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Article: What did the Kurds ever do for the US?

Rogue Valley said:
I'm always amazed that so many Americans have no sense of honor whatsoever. Patriotism is also in short supply.

Not sure if that is bad parenting, bad schools, or a combination of the two.
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We have come to believe that sacrifice is for suckers.
 
Jack Hays said:
Nice dodge, but I'm not fooled.
I've been to Somalia, as well as Iraq, Afghanistan et al. I need no lectures from you. No one forgets the soldiers who died, but I guarantee you our troops in Syria would rather have stayed and run the risk rather than become an excuse for dishonorable US conduct.
Trump took precipitate action to betray an ally and dishonor our country.
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I doubt that every single soldier in Syria shares the exact same opinion of the supposed desertion, but that's irrelevant to my earlier point. Once more: how justified are the politicos who express absolute foreknowledge that Turkey would've made no moves into Syria had American troops remained stationed there?

And the answer is: they have no such justification, they just want to believe that because it's another stone to toss at Trump. That's why I accuse the politicos of forgetting how easy it is for foreign countries-- potentially, even NATO signatories-- to kill off Americans and to pay no real price for it.

We don't have a transcript of the call between Trump and Erdogan, but it's generally agreed that the latter announced that he was going to invade no matter who was there. Neither you nor I nor the politicos know that Trump's decision will have dire consequences, but I think we're past the days where an American presence guaranteed non-invasion.

Maybe I would agree with the ideal of defending our allies if there were not strong rumors that they were using their gains from the civil war to conduct terrorist activities in Turkey. Whatever those terrorists were after, and whether or not they were overtly allied with the official leaders of the Kurds, they badly miscalculated the U.S.'s willingness to protect allies who may be indulging in bad behavior.
 
Ouroboros said:
I doubt that every single soldier in Syria shares the exact same opinion of the supposed desertion, but that's irrelevant to my earlier point. Once more: how justified are the politicos who express absolute foreknowledge that Turkey would've made no moves into Syria had American troops remained stationed there?
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Obviously you've never been in or around a special operations unit.

The answer to your question is that it doesn't matter. We don't abandon allies in response to threats. Erdogan seems to have taken Trump's measure and concluded he is a spineless coward.
 
Jack Hays said:
Obviously you've never been in or around a special operations unit.

The answer to your question is that it doesn't matter. We don't abandon allies in response to threats. Erdogan seems to have taken Trump's measure and concluded he is a spineless coward.
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No, the main point is not the personal feelings of soldiers in the field. The main point of the thread is whether or not the Kurds have justified our defense of them. It's my contention-- which you've failed to answer-- that they overreached themselves, possibly in a move for greater power or autonomy. If this is true-- and the media seem blithely uninterested in such fine points-- they would have undermined our justification for feeling indebted to them.
 
Chagos said:
Well, Turkey certainly isn't on the side of the Iraqui Peshmerga (anymore).

Turkey initially supplied training to them (pursuing its own interests in the fight against IS) but withdrew any support in 2017 when the Peshmerga led an independence (from Baghdad) vote.

As to the relation between the Syrian and the Iraqi Kurds, Peshmerga stated in March this year that they would support Syrian YPG with material aid (finances, arms, medical help) in case the latter were attacked by Turkey.

But not with fighters.

We'll have to see what now becomes of that.

Incidentally that would be a repeat of the Kobane battle of 2015 where Peshmerga even supplied heavily armed fighters to relieve the city perilously beleaguered by IS.
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Interesting. So even some ethnic Kurds don't want their people dying in the field for Syrian Kurds.
 
Ouroboros said:
No, the main point is not the personal feelings of soldiers in the field. The main point of the thread is whether or not the Kurds have justified our defense of them. It's my contention-- which you've failed to answer-- that they overreached themselves, possibly in a move for greater power or autonomy. If this is true-- and the media seem blithely uninterested in such fine points-- they would have undermined our justification for feeling indebted to them.
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It is silly to claim the Kurds overreached. They are the only players without their own state. The reason the media is uninterested is because it's a stupid question. It's like asking a hit-and-run victim if he was trying to damage the car.
Our relationship with the Kurds is not transactional; it is not for them to "justify" anything. It is up to them to uphold their commitment to us, which they have. It is up to us to uphold our commitment to them, which we have not.

And btw, "the personal feelings of soldiers in the field" was no part of my reasoning. I mentioned that only in response to your claim about remembering the 18 who died in Somalia. The point being they're not afraid.
 
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Infinite Chaos said:
  1. In 1972, partly armed by Washington and urged on by the then Shah of Iran, Iraqi Kurds defied the government in Baghdad
  2. US President George HW Bush called on the Kurds in Iraq to rise up against Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq.
  3. the US sought to find elements on the ground who could mount a serious challenge to the fighters of IS. Washington's decision to support the Kurds with training and equipment reaped dividends. They proved both reliable and capable and the dismantling of the IS caliphate in Syria owes much to their efforts.

This is the third betrayal of the Kurds by the US, is this one the most serious though? How many more times would they return to the US cause?
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The Kurds have never fought for the USA. They fought for themselves.

What we are seeing is just how much the Democratic Party LOVED Vietnam and they want a far worse and perpetual war in Syria. It is worth TRILLIONS of dollars, vastly more staff, more military and contractor money, and still more power for the warhawks and intelligence community.

Syria is the absolute LAST place we should put US troops, other than in the view of the Democratic Party that is the party of War and Death - and always has been. Over 90% of all Americans killed in wars and killed by Americans in wars has been under Democratic leadership.

Hell, Hilary Clinton promised to order the US military to attack the Russian military - an action the US Commander of Joint Chiefs of Staff said meant WW3 with Russia.

Understand, there is no death, no war, no destruction anywhere on earth the Democratic Party won't fanatically demand. All the Democratic Party knows how to do is destroy - and who they most want to kill and destroy are Americans and the United States of America.
 
Jack Hays said:
It is silly to claim the Kurds overreached. They are the only players without their own state. The reason the media is uninterested is because it's a stupid question. It's like asking a hit-and-run victim if he was trying to damage the car.
Our relationship with the Kurds is not transactional; it is not for them to "justify" anything. It is up to them to uphold their commitment to us, which they have. It is up to us to uphold our commitment to them, which we have not.

And btw, "the personal feelings of soldiers in the field" was no part of my reasoning. I mentioned that only in response to your claim about remembering the 18 who died in Somalia. The point being they're not afraid.
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Lying is the #1 Democratic party tactic so you resort to this to the extreme.

No, the Kurds are NOT the only "stateless" people in the region and your message on it's face is pure racism, isn't it?

Mormons in the USA don't have their own state. Nor do Jews. Nor do Christians. Nor do white people. Nor do black people. Nor do Latinos. But you, in a purely racist perspective, claim that it is just a fact that the Kurds should be able to form their ethnically purified Kurdistan - and demand the USA go to war against Syria, Turkey, and Iraq - all to be armed by Russia - for the purpose of taking massive tracts of land from those countries - including a NATO ally - on behalf of Kurdish genocide to have a purified Kurdish country.

So do you want our troops to join in mass murdering non-Kurds? Or just protect the Kurds while they do so? Which one?

How every Democratic of you to see the whole world as needing to be divided up into ethnically and racially purified countries. I guess since whites are still the majority in the USA, you also would support using US troops to have a pure white America - or at least run solely by white people - since the Democratic Party already went to war in this country in pursuit of that goal.
 
Ouroboros said:
Interesting. So even some ethnic Kurds don't want their people dying in the field for Syrian Kurds.
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Who the Kurds MOST fight is each other. All the warhawk talking points are grotesque lies.
 
joko104 said:
Lying is the #1 Democratic party tactic so you resort to this to the extreme.

No, the Kurds are NOT the only "stateless" people in the region and your message on it's face is pure racism, isn't it?

Mormons in the USA don't have their own state. Nor do Jews. Nor do Christians. Nor do white people. Nor do black people. Nor do Latinos. But you, in a purely racist perspective, claim that it is just a fact that the Kurds should be able to form their ethnically purified Kurdistan - and demand the USA go to war against Syria, Turkey, and Iraq - all to be armed by Russia - for the purpose of taking massive tracts of land from those countries - including a NATO ally - on behalf of Kurdish genocide to have a purified Kurdish country.

So do you want our troops to join in mass murdering non-Kurds? Or just protect the Kurds while they do so? Which one?

How every Democratic of you to see the whole world as needing to be divided up into ethnically and racially purified countries. I guess since whites are still the majority in the USA, you also would support using US troops to have a pure white America - or at least run solely by white people - since the Democratic Party already went to war in this country in pursuit of that goal.
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Once upon a time I was a Republican. Now I am an Independent. I have never been a Democrat.
It has never been a Kurdish aim to create a "purified Kurdish country." I have been among the Kurds in their territory; they're about as diversity-friendly as it gets in that part of the world.
Your post is divorced from reality.
 
Moot said:
Even though they're all Kurds, I read the Iraq Kurds are a separate faction and don't support the Syrian Kurds and don't want them flooding into Iraq as refugees. The Iraq Kurds even have economic ties with Turkey which is telling whose side they're on.
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Yeah, the Kurds are complicated. The Kurds aligned with Turkey's Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), including the head of the Syrian Democratic Forces, General Mazloum Kobane, follow a Marxist orthodoxy, while Kurds in Iraq are split into two major political factions, one aligned with Turkey and the other Iran. That's been one of the major hindrances for Kurds to unite in agitating for a single homeland. Perhaps this explains why I recently read in the Washington Post an account of members of the Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga shooting at Syrian Kurds attempting to flee into Iraq. On the other hand, when ISIS was threatening to overrun Kurdish areas in Northern Syria, the peshmerga supplied artillery and mortar fire in support of the YPG, the Syrian Kurdish militia aligned with the PKK. So like I said, they're complicated.
 
Ahlevah said:
Yeah, the Kurds are complicated. The Kurds aligned with Turkey's Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), including the head of the Syrian Democratic Forces, General Mazloum Kobane, follow a Marxist orthodoxy, while Kurds in Iraq are split into two major political factions, one aligned with Turkey and the other Iran. That's been one of the major hindrances for Kurds to unite in agitating for a single homeland. Perhaps this explains why I recently read in the Washington Post an account of members of the Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga shooting at Syrian Kurds attempting to flee into Iraq. On the other hand, when ISIS was threatening to overrun Kurdish areas in Northern Syria, the peshmerga supplied artillery and mortar fire in support of the YPG, the Syrian Kurdish militia aligned with the PKK. So like I said, they're complicated.
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Complicated is putting it mildly. I haven't heard about the Marxist angle...but if the 35 million Kerds ever did unite they'd be a force to be reckoned with.

This article seems to tell their story pretty well...

Who are the Kurds? - BBC News
 
PoS said:
Well since you like the Kurds so much, why doesnt the UK send a few regiments over there?
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Well, they had a couple dozen guys there, but they're leaving, too, along with the "Frogs." Seems these days they need an American-supplied binky if the're going to stay. Not much is said about them leaving, so I guess the Kurds won't miss them much. But the Brits were a source of inspiration for a couple of musically-inclined Kurds.



***WARNING! STRONG LANGUAGE!***
 
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Nickyjo said:
No, I like to honor commitments to allies.
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How about the commitments of our leaders, including Presidents Trump and Obama, to the American public? Trump campaigned on getting us out of "endless wars." Obama sold the deployment of American ground troops into Syria SOLELY as a means to confront ISIS. It was supposed to be limited in scope and temporary. Now the so-called smart people, the policy wonks in Washington who go home to their families every night in the tony Maryland and Virginia suburbs of Washington, want to keep soldiers deployed there seemingly forever. We saved a lot of Kurdish ass in Northern Syria. If I recall, they faced an existential threat. Remember Kobane? We provided air and artillery cover, equipment, supplies, training, and ground forces. We did more to help the Syrian Kurds than ANY OTHER COUNTRY ON THE PLANET, even thought the people who should have been helping them because they faced the greater threat from ISIS as well as a large-scale refugee crisis, the Europeans, largely served in the capacity of Monday morning quarterbacks and critics of U.S. policy.

We didn't help the Kurds because of their centuries-long struggle for independence or autonomy. We helped them because we faced a mutual threat. Instead of being thankful for the help we provided, we're scorned as betrayers. So is it any wonder the American public is sick and tired of these foreign entanglements, especially in an area of the world as dysfunctional as the Middle East? While I don't think the threat is completely eradicated, it likely never will be. But I also don't think the world will be caught off guard again with the rise of another ISIS caliphate, at least not in my lifetime.
 
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Ahlevah said:
How about the commitments of our leaders, including Presidents Trump and Obama, to the American public? Trump campaigned on getting us out of "endless wars." Obama sold the deployment of American ground troops into Syria SOLELY as a means to confront ISIS. It was supposed to be limited in scope and temporary. Now the so-called smart people, the policy wonks in Washington who go home to their families every night in the tony Maryland and Virginia suburbs of Washington, want to keep soldiers deployed there seemingly forever. We saved a lot of Kurdish ass in Northern Syria. If I recall, they faced an existential threat. Remember Kobane? We provided air and artillery cover, equipment, supplies, training, and ground forces. We did more to help the Syrian Kurds than ANY OTHER COUNTRY ON THE PLANET, even thought the people who should have been helping them because they faced the greater threat from ISIS as well as a large-scale refugee crisis, the Europeans, largely served in the capacity of Monday morning quarterbacks and critics of U.S. policy.

We didn't help the Kurds because of their centuries-long struggle for independence or autonomy. We helped them because we faced a mutual threat. Instead of being thankful for the help we provided, we're scorned as betrayers. So is it any wonder the American public is sick and tired of these foreign entanglements, especially in any area of the world as dysfunctional as the Middle East? While I don't think the threat is completely eradicated, it likely never will be. But I also don't think the world will be caught off guard again with the rise of another ISIS caliphate, at least not in my lifetime.
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What I think your post is missing is that much of the reaction has been to how the withdrawal was conducted rather than the larger question of whether US presence is a requirement. The Kurds I'm sure viewed US assistance as a mutually beneficial alliance as well to end the ISIS threat in their region, but what they were likely not expecting is that the US was going to pull its troops in conjunction with a border incursion by Turkey. I don't think it's much to expect a formalized withdrawal that isn't communicated via Twitter. Then of course there's the matter of US troops still being deployed in Saudi Arabia as a counterbalance to Iranian backed attacks against it; that's not exactly keeping troops out of regions where there are "endless wars".
 
Ahlevah said:
How about the commitments of our leaders, including Presidents Trump and Obama, to the American public? Trump campaigned on getting us out of "endless wars." Obama sold the deployment of American ground troops into Syria SOLELY as a means to confront ISIS. It was supposed to be limited in scope and temporary. Now the so-called smart people, the policy wonks in Washington who go home to their families every night in the tony Maryland and Virginia suburbs of Washington, want to keep soldiers deployed there seemingly forever. We saved a lot of Kurdish ass in Northern Syria. If I recall, they faced an existential threat. Remember Kobane? We provided air and artillery cover, equipment, supplies, training, and ground forces. We did more to help the Syrian Kurds than ANY OTHER COUNTRY ON THE PLANET, even thought the people who should have been helping them because they faced the greater threat from ISIS as well as a large-scale refugee crisis, the Europeans, largely served in the capacity of Monday morning quarterbacks and critics of U.S. policy.

We didn't help the Kurds because of their centuries-long struggle for independence or autonomy. We helped them because we faced a mutual threat. Instead of being thankful for the help we provided, we're scorned as betrayers. So is it any wonder the American public is sick and tired of these foreign entanglements, especially in an area of the world as dysfunctional as the Middle East? While I don't think the threat is completely eradicated, it likely never will be. But I also don't think the world will be caught off guard again with the rise of another ISIS caliphate, at least not in my lifetime.
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I have been among the Kurds in the ME. Have you? We are scorned as betrayers because we have acted as betrayers who deserve scorn.
 
Jack Hays said:
I have been among the Kurds in the ME. Have you? We are scorned as betrayers because we have acted as betrayers who deserve scorn.
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No, but up to now I haven't felt a necessity to engage in faulty logic to support my argument by appealing to an authority. Having said that, I have been among young, working-class Americans who show absolutely zero interest in dying for Rojava.
 
Ahlevah said:
No, but up to now I haven't felt a necessity to engage in faulty logic to support my argument by appealing to an authority. Having said that, I have been among young, working-class Americans who show absolutely zero interest in dying for Rojava.
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That's why we have an all-volunteer military. I can guarantee you that all the special operations troops in Syria were committed to staying.

Russia has earned its success in the Middle East — partly thanks to Trump

 
Jack Hays said:
That's why we have an all-volunteer military. I can guarantee you that all the special operations troops in Syria were committed to staying.

Russia has earned its success in the Middle East — partly thanks to Trump

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Right, but they signed up to defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, not fight and possibly die for Rojava. They're also required to follow orders, and right now they've been ordered out of those areas. If they're that committed to the Kurds, they can go join the YPG when they complete their enlistments or resign their commissions, but I'll bet you there won't be many takers. As far as Russia's "success" is concerned, the reality they face is there are at least four cats in a bag all vying for control of the same territory in Northern Syria: Turkey, Syrian militias ostensibly aligned with the Turks and foes of the Assad regime, the Syrian government in Damascus, and the Kurds. Things are likely to get ugly once again at some point, and it's best we not insert ourselves--again as we did in Iraq--into what in reality is a sectarian civil war.
 
ElChupacabra said:
What I think your post is missing is that much of the reaction has been to how the withdrawal was conducted rather than the larger question of whether US presence is a requirement. The Kurds I'm sure viewed US assistance as a mutually beneficial alliance as well to end the ISIS threat in their region, but what they were likely not expecting is that the US was going to pull its troops in conjunction with a border incursion by Turkey. I don't think it's much to expect a formalized withdrawal that isn't communicated via Twitter. Then of course there's the matter of US troops still being deployed in Saudi Arabia as a counterbalance to Iranian backed attacks against it; that's not exactly keeping troops out of regions where there are "endless wars".
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I'll be the first to admit that I'm not thrilled with diplomacy by Twitter as well as some of the other mechanics Trump utilizes in conducting foreign policy, and I think he could have handled this better, but I agree with his larger, long-term policy objective.
 
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