trump comes to a global military decision, not with counsel from his military leadership, his own secretary of defense nor congressional leadership but rather from authoritarian despotic leaders like erdogan and putin... yea, I have a problem with that. trump's embrace of authoritarian leaders while abandoning allies in the middle east and others sends a chilling message to the world.
It is indeed part of Trump's narcicissm to not heed experts. A whole different problem is for otherwise intelligent people to keep faith in pundits on mainstream media that always support later widely admitted stupid wars, but never get discreditted.
You know more than the generals, than Mattis, than our allies etc? The details you are talking about of which you don't care and call petty get people killed. People that will be killed because they trusted the United States and were doing the heavy lifting for the United States. You are right that I don't like the result of abandoning allies, not fighting against ISIS, and showing any other potential allies that our nation can't be trusted. You are wrong about the reason for that dislike. It has nothing to do with partisanship. It has everything to do with what I think is good for our nation.
and sadly it wasn't. That's the whole thing. There might have been a proper way to do it so that the allies who have been fighting against ISIS and dying in our effort won't be left to be slaughtered because Turkey wants it to be that way. It would have also been nice to talk with other allies and strategic partners in the battle against ISIS.
You basically say that because I don't agree with some of our officials, I am wrong. There is no actual logic here. OK so I guess you have no opinion of your own that deviates from them. That is your choice, but illogical. You are an authoritarian I guess because your entire basis for your argument rests on authority. Second, who is getting killed? If it is Kurdish terror cells, I really don't care. They have made their choice. That is a completely emotional argument, and a bad one at that. We can discuss the finer points of the Kurds if you really want, and I don't think you do because it is going to be a hill that your arugment dies on.
Not quite. I said I disagree with your stance. My comment about military generals and your claim about how much you knew about the conflict there was about your professed knowledge more than about being right or wrong. People can have different opinions but you, others and my knowledge of any of this stuff are only at an amateur level. I'm fine discussing the Kurds. It doesn't become a hill that my argument dies upon at all. They are allies who pledged support by the U.S. and have been giving the U.S. support in the battle against ISIS. There are Kurdish groups that have absolutely been terrorist cells. But in WWII we allied with Stalin and the Soviets. WWII might have had different winners if we hadn't. If the Kurds weren't desirable allies then we shouldn't have allied ourselves with them. Once we did then we should live up to our obligations.
Its interesting to me how completely the Kurds have been recharacterised in the last couple of days. I'm not sure where all the people decrying this grave thread were last week. Must have been busy with laundry or something.
You know who else is a key ally? Our own generals. The fact that he made this decision from a tweet right after a talk with Erdogan and zero consultation from our own national security staff is absurd.
We do not owe them. Plus we have always had to choose between them and Turkey. It is not in Turkey's interest to have a Kurdish state established across their belly. Period. You act like we actually need to care about this group of terrorists. Your priorities are interesting to say the least.
Example of how they have veen recharacterized? I have always characterized their militia as terrorists. Not sure about other people. Kurds are fine people themselves and I have interacted with plenty. I still do. But the militants never represented their entire group and they certainly are not elected. They are not even a country and no they are not reclaiming territory. They are land grabbing. I really think the problem lies in how much propaganda has been put out about how great the kurdish militia are without a reality check. Yeah they were not ISIS and but their efforts were often portrayed as defensive and heroic. They need to work with the respective governments now to rebuild or face dire consequences. They chose this route.
I think people are more concerned with the US being seen as an unreliable backer for war partnerships. It’s a complete sellout. The Kurds had to know we wouidnt back them forever I’m sure but probably had no idea that we’d make a path for them all the way up to Turkeys border and then ditch them in the worst possible spot geographically. Say what you want about the Kurds as is a healthy exercise to evaluate our allies, but nobody should be able to sit here and say it’s a great exercise of publicly selling out that Allie for impending death potentially. I think it was Friday Erdogan used the phrase “extinction”. You want to talk about an Allie we should evaluate...
