen.
See what Christiane Amanpour says in this interview with Assad before the war:
