… until another Islamic state kicks off with US as it’s number one target… ?
You know the islamic state was the epicenter of multiple terrorist attacks on the West right ?
The US only had a couple of hundred troops there. By withdrawing suddenly it injected a lot of risk that ISIS can regroup. Turkey has even supported elements of ISIS.
And those ISIS guys are the real deal evil empire.
Remember less than two decades ago 3000 ppl died in single terrorist attack in the US planned and executed by Islamic territories in a remote Islamic state . Those ISIS extremists wouldn’t even blink at doing that if they got the chance. Maybe it won’t be the US homeland, it could be a cruise ship, it could be anywhere. I don’t see any security benefit from the way the US withdrew from Rojava like this.
For MSN it’s a puff piece. This strikes me as the problem: The Syrian government wants to reclaim territory that Mr. Kobani’s forces control and has sent troops to keep the Turks from advancing. Russia has stepped in to broker deals. Turkey has dispatched Syrian militias to take territory. And the Trump administration announced a cease-fire deal last week that would allow Turkey to establish a so-called “safe zone” in Syria where it hopes to resettle Syrian refugees.
The land they “control” belongs to Syria, not the Kurds. They should use their history in the region to get concessions, but they ain’t going to get a State out of this.
And this:
HIghlights:
Members of Congress can begin realigning security spending with these true security needs by working
towards the following goals for 2021 and beyond:
Following the expiration of the current budget caps deal, cut $2 – 3.5 trillion from the Pentagon’s budget
over the next ten years by cutting the annual budget by $200 – 350 billion per year.
Eliminate the Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) fund, which has become a slush fund for war and
require any war-related funded to be included in the base budget.
Double the State Department’s Budget to rebuild U.S. diplomacy, peacebuilding, and development tools,
and prioritize investments in flexible funding accounts like the Complex Crises Fund.
Force the Pentagon to pass an audit and impose real consequences until it does.
Reinstate a comprehensive reporting requirement for climate change spending in annual appropriations
legislation, and invest in climate research, mitigation, and adaptation.
Authorize a Commission on Budgeting for National Security and International Affairs to analyze the
current budget process and recommend changes that results in a more unified approach to security
spending.
Makes a body wonder if number 2 there is what Syria has become. A slush fund for endless war.
So, the Special Forces are moving south:
The desert base is also small and austere. “You’d have to build that place up quite a bit to make it a viable counterterrorism platform,” said a current special operations officer with experience in Syria, adding that expanding al-Tanf might raise the hackles of the Syrian regime.
So, another build up in Syria might the reason for the pull back. Do it from Iraq. Allow Syrussia to do the day to day intel gathering. Neither one are fanboys of ISIS.
The US already kindasorta works with Russia anyway:
In some countries with al-Qaida and ISIS branches, such as Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan, the U.S. military has relied heavily on air strikes . But in most cases, as in Yemen and Somalia, local proxy forces have complemented the strikes with operations on the ground. And in all of those cases, the U.S. has been able to count on “permissive” skies that the host government has allowed its drones to operate in.
That may not be the case in Syria. The U.S. and Russia have long flown on opposite sides of a “de-confliction line” in Syria. Russian planes have been operating mostly in the west of the country supporting the Syrian government forces in the country’s civil war, while U.S. aircraft operated in the east against ISIS targets.
By leaving, the US is taking the Kurdish proxies out of their equation a bit.
Chips are falling, yo.
I’m sure US troops are happy to be only pelted with rotten potatoes and not RPGs or driving over IEDs and coming home in a body bag or missing limbs to defend a region that needs to solve its own bloody mess.
The Pentagon proposed deploying tanks to eastern Syria as an option to guard the region’s oil fields after the US was concerned Russia would cross a deconfliction line on the Euphrates River this week, a US official with knowledge of the situation told Al-Monitor.
Earlier this week, the US raised concerns that Russian forces might make a move to cross the river, which has served as a de facto marker between US-led operations to defeat the Islamic State and Moscow’s military campaign in support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, though Russian forces were not seen massing in the area.
At least two Trump administration sources confirmed there were concerns about putative Russian moves on Deir ez-Zor province, home to some of the war-torn country’s largest oil fields.
First Turkey purchased the S400 missile system from Russia and now is looking to purchase the SU-35 fighters. That will make system integration interesting for NATO.
US President Donald Trump’s many critics insist he has no idea what he is doing in Syria. The assassination of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi over the weekend by US Special Forces showed this criticism is misplaced. Trump has a very good idea of what he is doing in Syria, not only regarding ISIS, but regarding the diverse competing actors on the ground.
Regarding ISIS, the obvious lesson of the Baghdadi raid is that Trump’s critics’ claim that his withdrawal of US forces from Syria’s border with Turkey meant that he was going to allow ISIS to regenerate was utterly baseless.
The raid did more than that. Baghdadi’s assassination, and Trump’s discussion of the mass murderer’s death showed that Trump has not merely maintained faith with the fight against ISIS and its allied jihadist groups. He has fundamentally changed the US’s counter-terror fighting doctrine, particularly as it relates to psychological warfare against jihadists.
…
The al-Baghdadi assassination and related events demonstrate that Trump is not flying blind in Syria. He is implementing a multifaceted set of policies that are based on the strengths, weaknesses and priorities of the various actors on a ground in ways that advance US interests at the expense of its foes and to the benefit of its allies.
The real question about the Middle East is: why should we even give a rat’s ass. The traditional answers are:
Oil!
Israel’s security.
Terror attacks on civilized soil.
The first of these is no longer relevant. We simply don’t need the oil any more.
The second is mainly Israel’s problem, and they are literally in the best position to know what’s going on there, and thus what to do. I say we should support our fellow civilized democracy, but not to the point of fostering dependence or micro-managing. It’s a question of what kind of support. Also, there’s Jordan.
The third: terrorists always go for the soft targets. We can’t fix human nature, but we can fix being a soft target. It starts with a sane and self-respecting immigration policy.
Turkey still putting the squeeze on the Kurds sticking it out.
Under its deals with Washington and Moscow, Ankara paused its offensive in return for the withdrawal of the YPG fighters. While U.S. and Russian officials have said the Kurdish fighters have left the region, Erdogan on Thursday accused Russia and the United States of not fulfilling their part.
With the deal Ankara struck with Moscow, Turkish and Russian troops have been holding joint patrols along the Turkish border with Syria. On Friday, the troops completed a third patrol, but a spokesman for the SDF said Turkish troops had used tear gas against some civilians protesting against the patrols.
“Turkish troops targeted civilians peacefully protesting against the patrols…with tear gas and injured 10 people,” said SDF spokesman Mustafa Bali on Twitter.
Turkey’s defense ministry said in a statement that the third patrol was completed as planned along an 88-km route along the most easterly section of the border at a depth of 10 km.
So, Turkey tear gassed some Syrian protesters. Ten injured. I’d say that’s a high step beyond how Syria has treated protesters.
If Turkey goes through with its plan to deploy Muslim Brotherhood volunteers to Libya, The Egyptian air force will go into action for a showdown against Turkish intervention.
