For example: https://pando.com/2015/07/29/war-nerd-dont-be-fooled-its-kurds-turkey-attacking/
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Doesnât surprise me. The guys who were translators assigned to combat units canât even get asylum. Which is such bullshit I canât even really use words.
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âComparisons with Mad Max are not entirely appropriate⌠but they really did get the pyrotechnic effects right in that film, didnât they?â
You acknowledge that comparisons with Mad Max arenât appropriate, and then you do it?
This is a war where a quarter million people have died, and millions have been displaced. If you canât respect that, keep your mouth shut.
Last thing we need is for this war to become a vehicle for jokes. Shame.
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Make sure you arenât reading the Penguin version, the translation isnât very accurate. The Howard/Paret translation is the generally considered standard.
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Grabbed the Project Gutenberg one, may well invest in the one you mention as paper version
Itâs a sad day on boingboing when someone has to compliment Kurdistan by taking swipes at Israel.
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So get rid of human nature? Are you familiar with the concept of the Yetzer Hara (roughly âevil urgeâ to those following along)? Maybe you know the Talmudic stories about what happened when the Rabbis of a town tried to capture it so people would only do good? Something like âmen stopped working, women stopped caring for their children and hens stopped laying eggsâ That is to say it leads up to another Talmudic saying that âwere it not for the Yetzer Hara, a man would never build a home, marry or take up a tradeâ.
Until it wasnt so wonderful⌠Either because of what I described above or just because small scale collective farming turns out to be a crappy economic base past a certain point.
AFAIK the Kurds have long since learned this lesson, at least in Iraq. The Turkish Kurds probably still have some leftover delusions in this area with YPG/PKK.
Anyway âtwo Jews, three opinionsâ 
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Good point. People have never joked about war before, and we mustnât start now.
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Albania has an amazing love affair with the United States as well. Downtown Tirana. No side street - that runs in front of the Parliament.
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Thatâs nothing! Kosovar Albanians named a street AND put up a statue to President Clinton:
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Trump will make them put up a Trump statue⌠and make them pay for it!
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I imagine his will be larger and golderâŚ
But I do think Kosova paid for the clinton statue, though.
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âWho wants a BJ?â
âOh, me! Me! I do!â
Sorry - I know, childish, but I couldnât resist.
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Mal: âItâs my estimation that every man ever got a statue made of 'em was one kinda sombitch or another.â
Bomb our enemies and weâll glorify you with a statue and name streets after you! What could possibly go wrong?
(Hmm, Iâll never look at a Lafayette street quite the same way againâŚ)
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To be fair, the UN/US intervention staved off at least some of the violence we saw in the war in Bosnia. Clinton pushed for intervention due to western inaction during the Siege of Sarajevo and the massacre at Sbrenica. Sure, the UN and EU muddled the peace and tensions are still pretty high (and there was plenty of violence in the Kosova war, especially considering assymetries between the KLA and the Yugoslav army), but looking at the Bosnian war, it could have been a hell of a lot worse there. I can understand Clintonâs popularity among Albanians for that.
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And changed my old neighborhood now also known as Little Bosnia. So if they are migrating here in those numbers they canât hate us that much.
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We also have a community of Bosniaks near us. I sometimes get a kid whose family fled the wars in my classes. I donât think nearly as many Albanians immigrated though, illustrating some more of the differences between the two wars. I do know there is still a gap in gender demographics, thanks to the war, though. Lots of men left or were killed. The whole region is still struggling now.
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To be fair, Norman Wisdom was also unusually popular in Albania. Maybe theyâre just a bit odd.
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That has more to do with Hoxha, I think, than anything about Albanians being odd.
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Well, Iâm certainly not suggesting exclusively morality based decisions, but that there should be some combination of one or the other or both that makes sense.
Your numbered points make sense⌠if one thinks we should have our nose intimately shoved into peoplesâ business over there. Iâm sure Iâll be accused of being a naive isolationist or something, but I simply donât. Yes, itâs all messy, but I donât think our continuing meddling in the region helps make it less messy. Turkey might be useful for furthering our goals in the region, but Iâm not really a fan of our goals there to begin with.
So why keep denying the reality in front of everyoneâs faces. The Kurds have a defacto quasi-state in northern Iraq, and the Armenian Genocide happened. If we made these official, Turkeyâs feelings will be hurt, many wambulances will be called and then⌠if the alliance was useful for them, theyâll stay in it. If it wasnât, then they werenât really going to be a reliable ally anyway.
Other rambling thoughts:
NATO and Putin probably thank god everyday for giving each otherâs countries the paranoia to exist. Iâm not concerned about NATO and Turkey because my opinion is that NATO should have been scrapped because it doesnât make sense in a post-cold war world. Yes, Russia is not playing nice with others, but itâs mostly contained to their former Soviet territory and relies on there being a local Russian population; I donât see any plausible scenario where they invade Europe. Are we supposed to be scared if a Russian fleet hangs out in the Mediterranean? Itâs possible to envision a Russian force that might oppose our interests somewhere, but thatâs not the existential threat that NATO was built for.
And the rest of your thoughts, while good and thoughtful, still all rest on the assumption that we should be meddling in the region.
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