The Kurds

I don't remember that story being big at all, personally.
As for independent Kurdistan, there was definitely talk of a federated Iraq, but I don't remember any support for a greater kurdish independence movement.

That conservatives like Bill Kristol were saying a Kurdish independent region in Iraq would encourage Kurds in Syria and Turkey to become terrorists was definitely a thing though. So people were worried about there being a move to a Greater Kurdistan.

GMA said:

Donald Trump is a corrupt buffoon. An embarrassment for the United States.

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I agree 99% with the above statement . GMA sir no need debating this one

He did have some great ideas though on how to deal with hurricanes caused by the ever changing climate . To “nuke” them ,,, talk about thinking outside the box lol

However I sincerely hope that they keep the nuclear codes away from the orange one .... come to think of it any sharp objects aswell

Turkey has a history of ethnic cleansing ( genocide ) , and tge Kurds have witnessed this first hand in the Irak war . Hope that history doesn’t repeat itself.

^^
Kurds have been dreaming for years of their own country, nothing new . Turkey fears that more than anything. They have been fighting Kurdish separatists for more than 40 years .

GMA said:

Donald Trump is a corrupt buffoon. An embarrassment for the United States.

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Agree with the buffoon part, every politician is corrupt, the Clinton's perhaps the worst. Still think that for the average working American Trump was a better choice than Clinton. We have a leader who is a total worldwide embarrassment and is about to bankrupt many more Canadians if elected and people still will vote for him. Ignorance in politics is everywhere.

Or it's a thank you to the Russian to help Trump win in 2016? He may have to step down soon so it was maybe payback time?

Cheers,

To those of you who were critical of USA for not helping the Kurds: did you praise the USA when it intervened, started a war, and then caught and executed this guy, saving many Kurds from unspeakable fates:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Hassan_al-Majid

While I don’t agree with the vast majority of what Trump says and does, his Middle East policy is at least arguably rational. It is not for the USA to be world policeman and have its taxpayers pay for that while Canadian liberals chirp and not only don’t pay a fucking cent for the US troops, but they don’t have the nerve to demand Trudeau send in the Canadian army to do some of this dirty work.

More significant than that hypocrisy is that I have a good friend who went to Iraq to set up the postwar legal system which also included Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds. He told me it was pointless and shortsighted to think any kind of system such as what they were trying to implement would work when the underlying sectarian strife is unresolved and unresolvable. It’s been going on for many centuries and anyone who thinks it’s a finger snap fix is extremely naive. The Kurds are a suppressed minority but it’s not necessarily up to any one armed force to uphold their perceived rights. There are too many problems and issues in our own country that need to be focused on and I don’t at all disagree on removing the troops. If and when ISIS regains power they can be dealt with, but the idea of some permanent policing force in every single place of the world where instability is perceived to exist is paternalistic fucking bullshit. Let the regional powers deal with it, and if the Canadians paternalistically want action, they can spend money on sending over their own troops.

cloudsurf said:

Was Trumps genocidal plan based on future business opportunities for his kids in Turkey or aiding Russia to take over all of Syria with their puppet Assad.
Is he that smart and ruthless ?

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Or maybe there is no well thought out plan...

https://mobile.twitter.com/davidfrum/status/1164262663704072193?lang=bg

You are letting your patriotism take over reasoning EB.

Trump does not have a middle east policy. He is driven by another agenda as Cloudsurf wrote.

The shit hit the fan when Bush invaded the wrong country back in 2001-2002...

cloudsurf said:

Beav tell me how you explain Trump withdrawing 50 troops that are training Kurds to fight Isis in Syria and a few days later sending 3000 US troops to defend Saudi oil fields.. Very logical . Its all about the money with Trump.

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I did not say I agreed with the specific policy he is implenting, but his general view that the US should not be fucking around with the Kurds and shouldn't be sticking its nose where it does not belong in the middle of local sectarian disputes.

At the moment, the Saudi oil fields do need protection because of the terrorist attacks on them and the threat to oil supply in the US. I am guessing the troops are there to help the Saudis implement defensive measures so that damaging attacks like the one that happened do not happen again. That would be logical. it's about a nation's energy supply and the possible disruption to it.

What I reject are paternalistic western notions of intervention in the Middle East, all of which stem from condescending beliefs that "these people cannot manage the conflict on their own and need intervention of western military might." I say let them live and figure out the conflicts they have wiithout our constant help and meddling. Live and let live. Let's work out our problems and let them work out theirs.

EagerBeaver said:

I did not say I agreed with the specific policy he is implenting, but his general view that the US should not be fucking around with the Kurds and shouldn't be sticking its nose where it does not belong

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The US should stop interfering in anyone's business. Seems like they like to interfer in a lot of countries business.

Patron said:

The Kurds were the most westernized of the Muslims and their success had the potential to be the “beacon” that W. Bush hoped that Iraq would become (but didn’t).

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This is the kind of naive paternalistic thinking (by Bush) that led to the Iraq War in the first place, that and dummied intelligence in the drumbeat aftermath to 9/11. Iraq was no beacon and never was going to be, and honoring the Kurds becauase they are perceived to be more westernized (and therefore more entitled to "help") than other ethnic groups is exactly the kind of paternalistic, condescending, ethnocentric thinking that breeds and stokes anti-US sentiment across the region. What we should simply do is ignore that whole region. Whatever happens to the Kurds, happens. They are no more entitled to US military aid than any underdog group in the world.

Saudi Arabia is a different matter and it's not just profits that are the issue, but disruption to the oil supply for the nation, which if it happens on any President's watch because he or she let it happen and did nothing to assist the defense of those oil fields, their ass isn't getting re-elected. Nobody wants to wait in long lines for gasoline like back in 1973, but that situation could happen again.

Ignore all of it. Turkey has been armed and let them figure it out. Unlike the Russians, they are Muslims. The Muslims will eventually unite against the nonbelievers (the atheist Russians). Let them wear each other out while we watch. Would be like watching playoff hockey but not as entertaining. US needs to learn to be a spectator on these kinds of conflicts.

jalimon said:

The shit hit the fan when Bush invaded the wrong country back in 2001-2002...

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Exactly

EB, EB, EB...

EagerBeaver said:

dummied intelligence in the drumbeat aftermath to 9/11.

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It was not dummied intelligence, it was carefully fabricated intelligence by Bush and his circle to fool the American people which they
"Succeeded brilliantly".

EagerBeaver said:

It is not for the USA to be world policeman and have its taxpayers pay for that while Canadian liberals chirp and not only don’t pay a fucking cent for the US troops, but they don’t have the nerve to demand Trudeau send in the Canadian army to do some of this dirty work.

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https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia...nal-campaign-against-terrorism-in-afghanistan

Its not us, the Americans are getting into shit like this by becoming the de facto policeman of the world.

Why, why I have to demand Trudeau (Or any other PM) to get into a fucked up and fabricated war and situation which was created by the US and
Middle Eastern countries, some wanted "Arab Spring" to continue so more countries get screwed up, not our problem. It was these countries who
financed and opened the door for ISIS to go in and take care of Assad. (Which would have become another Libya or worse had they succeeded).

Patron said:

Assad has become an enemy of the U.S. due to human rights abuses.

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The US deals with countries with human rights issues as bad as or even worse then Syria, but thats OK
We understand that there was maybe some bad shit was happening, killing, torture of opposition but it was a stable country.
Now explain me how someone can justify about 500K dead, millions and millions of refugees, cities destroyed for some
human rights shit.


I think we can all agree that it is one fucked up situation. (With more episodes to come).

Cruiser777 said:

I think we can all agree that it is one fucked up situation. (With more episodes to come).

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This is exactly the point......when a country intervenes in a fucked up situation, it's usually on the naive, simplistic and patronizing belief that its intervention will be somehow beneficial and ameliorative in the situation. But what ends up happening, time and time again, is the intervening country unwittingly become a part of the "fucked up situation with more episodes to come", and in the process spends tons and tons of taxpayer monies while imposing repeated human sacrifices on its military. Yet after all of that, in the end, there is no benefit to anyone, and no amelioration of the fucked up situation, and the situation continues to be fucked up. So at a certain point you have to look at history and say we are not going to repeat these mistakes, instead, we are just going to take a pass on it. And forget about it.

cloudsurf said:

Its all about the money with Trump.

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You got that right. And that is exactly why he donates his entire salary (minus $1, which of course demonstrates his true greediness), an obvious attempt to conceal his true demonic intentions. But we are not a gullible bunch here on merb, he won't dupe us so easily.

Destroying Turkey’s economy, as Trump is now twitting, will only get things worse as it could easily switch the country on the bad side. Bringing another populated Muslim allie against the occidental world...