After over two solid months of US airstrikes in support of Kurdish forces, they finally managed to take the city of Manbij away from ISIS earlier this month, with US officials touting it as a huge victory. Today, Vice President Joe Biden demanded the Kurds immediately relinquish control of the city and withdraw back across the Euphrates River or risk losing US support.
It’s a puzzling combination of moves by the US in an ever more convoluted war in Syria, with the US desperately trying to fight a growing number of enemies and support an ever-increasing number of “allies” who are at one another’s throats.
Turkey’s invasion of Syria today just adds to what is an increasingly volatile mix, and almost certainly was the reason why the US suddenly demanded publicly that Manbij, just south of the newly seized Turkish-occupied Jarabulus, needs to be ceded.
Turkey, after all, is a major US ally, and if there’s one thing Turkey doesn’t care for, it’s Kurds. Turkish officials even claimed previously that the US had “promised” the Kurds wouldn’t keep Manbij, and while the US never admitted to this, it sounds like one of the many promises they’ve made to the Turkish officials about limiting Kurdish territorial growth.
The Kurdish forces showed no sign of leaving Manbij, and Turkey’s invasion forced the issue, and forced the US to actually make a choice between the two sides. That said, Turkey’s hostility toward the Kurds is unlikely to end with Manbij, and the US is likely to have to continue walking a tightrope on these allies.
The same Kurdish forces picked a fight with the Syrian military further east last week, and in that case the US was quickly sucked into militarily backing that fight, even though it had nothing to do with ISIS. Several officials were thrilled, since they wanted a shift of the war away from ISIS and against the government. Even then, the Kurds quickly reached a ceasefire with the Syrian military, which left the US with a needless no-fly zone imposed on a territory in northern Syria.
It is indicative of how far our standards have fallen that this article, written by an employee of an “antiwar” publication, fails to mention that all of these military activities are blatant violations of the sovereignty of a member nation of the UN (Syria) and constitute the ultimate war crime of aggressive war, under both the UN Charter and the Nuremburg Principles. If Syrian tanks and troops had invaded Turkey under the exact same “justifications” here given by Turkey, our US Government would have convened a special meeting of the Security Council and demanded joint military action against such an obvious violation of the UN Charter by Syria. But when Turkey does it — with US support — there is not even a whimper by this “antiwar” publication. I am old enough (85) to have lived through WWII and followed the Nuremburg trials. It appears that 55 million people lost their lives totally in vain, because there is really nothing left of the Nuremburg Principles or the UN Charter’s ban on aggressive war. And so it goes.
Yes, because in order to be antiwar, an article must ride your hobbyhorse and no other. Noted.
That is true, but since such infringement upon international law takes place in nearly every piece of news here, it doesn’t have to be repeated constantly. The news updates which Ditz writes are not editorials, or commentary; although Jason squeezes in some quips here and there, it’s not the purpose of news updates to argue cases,
but to provide timely, necessary information.
I’m sure the Syrian Gov isn’t upset over Turkey pushing back the Kurds either, because Syrians want any independent Kurdistan to be as far East as possible, hopefully off all Syrian soil.
Unfortunately, The Nuremberg Principals have been proven to be nothing more than a smokescreen to allow the victors of WWII to do as they please in the years after.
Most of what was reported to the world right after the war at the trials and later was for popular consumption not reflecting the many contradictions that took place during them. For example, the Allies were just as guilty of atrocities as the German military forces. Japan for example was never part of these trials though they treated Allied prisoners with the depths of depravity while German forces treated them as POWs under the Geneva convention; this was especially true for the Luftwaffe.
The Nuremberg trails also gave rise to popular myths still accepted today concerning German atrocities, though most have been successfully refuted. Such myths included the construct that Germany was solely responsible for WWII when in fact diplomatic histories have shown that it was Poland that continuously provoked Germany into attacking her.
The list goes on demonstrating that there was never any substance to such trails except to burnish into everyone’s memories that the Allies were the “Good Guys” when in fact they were just as bad leaving us to witness today their own atrocities the world over…
“Japan for example was never part of these trials”
Correct. For the same reason that if I break the speed limit in New York, the ticket doesn’t direct me to go to court in Los Angelese.
Japanese soldiers and political officials were tried by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East.