No, but they helped repair the airports that George Washington captured.Originally Posted by Glenn E. Meyer
No, but they helped repair the airports that George Washington captured.
If we have to march off into the next world, let us walk there on the bodies of our enemies.
Knowing the Difference Between Small and Large Kurds
Caveat: The People's Cube is not known for straight forward fact-based reporting, preferring experience-based satire ripping of all things progressive.People often tend to confuse our operations alongside the Iraqi Kurds with those alongside the Syrian Kurds. Those are two different conflicts, different stories, and different wars.
In Iraq, the Kurds had sided with us to defeat Saddam. In Syria, it was the U.S. that sided with the Kurds to help them defeat ISIS, whom they were fighting anyway. Now ISIS has been defeated and the Kurds are back to fighting Turkey, resuming their multi-generation hostilities with our, albeit formal, NATO ally.
The pullout of 50 to 100 U.S. special operations forces out of Kurd-held northern Syria is described in the media as a biblical-scale catastrophe, and it is affecting some of the anti-Trump conservatives like Ben Shapiro. I repeat: the number is between 50 and 100, and they are being relocated to spare them the crossfire in a purely ethnic Turk/Kurd conflict. Such a creation of mountains out of molehills is very similar to what happens when Rachael Maddow puts on a padded brassiere.
Still.
{Emphasis added, lest anyone miss the key point.}Additionally, the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), a Kurdish far-left militant and political organization, is getting enough help from the American and European members of Antifa, who are coming there for combat experience, which they're expecting to use back at home. The Rolling Stone wrote about this last year, and Mother Jones just now. A simple search will produce plenty of MSM stories that glorify Antifa joining the Kurdistan Workers' Party.
Recovering Gun Store Commando. My Blog: The Clue Meter
“It doesn’t matter what the problem is, the solution is always for us to give the government more money and power, while we eat less meat.”
Glenn Reynolds
Thanks for this info. It’s interesting stuff.
Just came across this.
https://www.npr.org/2019/10/11/76929...e=facebook.com
Last edited by Elkhitman; 10-11-2019 at 08:48 PM.
It’s interesting stuff in that there is no action dishonorable enough that people won’t attempt to justify it.
This is a perfect example of justification based information sourcing. It is also a frankly disgusting attempt to equate a known malicious entity with a much larger and more significant group of people.
The PKK has been on the list of designated Terrorist Organizations for over 20 years, and material support for them is already a felony under 18 USC 2339. In fact, a lot of the folks who were all fired up to go kill ISIS needed to be very careful lest they end up associated with the wrong sort of group, and in violation of a variety of federal laws. I would be confident that the USG folks in the region are not making these kind of rookie mistakes.
To be very clear, this line buries the lead:
"The pullout of 50 to 100 U.S. special operations forces out of Kurd-held northern Syria is described in the media as a biblical-scale catastrophe, and it is affecting some of the anti-Trump conservatives like Ben Shapiro. I repeat: the number is between 50 and 100, and they are being relocated to spare them the crossfire in a purely ethnic Turk/Kurd conflict."
The Turks are not just going after the PKK, this is a much broader campaign. The bit about Antifa and whataboutism with the implication that the Kurds were responsible for what happened to the Armenians is particularly interesting BS, and does not even remotely address the issue that any number of host nation groups around the world, who are fighting terrorism side by side with the US, can now turn to their US partners and ask when they are going to be left hanging as well.
Proximate cause for 9/11 was the US putting troops on scacred Saudi soil during Gulf War part one. You know, when we started acting as "policeman" for the Middle East.
Our policing is the only reason we have threats in the first place.
I'm sure the first high-casualty attack by an African-born terrorist(s) on US soil will be splendid retro-justification for us having special forces all over the continent now.
What the US learned from Vietnam and the USSR: if you want a perpetual war, fight a concept ("terrorism") that's nice and vague. Fights with coherent ideological enemies ("Comintern") and actual nation states end in victory or defeat, eventually. The war on terrorism has no logical end. Our elites have no interest in shrinking the miltary-industrial complex that is the lifeblood of their power.
As previous posters have pointed out, pulling out of Syria isn't even a symbolic start to "bringing the troops home."
REPETITION CREATES BELIEF
REPETITION BUILDS THE SEPARATE WORLDS WE LIVE AND DIE IN
NO EXCEPTIONS
Nope.
We tried the “mind our own business” approach before. The outcome was thousands of people dying in Hawaii one December morning. Minding our own national business is not an option- sooner or later someone’s gonna start a fight with the United States. We can either sling the lead 10,000 miles away, or wait for the bad guys to bring it to Main Street. Either way there’s gonna be a fight. OBL is a great example of this- his core beef with the US was our alliance with the Saudi Royal family (of which he was attached to). OBL was evil but he did have a geopolitical cause. There’s plenty of subhuman assholes who’d kill thousands like he did because they were bored.
In the 1940s Imperial Japan had to build a navy to attack the US. Today all you need are some choice missile systems and the element of surprise. Love it or hate it, we are at war 24/7 365 days a year with someone. No vacations, and no sick time.
Last edited by GardoneVT; 10-12-2019 at 12:15 PM.
The Minority Marksman.
"When you meet a swordsman, draw your sword: Do not recite poetry to one who is not a poet."
-a Ch'an Buddhist axiom.
Equating Iraq 1991 with Imperial Japan 1941 makes no sense. We were actively engaged in a region wide "cold" conflict with the latter before Pearl Harbor. War was probably inevitable between us. Iraq was a semi-ally, right up until they pissed us off. Then Kuwati propaganda (including fake news of war atrocities sold to the UN by "witnesses" who weren't in Kuwait for the invasion) and the Kuwati ruling class links with our ruling elites made "liberating" Kuwait a "vital US interest" as well as a "humanitarian" one. Not to mention keeping oil prices low was needed to stave off global chaos. Amazing how sky high oil prices due to the Saudis manipulating the market later, pre-fracking, seemed to be a storm we weathered just fine.
Please tell me how we would be one iota less safe without the Gulf War. (1991) Even if the next phase had been a general war in the Middle East, we would have been unscathed if we stayed out. Middle eastern conflicts only endanger the US when we show up to participate. Our links to Saudi Arabia are the biggest ongoing threat we have. They are the country which has the citizens that despise us more than any other, I think 9/11 proved that. And they hate us because we prop up the evil monarchy that cryshes them under it's heel.
But we must prop them up, "to stop terrorism." The US world strategy for fighting terrorism makes about as much sense as building walls out of sugar to keep picnics safe from ants.
REPETITION CREATES BELIEF
REPETITION BUILDS THE SEPARATE WORLDS WE LIVE AND DIE IN
NO EXCEPTIONS
We did not mind our own business with Japan. We objected to their actions in China. We cut off oil and steel supplies necessary for their industrial and military complexes. They had wanted the Chinese territory as resources were so limited in Japan proper. They saw the Western powers being imperialist and did not see why they could not do the same. Thus, the Dutch East Indies offered the petrochemical resources. We would probably oppose their takeover and the Philippines stood over their supply lines. Before the war, they debate whether to go for military conquest or pure economic competition. For cultural reasons they went for military.We tried the “mind our own business” approach before.
Their miscalculation was that they thought we wouldn't fight hard and come to a negotiated settlement. They didn't know we would go bat shit crazy and want to invade the home islands.
Some historians also feel that the American and European pressures to open up in the 1800's (Perry, for example - shelling various ports to demand trade, etc.) set up a need for revenge. Thus, Pearl Harbor and the conquest of Malaya paid the USA and UK back for those actions. Even if unsuccessful in the end, it made the point that they were not a trivial non-white set of inferiors. We had no 'right' to force them to open up, except wanting to make a buck or a pound or a franc.
One problem was that the Japanese thought it would go the same way as after the Battle of Tsushima. Inflict a great naval defeat and then negotiate. Taking out the BBs at Pearl and the two British ones off Malaya, would do it.
The Chinese currently have the same view, looking to pay the world back for the imperialist indignity inflicted on them.
About GW1 - there is a semireasonable argument that Saddam was on his way to nuclear weapons so that was worth stopping. However, that wasn't causal. There was also a semireasonable view there was a general principle after WWII that we didn't let one country take over another. Of course, that was never really enforced if it didn't suit us. Certainly, the Hungarians in 1956 weren't bailed out. Gulf War 1 could be seen as a mistale in hindsight. Certainly the follow up with troops in Saudi Arabia was a big screw up.
Our troops and planes there is another oil can screw up. Let them use the F-15s, Tornados, Eurofighters, etc. to defend themselves. Oh, they don't know how to fly them except in a straight line and right turns only.
Last edited by Glenn E. Meyer; 10-12-2019 at 01:01 PM.
An excellent analysis Mr Meyer. Japan felt threatened by our commercial policies to their country. They thus felt a military solution was the answer. So long as we have to trade with other countries, we risk military involvement. Whether by choice or not. The alternative would be total economic and military withdrawal from the rest of the world ,which would not guarantee peace either. We return to the point made earlier- the United States of America will always be at war with someone.
The Minority Marksman.
"When you meet a swordsman, draw your sword: Do not recite poetry to one who is not a poet."
-a Ch'an Buddhist axiom.
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