US pulling out of North Syria

[_Icarus]

Wow, you're just 150% in the tank for Trump huh? Everything he does is just pure genius and wonderful for the country? Why is it that nearly everyone both Democrat and Republican and certainly US military officials, strongly disagree with him on this? Even Evangelicals are beginning to criticize him for the first time. Is every single one of them a "hawk"? You don't seem to get what a hawk is. No one is saying it is good that we're there, but that there are smart ways of doing things. The mere 1,000 troops in Syria coming home isn't keeping a campaign promise, as there are thousands more in other Middle East countries he has no intention of withdrawing. The existence of this relatively small force of US soldiers has served as a buffer to prevent war with Turkey without it actually happening. And the troops haven't actually left the country, they've only left the line of defense which gave the green light to Turkey to go ahead and move in.

Has it not even occurred to you that it is inevitable that this nation suffer another terrorist attack and we will again, at some future point, be in desperate need of help again from the locals from these countries and they're going to laugh in our faces and say, "yeah right, we remember how you honored agreements with the Kurds. With allies like you, who needs enemies?" They'd probably be better off joining forces with ISIS. Trump has done permanent damage to the honor of this country. He's turned us into a nation with no moral compass, the same way he runs his business thinking of only himself and no one else.

Finally, this has nothing to do with Trump caring about the lives of American soldiers. We're talking about a man who insults Gold Star families and continues to piss on the grave of a noted war hero while belittling honorable military generals simply for disagreeing with him. This is a man who used bone spurs as an excuse to avoid the draft, and bombed Syria in his first year in office because he said he wanted to prevent children from suffering. The only reason Trump does anything is to either: 1) benefit Putin or 2) create a distraction in the media or 3) both.

And let's not kid ourselves here, virtually everything he's been doing benefits Russia and himself. If it were Obama who owned properties in a country and if it were Obama who sold out our long time allies to benefit that country, the conspiracy minded Trump supporters would be calling for his head. But when its Trump, it has to be spun as some kind of genius move that only the truly smart people can understand.

[_EAllusion]

A lot of anonymously sourced reports this morning are indicating that both NATO allies and the Pentagon were blindsided by Trump's decision to abandon the Kurds to Turkish invasion.

Okay, first let me say that I honestly don't know who the Kurds are. Please explain why it is very important for the US military to protect them? Should (or can) the US military also protect the rest of the world? Why are the Kurds so special?

There's several layers to this. The first is that the Kurds are US allies in the Middle East to act as a counterweight to forces aligned against US interests. This came in handy when we needed them to push back against ISIS, but our alliance with them is more about regional powers. Or, rather, they were our allies. Have fun debating the extent to which that should be the case because he's irrelevant to the more pressing issue that the US, the Trump admin, convinced them to lower their defenses in exchange for promises on security then broke those promises leaving them to slaughter. That has consequences beyond the fate of the Kurds. It tells any nation US commitments aren't worth squat.

Then beyond this, the decision making done here was as reckless as possible. Because there was no meaningful warning, ISIS fighers are escaping left and right while the US military bombs its own equipment because it didn't have time to properly withdraw from the region. Meanwhile, the Kurds, facing genocide from Turkey, are running into the arms of the Russian-Assad alliance.

It's a god damn disaster apart from whether you think the US should, in a vacuum, protect the Kurds.

[_EAllusion]

Its only important to the more Hawkish members of our government...but Trump ran on a platform of ending the endless wars and bringing troops home.

He didn't bring those troops home. He moved them a little bit.

[_Some Schmo]

While idiots have been touting the "Trump economy" I've been saying all along that the biggest threat Trump poses is his incompetence in foreign relations, and the permanent damage he's doing to the US's reputation abroad. This is no great insight; paying even a modicum of attention should make most people conclude Trump is a total “F” up on the world stage.

[_EAllusion]

If a Democrat wins the Whitehouse, they're going to inherit the consequences of Trump's smash and grab on our country. That's preferable to Trump further poisoning the country, but it's a got a good shot at being a lose-lose situation. Partisan hacks like Subs are going to blame the consequences of Trump on Democrats. You can set your watch to it.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

Not that anyone really cares, but:

https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/08/politics ... index.html

"The abrupt policy decision to seemingly abandon our Kurdish partners could not come at a worse time. The decision was made without consulting US allies or senior US military leadership and threatens to affect future partnerships at precisely the time we need them most," retired Gen. Joseph Votel, who led US Central Command from March 2016 to March 2019, wrote in an opinion piece in The Atlantic.

And for Doubting Thomas the reason why this is bad for policy:

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... Relief Society/599632/

Who is General Votel?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/che ... commander/

tl;dr - Delta Force.

- Doc

[_Doctor Steuss]

Lol.

<<image of letter>>

Read it here:

https://i0.wp.com/media.boingboing.net/ ... jpeg?ssl=1

Sources say it was delivered like this to be translated by Turkey's top fifth grader.

[_Xenophon]

Sources say it was delivered like this to be translated by Turkey's top fifth grader.

Are you gonna play nice? Check yes or no!

[_Doctor Steuss]

Are you gonna play nice? Check yes or no!

I have an inside source that was just able to sneak me a copy of the first draft.

[_Xenophon]

Are you gonna play nice? Check yes or no!

I have an inside source that was just able to sneak me a copy of the first draft.