Announced earlier in the day to a lot of political controversy, the US has begun a military withdrawal from northeastern Syria. Turkey’s President Erdogan said troops started withdrawing immediately following his phone call with President Trump.
Though most of the complaints about this were couched toward the idea of the US leaving Syria, and President Trump certainly continued to give that impression, other officials reported that the pullback would be limited to “just dozens” of troops, and would just withdraw them from the “safe zone” that the US and Turkey initially declared, to an area further south.
Trump has downplayed the planned pullout, saying that the US has paid the Kurds “massive amounts of money,” and that “we can always go back and blast” if he wants to get back into the conflict.
Beyond that, Trump also warned Turkey against doing “anything that I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be off limits,” saying he would “totally destroy and obliterate the economy of Turkey.”
Trump continues to say that he is withdrawing because he was elected to get out of “endless wars.” Despite that, he keeps threatening the idea of going back in or using it as a pretext to move against Turkey.
Turkey’s offensive in the near-term seems to be focused on hitting Syrian Kurdish forces in the far north, and the US policy is to move south and get out of their way.
This doesn’t necessarily mean Turkey is going to escalate this into all of Syrian Kurdish territory, as they’ve oft threatened, or that the US is actually going to leave Syria, as Trump seems to at least want to suggest. Instead this may just mean a brief operation in the far northeast establishing a similar status quo.
They’re shuffling things around and playing word games as usual. The US has dumped a huge amount of weapons and equipment into the “SDF” in the past few weeks. They’re not just going to up and leave that investment. They’re still very much trying to carve up Syria, now there’s just no consensus among the antagonists on how to do that. Notice that the US troops sitting on Syria’s petroleum infrastructure and resources aren’t going anywhere. Moving a handful of GI’s a few klicks south doesn’t take anything serious out of Erdogan’s way. They want him to bleed for anything he takes from them.
How did you draw these concludions?
I think this will be a drawn out process. US dies not want to look like they are withdrawing, while withdrawing in front of Turkish military coming into Syria and this time into area controlled by US. Sure, it us not a withdrawal. Just a tiny one.
Let us see where will Turkey place
millions of refugees? Everywhere. From border towns to Euphrates valley and in to Deir Azzor. Probably Manbij.
The red line for Trump must be Kobane town itself. This is Kurdish biggest city, and the only one where they are majority. I can see that. Turkey does not have to take YPG out of power — but after US caving in to Turkey, Kurds may rethink their leadership strategy and take Damascus offer.
The problem for Kurds is that US will keep on dangling promises, until the last bit of usefulness is drained out of that turnip.
It will not end there. Currently Hassakah and the border region with Iraq are targeted to remove Kurds from controlling Iraqi border and several border passes. The operation most likely aimed at cutting off Iraqi PKK branch from Syrian YPG. But also to insure Iraq can take control of its border, not YPG and US.
But this is not nearly enough to provide for resettlement of refugees. As well as corridor for refugee return to OTHER parts of Syria. This is crucial to normalization as Kurds stood firmly in the way of refugee return. The reason? They emptied most towns and villages on Turkish border and beyond of Arab population hoping to attract Kurds from other parts of Syria to settle there.
And in order to return refugees home, reversing some of this demographic re-engineering is necessary.
Some places along the border were forcibly put under Kurdish rule, all with US full knowledge. And the manner in which it was done — making Arab leaders in local government swear Allegiance to Kurdish authority on TV — makes great show. Now if this is something Russia, Damascus or Turkey did — it would be a hit on every TV channel, and tears would be shed by Rachel on MSMBC. But never such Kurdish specials.
Trump is not mad for getting out — he is mad because not inly dies he have to deal with neocons telling him what to do, but now he has to deal with Erdogan telling him what to do.
Can’t the world just have some decency and respect election time in US?
He’s not getting out. He’s just playing the Syrian situation to force help fuel war on Iran.
What makes you think DJT isn’t getting out, Willybob? His only blocks are only from the Trotskyists aka Neocons and Pompous Pompeo, and Israeli PM Bibzy Nutty&Yahoo, whom DJT has dumped.
Truth is, DJT is against a war with Iran, and he’s been secretly negotiating with his Iranian counterpart (Hassan Rouhani) behind the scenes.
So France, not being able to get Trump and Rouhani together at the UN dog and pony show, was just for show? And Trump and Rouhani have been in secret meetings all along? Really? Any links?
“What makes you think DJT isn’t getting out, Willybob?”
He hasn’t the power to do so. You keep making the assumption that the MIC has to listen to anyone. They have all the weapons remember, that means they don’t have to submit to any authority.
Now would be the time for the Syrians to grab the oil-rich northeast of the country and forestall any Turkish invasion, just like they’ve done in Idlib province to the west. Assad is well on his way to liberating all of the country from the Saudi/CIA/Mossad-backed head choppers.
Wrong. Assad and Russia are not challenging US air space controlled area. This kind of head on confrontation would be stupid. Initially, it was tested. US bombed Syrian troops without hesitation for coming even close to SDF units. You must remember that.
The inly country that can challenge Washington is US nominal NATO ally Turkey. Turkey has clear interests.
Does not want ethnic cleansing to become permanent and does not want to keep Syrian refugees. Having trouble with armed secessionists, the last thing Turkey needs is a quasi Kurdish US sponsored statelet on its border.
It surely is taking a long time here to grasp that Turkey is not doing anything without consensus with Russia and Iran — no matter various “official” statements.
The reason? Neocon demonization media campaign WORKS. When they took aim at Erdogan few years ago — it was full on wall to wall demonization of everything imaginable. He and his son were profiting from ISIS oil sales, even though it was obvious that the trade was with Kurds. Turkey was bringing militants in — even though it was Kurdish people smugglers that brought them into Syria. He supported terrorist groups to topple Assad, even though Turkey’s key interest was to stop Kurds from taking control of the birder region. The talk stopped only after a failed coup in which US and Gulen Fund were implicated. I have no idea why do we still selectively trust neocon media. For mainstream media is all neocon — no matter what they say. It is important to dig behind everything they say and trust nothing.
In fact, Erdogan did support ousting Assad. That Turkish jet didn’t shoot down a Russian jet for no reason.
Early on, Turkey repeatedly fired on Syrian forces over the border because they claimed that shells from Syrian forces landed in Turkey. That was BS. The intent was to get the Syrians to fire back, so Turkey could invoke Chapter 5 of NATO and the US and NATO could attack Syria. That was Obama’s plan.
Israel also did the same thing repeatedly near the Golan Heights. The Israelis knew what the purpose was.
That plan failed because Assad never took the bait.
Colonel Pat Lang has said that in his view Erdogan wants to seize a portion of Syria for Turkey. The motive might be to keep a buffer between Turkey and the Kurds, as Erdogan says, but Lang believes Erdogan simply wants the land because he has “Ottoman Empire” dreams.
It was only after Russia entered the war, Turkey shot down the jet, and Putin “chastised” Erdogan over that with sanctions and cutting off Russian tourism in Turkey – and who knows what other threats – that Erdogan backed off from supporting Assad’s ouster.
Erdogan doesn’t want a war with Russia regardless of Chapter 5 and NATO. But at the same time, Turkey isn’t afraid of the US, either.
If the intent had been to get the Syrians to fire back, “Syrians” would have “fired back.” That is, there would have been shelling attributed to them.
So you’re saying either this never happened or Turkey (or Israel) was telling the truth that the Assad regime fired into either country (either deliberately or by accident.)
I find either suggestion unlikely.
I think you’re missing the point. What happened is that a couple shells landed in Turkey (or Israel) – or at least that was the claim from Turkey (or Israel) – that the *Assad military* fired them. Then Turkey (or Israel) fires into Syria and either hits something or doesn’t hit something – and they did hit Assad forces on occasion IIRC.
Then they wait for Syrian army units to fire back – which never happened because the Assad government had no interest in providing either Turkey or Israel an excuse to attack Syria.
And make no mistake – *both* countries were willing to attack Syria. There is absolutely zero doubt on that score.
This happened *repeatedly* in the early years of the war and indeed even into the later years.
I find it hard to believe that these were merely military accidents on the part of the Assad military – not that such would be impossible on occasion, mind you. But I find it hard to believe that this was not a provocation by both countries to justify further military action against Syria.
I see your point that if either country was using the militants to fire the initial shells, or that they were simply lying about the original incident, that they could simply have repeated the claim and gone ahead and attacked Syria.
The problem with that notion is that usually “false flags” of this sort have some basis in actual action. Witness the White Helmet fake gas attacks – some sort of action actually takes place. It’s just that the Assad forces were not involved. This is because the false flag initiator needs some plausibility in their claim because otherwise someone somewhere will notice – if only at some historical later date – that nothing actually happened.
So you get your proxies to fire some shells, you “retaliate”, then wait for your *real* target to retaliate. Then you say, “See! We’re justified!”
If the Assad regime *did* fire into either Turkey or Israel (or both) by *accident*, then why didn’t Turkey or Israel use *that* as an excuse to attack Syria in the first place? Because all they had to do was ask Assad if that was an *accident*. Assad could say, “Yes, that was an accident” – and that would be the end of it.
Instead Turkey and Israel deliberately return fire. You only do that if you assume either 1) that Syria *intended* to fire on Turkey and Israel (which makes zero sense in the real world – Assad had no such intention – which would be obvious to both Turkey and Israel, or 2) you intend to use the incident – accident *or not* – as an excuse to attack Syria further.
But you can’t use an Assad *refusal* to fire back to justify further action because it simply won’t play if someone looks at what really happened.
Wikipedia has a list of these sorts of incidents. Unfortunately a lot of them are from Turkish papers so we can’t see details.
Syrian–Turkish border clashes during the Syrian Civil War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian%E2%80%93Turkish_border_clashes_during_the_Syrian_Civil_War#cite_note-16
We have one example reported here from early on. Turkey fired on Syria for a couple days in a row after an alleged Syrian mortar attack killed some Turkish civilians in a border town. Note that Syria said the attack was an accident. But the report also said: “Syria said it was investigating the source of the mortar bomb and urged restraint.”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-syria-crisis/turkey-steps-up-syria-strikes-says-will-defend-borders-idUKBRE8920QA20121004
“So you’re saying …”
No, I’m saying what I actually said.
You wrote:
“Early on, Turkey repeatedly fired on Syrian forces over the border because they claimed that shells from Syrian forces landed in Turkey. That was BS. The intent was to get the Syrians to fire back”
If Turkey needed the Syrians to fire back, they would have simply announced that the Syrians had fired back (perhaps after sending one or two of their own artillery pieces to a location from which fire could be made to look convincingly “Syrian” and lobbing some shells at their own territory).
Well, I’m saying that I don’t think it would work that way. It *could* work that way – but in most false flag incidents it doesn’t. There’s just too much risk that some form of forensics, witnesses, or who knows what could derail the narrative. It’s simply easier and safer to just bait the target to respond the way you want. But if they don’t, you just try again. And Turkey and Israel tried repeatedly in my opinion. They certainly had the motive.
OK, if you say so. I disagree. If an incident is “needed,” manufacturing it isn’t that hard, especially since once the narrative is shaped, all the forensics in the world don’t seem to change public perception of it much.
I don’t think public perception even matters anymore Thomas.
I definitely agree with you on that last part.
As far as Trump’s trade policies encouraging goods to be made here, the “trade deficit” has gone up every year since he took office, both as a raw number (up from less than $520 billion in Obama’s last year to a projected nearly $650 billion this year) and as a percentage of GDP (up from 2.8% to 3.1%).
Trump threatens Turkey? With what? Sanctions that will be even less likely to work than they do on Iran? Erdogan has Trump over a barrel and Trump knows it. The only world leader who can threaten Erdogan effectively is Putin.
This is all very good discussion. I think the key take away is that the US needs to say goodbye and leave w/o looking back. WTF has the US federal gov become? All it seems to be is a clown show of foreign policy F-ups.