Following a meeting with US Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, Turkish Defense Minister Fikri Isik gave an interview to state media in which he claimed the US was eager to work with the Turkish military on a joint invasion of the ISIS capital city of Raqqa.
Turkey has been demanding to be given a major role in the invasion of Raqqa, saying it should be a joint Turkey-US operation, that no Kurdish fighters can be allowed, and that the US likewise must ensure that the Kurds don’t gain any new territory in the operation.
The US has mostly not discussed this matter, though with only a few hundred US troops in Syria, virtually all embedded with the Kurdish YPG, it’s hard to see how they’d have such an invasion without the Kurds. Indeed, Ash Carter has recently talked of arming the YPG for such an operation.
One thing Ash Carter didn’t talk about was invading Raqqa with Turkey, as despite Isik making that the focus of his post-meeting interview, Carter’s own comments after the meeting didn’t mention Syria very much at all, and didn’t touch of Raqqa, instead focusing on the battle in Mosul, and potential Turkish involvement in that.
Dear Ash: Did you ever hear of a thing called the UN Charter? No, I thought not. Well, that is a piece of paper signed by our US Government in 1946, as a binding treaty which is deemed “the Supreme Law of the Land” under our Constitution. What is the Constitution? Oh, that’s the thing that you swore “to protect and defend against all enemies, foreign or domestic.” Getting back to the UN Charter, did you know that it has collective security provisions which expressly prohibit any member nation (yes, it applies to us) from attacking any other member nation (yes, Syria is a member nation), excepting only in response to an attack by the other nation (no, Syria has never attacked the US or Turkey). Why am I bothering you with all these questions? Well, Ash, as a Korean War veteran who grew up during WWII and recalls the 55 million human lives that were lost because of aggressive wars initiated by Germany and Japan, I have a dim view of aggressive wars. And as a former sailor who took the same oath as you did — “to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign or domestic” — I can’t help from viewing you as a domestic enemy of myself and millions of fellow US veterans and active-service members of our armed forces. But you wouldn’t understand that, would you Ash, since you have never served one day in our military. Why don’t you do us all a favor and get out of the office you are defiling? Sincerely, RL Young, service no. 323-90049, US Navy.
Congratulations. Well spoken and hundred percent true.
This and those behind this are “deplorable.”