TRUMP BETRAYS ALLY

That's not at all clear. In fact, the evidence shows that their presence was the only thing stopping Erdogan who has had troops amassed on the border since January.

 

Agreed. Turkey under Erdogan has take a sharp turn towards authoritarianism. Turkey today wouldn't be invited into NATO. Our influence there is waning which certainly keeps our military brass up at night given Incerlik is a key base to reach all of the ME and reportedly houses nuclear weapons. Oh...there is also the pesky fact that Turkey has NATOs second largest standing army.

Does anyone else see any parallels between Erdogan and Sadam Hussein? In the 80's Hussein was our ally in the fight against Iran. After arming him he took a turn towards Russia and suddenly he was our enemy. Iraq was a fairly Westernized country all the while too, like Turkey. I'm not claiming Erdogan is going to invade Iraq anytime soon but the directions that the he's heading have significant similarities to Hussein.

 

yeah and whereas we have TSA screening at SEA ... and whereas there have been no more commandeerings ... therefore TSA screening is effective at preventing airliner commandeerings by muslims.

SMH.

what great logic.

The original story last week reported that Erdogan advised Trump he was coming for the Kurds. You can choose to reject that statement ... but as we discussed last week ... if Trump hadn't moved 'em and they were casualties in the Turk's advance ...

then what?

"Aw, it's OK, CINC, the troopers knew what they were doing when they signed-up? At least we didn't abandon a (staunch) ally"

yeah, right.

LOL ... yeah. Another grand display of equivalence. Why do we insist on whataboutism? Each situation is unique in time/place/players.

taking a turn toward Russia is kinda a show stopper, SH. They are the reason we have NATO. They were with us in WWII ... until they saw an opportunity to expand their own. You could say our alliance with the Kurds is more like that, noting the vast difference in capacities and nation-state status. A common enemy ... but when that is done ... it's DONE.

Why were we still there? Ask THAT question.

 

And your own assumption is that Erdogan was not bluffing and willing to kill Americans, consequences be damned, to satiate his desire to kill the Kurds.

Which assumption is more logical, yours or mine? I think we both know the answer to that in fact we have the evidence of Erdogan making no move until the lone barrier to his attack was removed.

Yeah, learning from history has no place in this thread. Rather we should misuse terms like "whataboutism". Notice I never said the situations were an exact match. In fact I pointed our the low probability that Turkey would attack a neighbor. ather Instead I pointed to parallels to extrapolate a potential outcome of our relationship. If that bothers you then I suggest you stop trying a similar tactic with your reading of the bible. At least my references are based on verifiable history.

 

And yet ... a deal has been struck, formally. No more hoping they don't roll over the horizon to get a group with whom we have had less than a NATO-type agreement.

Perhaps the checkers/chess illustration is apt here?

I appreciate the effort to insult. The history is there ... and it goes back a few years before Hussein (Saddam) was even born ... but you just be careful pattin yerself on the back. We get injury prone doing stuff like that at 40 plus ... 50 plus? well, you're BEGGIN to need rehab.

 

ShAArk and SH, Erdogan wasn't bluffing. He "accidentally" fired missiles at a different US military outpost. I don't think he would have cared about killing 50 US military men.

Like SH said, Turkey claims the right to control 50 nuclear bombs at Incirlik. Each 10 times more powerful that Hiroshima bomb. They are technically the US's bombs. But the agreement was there to give Turkey nuclear capability without them building there own nuclear program. Attempting to remove those bombs would not be allowed. I doubt Erdogan would avoid killing Americans in that case.

They are a truly bad ally. But they are an ally. As of today, I think Trump has managed them pretty well. Makes me think he should pull troops out of Iraq or Saudi or some other place in the ME.

They should also be working on an extraction plan for those 50 nukes at Incirlik.

 

UNICEF says over 5,000 children killed, injured in Yemen's war - Xinhua | English.news.cn


The US military is up to its eyeballs in Yemen too. Much of the starvation and death is with US bought weapons, US trained military, and with the approval of the US government. Trump refused to sign a UN statement against the blockade.

It is a humanitarian disaster and the US's finger prints are on it. Trump now needs to "betray" Saudi Arabia.

 

As we entered into an alliance with the Kurds for a common threat in a specific geographical place ...

we helped Turkey become a NATO nation to further our national defense interests at the time ... and place.

Turkey doesn't hold the same tactical value they did in '52.

 

I’m sure our Trumpsters are just fine sending more US troops to KSA.

Square that circle.

 

I'd support bringin 'em home.

but I'm not a Trumpster ... just a guy who, at this point, will be voting to re-elect Trump after seeing a pretty good track record of GOVERNANCE.

 

Pretty simple really - stop forcing stupid social justice policies on America businesses and the public.

 

An agreement that unnecessarily cost many lives of the Kurds and has been on the table since January? That deal? The defense of the execution of our decision is truly unfathomable. Erdogan had one goal, weaken the SDF and only an attack, sans American casualties could reach that goal. As long as we were sharing space with them he was never going to attack. There was VERY LIMITED risk of Turkey "roll(ing) over the horizon". If you start with an unrealistic premise it often leads to unrealistic outcomes.

Just giving what I was getting, good sir. Have a good day.

 

I think that is a rational statement. However, doesn't Turkey hitting a US outpost with missiles show that idea to be wrong? Erdogan has proven that he isn't that afraid of hitting US military in limited ways.

 

Did they hit an outpost? From what I remember they their artillery came "within a few hundred yards" of our outpost. One could easily turn that around as a good example of their concern for our presence.

 

or ... knowing how bad they really were at employment, recognize they were trying to hit those targets ... and the troopers were moved out of caution, not fear.

you have your idea about what happened and that's fine. Don't presume that it's accurate just because the 9 month status quo was more/less stable. Things change over there in a heart beat. in 4 trips of 3 month deployments out of Kuwait ... they changed mightily, both in the nation we were based and the AO over which we were tasked. Northern Watch bubbas experienced the same sort of issues.

It's just amazing to me how spooled up we're getting over this. Grasping at straws to criticize POTUS on something substantive.

it's unbecoming.

 

So, Trump's claims that ISIS is gone so our troops are coming home? Psych!!!!

The threat of ISIS is substantial enough that the US will leave forces in Syria to guard the oil fields. This will include Mechanized units according to Sec of Defense Mark Esper. Of course, if we have Mechanized units you need secure supply lines. Below is a map of Syria's oil fields. Can we assume the oil fields in th Northeast are of most concern?


It should also be noted that Esper simultaneously claimed that the Syrian drawdown would continue. It has been reported that the Syrian drawdown essentially involved moving the troops to Northwest Iraq so they still had rapid response capabilities into Syria. Iraq has demanded these troops remain in Iraq a maximum of 4 months.

Ultimately, this Trump decision in Syria has been one giant clusterf$@#.

 

But that isn't calling it like it happened. Everything else in your post is fine. Clinton certainly favored cutting the military, but he wasn't the cause of it. The cause was the politics at the time. The Cold War was wrapping up. Dictatorships were falling all over the civilized world and being replaced with liberal democracies. People (stupidly) believed in the "End of History" crap - the idea the the threat of war would basically go away as liberal democracies took root. That meant the public wasn't going to support military spending at all costs. You couple that with a budget deficit that was even worse than it is now (while our entitlement programs were still in decent shape after the early '80s reforms), and there was no question that the military was going to be cut. If Clinton hadn't done it, someone else would have.

 

That's splitting some fine hairs, Deez. I'm pretty sure had HW won re-election we would NOT have seen the extent of the cuts we did under "Slick Willie" ... as I stated, the guy who, himself, said he "loathed the military." Musta been a real peach to be in the Pentagon ... or the 89th at Andrews (who operates the fleet of VIP aircraft incl AF1)

 

sigh. You have that narrative and you're NOT letting go.

When is the last time you saw/heard/read of a dozen people lined-up to be decapitated by ISIS? You're letting good be the enemy of perfect ... which is unattainable.

This administration made a priority of getting control of that specific region back from fundamental mohammidians and has largely done that. The previous administration facilitated the creation and expansion of ISIS ... or what did he call it? ISIL? Odd that he had his own designation from the rest of the non-muslim world.

 

If HW had won, the cuts may not have been as big, but they would still have been substantial. There was pretty much bipartisan agreement to sharply scale back our nuclear arsenal (including its delivery systems - ICBMs, bombers, SLBMs, etc.), Navy, and Army (especially in Europe where we had about 300,000 troops). It was all about the so-called "peace dividend," and all of that was going to mean a much smaller budget. You're in a post-9/11 mindset. This was 1992. It was a very different time. I think we took it too far, but that was just the politics of the time.

 

With all due respect. I was there.

By your own admission you're saying if HW had won re-election the drawbacks would not have been as deep. And you're right ... which means that Clinton's efforts make him responsible for his part ... and his part was making cuts too deep.

We have traditionally had significant cutbacks after a large offensive ... this was no different ...

What I am telling you ... the cuts were so deep that the Air Force had to, for the first time EVER, invite the Reserve to join the corps of instructor pilots for the year-long Undergraduate Pilot Training. They didn't have enough pilots to instruct the students.

And that failure resulted in a major gap in the force and that gap went through the years resulting in too few experienced (fighter) pilots to instruct those in the specific "major weapons systems' as I have previously written.

All of that goes back to the Clinton years. IDK why you insist on defending Clinton. Until Hussein Obama, he was the worst president for the US Military in recent memory ... even LBJ was better than Clinton on that front. .... ED ... though they DID share a penchant for micromanaging the military. LBJ - Vietnam

Clinton ... Bosnia

 

We created ISIS. We took them down. Now lets leave Iraq and Syria to themselves.

 

Which ally did this move betray? Obama?

 

Not sure about your question. Yes. Obama and the US military in 2012 created ISIS.

 

I understood that to be something of a tongue in cheek ... I could be wrong

 

Sorry. I am not understanding. Is JF referring to leaving Iraq and Syria would be betraying Obama? Then yes. But also the DOD leaders of today.

 

Being "there" doesn't mean you understood the political machinations that drove the policy. I didn't defend Clinton or say he deserves no blame. He signed the budgets and was fully supportive of cutting the military. What I'm suggesting is that the issue is deeper than the superficial narrative that Clinton cut the military because he "loathed" it. There was a major, global philosophy that led Western democracies to cut their militaries. We cut our military, but have you seen what other Western democracies did? They went dramatically further, especially the UK and Germany.

As I specified many times, we took it too far, so you don't need to point out how bad the cuts were. I know they were, and I agree that they shouldn't have happened, at least not to the extent that they did.

 

If they had been briefed, it would have made it to Bag-deady before the op got started

 

Being there doesn't mean I didn't then nor now understand what happened either.

So ... there's that. In fact, I have said I gained greater understanding about Bosnia while "in country." Clinton was wrong with his tasking. But, in like fashion of poor objective issuance to the DoD as LBJ ... the administration micro managed the conflict, to the greater risk of our own.

I simply stated what happened when ... you took issue with that and off we went. You defended what you perceived to be an attack by me on Clinton with my first reference. I wasn't attacking Clinton in my first reference.

Yeah, we were giving peace a chance worldwide, right? Meanwhile, the muslims were gearing-up ... so was China. So, maybe not quite worldwide .... just between the ears of those who wanted, again, to use the "peace dividend" to further increase government in domestic affairs.

Perception/propaganda vice reality.