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Duckbox
Sep 7, 2007

Well, I suppose the huge Al Qaeda flag is something of a clue.

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Al-Saqr
Nov 11, 2007

One Day I Will Return To Your Side.

SA_Avenger posted:

Anyone watched Jenan Moussa report from Idlib yet ?
https://twitter.com/jenanmoussa/status/864242415649132544

https://twitter.com/jenanmoussa/status/864251129315635205

She is one of the few objective journalist out there IMHO so her taking such a stance seems like she has serious Intel from the ground

Desperate people resort to extremism when all their friends get gassed and tossed into the oven and no one rescues them when the guy oppressing them brigs in crazed theocrats from Iraq and Iran. News at 11.

WhiskeyWhiskers
Oct 14, 2013


"هذا ليس عادلاً."
"هذا ليس عادلاً على الإطلاق."
"كان هناك وقت الآن."
(السياق الخفي: للقراءة)

Al-Saqr posted:

Desperate people resort to extremism when all their friends get gassed and tossed into the oven and no one rescues them when the guy oppressing them brigs in crazed theocrats from Iraq and Iran. News at 11.

lol. These poor people turning to Al Qaeda are less responsible for their own actions than the Kurds possibly maybe making deals/being told to make deals with Assad. Extremely cool story.

Al-Saqr
Nov 11, 2007

One Day I Will Return To Your Side.

WhiskeyWhiskers posted:

lol. These poor people turning to Al Qaeda are less responsible for their own actions than the Kurds possibly maybe making deals/being told to make deals with Assad. Extremely cool story.

lol. these poor people don't have the might of the entire U.S. military handholding them to victory and providing text-to-bomb services to protect them with all their air force from having their cities leveled the being thrown into an oven. Super cool story brah.

WhiskeyWhiskers
Oct 14, 2013


"هذا ليس عادلاً."
"هذا ليس عادلاً على الإطلاق."
"كان هناك وقت الآن."
(السياق الخفي: للقراءة)

Al-Saqr posted:

lol. these poor people don't have the might of the entire U.S. military handholding them to victory and providing text-to-bomb services to protect them with all their air force from having their cities leveled the being thrown into an oven. Super cool story brah.

Would if they joined the SDF, brosef.

Al-Saqr
Nov 11, 2007

One Day I Will Return To Your Side.

WhiskeyWhiskers posted:

Would if they joined the SDF, brosef.

but they cant because America contractually obligates everybody they arm to only fight ISIS and not touch a hair on any Assad Soldier, Jabroni. Plus Joining the SDF means taking part in operations that would cripple the rebellions efforts in beating Assad, since it includes taking vital roadways with the help of Russia who are on Assads side, Brosefini. Also the SDF will never ever take the fight into Assad Territory or rescue sieged cities or anywhere that Isnt 'Glorious Rojava' which discounts like 95% of the rebellion, Toobmeister.

Al-Saqr fucked around with this message at 10:06 on May 16, 2017

WhiskeyWhiskers
Oct 14, 2013


"هذا ليس عادلاً."
"هذا ليس عادلاً على الإطلاق."
"كان هناك وقت الآن."
(السياق الخفي: للقراءة)
Contractual obligation seems to go both ways though. If their support for AQ is entirely hinged on saving themselves from the ovens they could've gotten protection from Assad quite easily. broham.

GaussianCopula
Jun 5, 2011
Jews fleeing the Holocaust are not in any way comparable to North Africans, who don't flee genocide but want to enjoy the social welfare systems of Northern Europe.

Al-Saqr posted:

but they cant because America contractually obligates everybody they arm to only fight ISIS and not touch a hair on any Assad Soldier, Jabroni. Plus Joining the SDF means taking part in operations that would cripple the rebellions efforts in beating Assad, since it includes taking vital roadways with the help of Russia who are on Assads side, Brosefini. Also the SDF will never ever take the fight into Assad Territory or rescue sieged cities or anywhere that Isnt 'Glorious Rojava' which discounts like 95% of the rebellion, Toobmeister.

They are on the losing side of a violent sectarian civil war - that comes with some need to compromise.

Al-Saqr
Nov 11, 2007

One Day I Will Return To Your Side.

WhiskeyWhiskers posted:

Contractual obligation seems to go both ways though. If their support for AQ is entirely hinged on saving themselves from the ovens they could've gotten protection from Assad quite easily. broham.

lol says white fat dude living in the lap of luxury who's never have all his friends killed, his town burned to the ground, and has no recourse to save or protect himself other than who will help no matter what. it's really obvious you have no loving clue what you're talking about and have made no attempt to read the history of how things got to where they are. Buzz off.

GaussianCopula posted:

They are on the losing side of a violent sectarian civil war - that comes with some need to compromise.

"hey man that guy who keeps gassing your kids and threw your brother into aushwitz? yeeaaaaah we need you to just stop fighting that guy, submit and die and maybe probably not we wont help you since we're too scared of stopping Russian bombers from napalming your town, also you're a stinky poopoo who deserves to die because you became an Islamist after everybody you once peacefully protested with were gunned down and a group of Salafists saved you by fishing you out of the pile of bodies and gave you a gun to take revenge. Thaaaaannnkss :D"

Al-Saqr fucked around with this message at 10:16 on May 16, 2017

Godlessdonut
Sep 13, 2005

Al-Saqr posted:

but they cant because America contractually obligates everybody they arm to only fight ISIS and not touch a hair on any Assad Soldier, Jabroni.

That whole "train and equip" plan was a failure but making them sign the "Don't touch Assad, only ISIS" form was the dumbest part. Shockingly they weren't able to get many recruits with that as a condition.

WhiskeyWhiskers
Oct 14, 2013


"هذا ليس عادلاً."
"هذا ليس عادلاً على الإطلاق."
"كان هناك وقت الآن."
(السياق الخفي: للقراءة)

Al-Saqr posted:

lol says white fat dude living in the lap of luxury who's never have all his friends killed, his town burned to the ground, and has no recourse to save or protect himself other than who will help no matter what. it's really obvious you have no loving clue what you're talking about and have made no attempt to read the history of how things got to where they are. Buzz off.

Literally no Kurd had to worry about these things.

Panzeh
Nov 27, 2006

"..The high ground"

Al-Saqr posted:

lol says white fat dude living in the lap of luxury who's never have all his friends killed, his town burned to the ground, and has no recourse to save or protect himself other than who will help no matter what. it's really obvious you have no loving clue what you're talking about and have made no attempt to read the history of how things got to where they are. Buzz off.

you're the asking the PYD to submit to the Turks and the opposition who have no interest in socialism.

Duckbox
Sep 7, 2007

El Disco posted:

That whole "train and equip" plan was a failure but making them sign the "Don't touch Assad, only ISIS" form was the dumbest part. Shockingly they weren't able to get many recruits with that as a condition.

Yeah, this is part of why I have a lot of trouble parsing the SDF's actual motives. They're trying to walk a very narrow line between the US and Russia that essentially only allows them to fight ISIS and presumably Nusra. They can't just do their own thing because they've got the Turks breathing down their necks and, as we saw last week, that patronage is pretty important to their security and stability. Something has to give as far as the US/Russia/Assad/Turkey relationship and I don't know how it will play out, but I do think it has made it hard to get any real read on what Northern Syria is about. Every message they put out has to be calibrated to not piss off any of the above or else gets taken back (as we saw with that "route to the sea" statement), so it's hard to see what their plans might be in a post-ISIS situation and easy for other people to project all sorts of devious or heroic motives onto them.

Conspiratiorist
Nov 12, 2015

17th Separate Kryvyi Rih Tank Brigade named after Konstantin Pestushko
Look to my coming on the first light of the fifth sixth some day

Coldwar timewarp posted:

Bets on who? Israel or Jordan would be my guess. Hopefully it comes out.

Oman for maximum trainwreck.

The Omani back Iran but don't want to piss the US off, so do some quid pro quo with the US remaining quiet about Omani logistical support of the Houthis. Don't interfere with their operations, and they pipeline America the info they yield for providing that support. It'd fall under the criteria of being so sensitive you wouldn't fully brief NATO allies.

If so we've got Oman playing all sides and now Russia has solid proof.

This would also be amazing news for Iran as it represents a betrayal and a window they can use to flood supplies to the Houthis, and easily put in the kind of pressure on the US and the GCC that they can't afford.

Then we've got the King of Jordan leaving Oman yesterday and Trump scheduled to have a phone call with him this morning. The trip was 2 days long, meaning he left Friday and was arranged at last minute. Trump meets Lavrov and Kislyak on Wednesday, leaks that morning, which is Thursday in Jordan. 24 hours later Abdullah is in Muscat meeting with the Sultan and various officials. That's like 12 hours to arrange a full meeting with one of the more secretive monarchies on Earth.

Jordan acting as a proxy to attempt to smooth out this clusterfuck, or because it involves a faction in the Royal Palace that Abdullah helped co-opt. Or both.

So that's maximum trainwreck: there's a legitimate chance the US had recruited the Sultan of Oman as an anti-Daesh intelligence asset and Trump burned him in a loving handshake meeting in front of TASS.

ED: Trump also allegedly name dropped the city, so it'd make sense if it was Muscat or Salalah, something that his senile brain could remember.

Conspiratiorist fucked around with this message at 11:37 on May 16, 2017

Rust Martialis
May 8, 2007

At night, Bavovnyatko quietly comes to the occupiers’ bases, depots, airfields, oil refineries and other places full of flammable items and starts playing with fire there
Al-Saqr is really just roleplaying the plucky defenders of Aleppo who even in their most desperate moments kept alive their dedication to hating Kurds by repeatedly attacking the evil, disgusting YPG in Sheikh Maqsood even at the ultimate cost of their freedom from​ Assad. True heroes all.

Seriously your devoted chauvinism, racism and bigotry against Kurds and Shia leads you to the most grotesque statements.

Your cheap crack about a fat white guy making comments on a situation he'll never face ring hollow for someone who is basically exactly that in turn, unless you're about to move to Idlib and sign up, you're in the same boat, you hypocrite.

White Rock
Jul 14, 2007
Creativity flows in the bored and the angry!

Al-Saqr posted:

"hey man that guy who keeps gassing your kids and threw your brother into aushwitz? yeeaaaaah we need you to just stop fighting that guy, submit and die and maybe probably not we wont help you since we're too scared of stopping Russian bombers from napalming your town, also you're a stinky poopoo who deserves to die because you became an Islamist after everybody you once peacefully protested with were gunned down and a group of Salafists saved you by fishing you out of the pile of bodies and gave you a gun to take revenge. Thaaaaannnkss :D"


I don't know what your saying. The US did not want to overpower Assad, because at that point it would potentially let ISIS win large swaths of the country and turn entire Syria into a extremist nightmare. They do not want to fund any extremist organisation that may end up doing some terror or sharia poo poo. Nor does it want to push Putin towards some kind of brinkmanship WW3 bullshit. Or before that, they didn't want a Iraq War V2, electric boogaloo. They have nothing to gain from any of that.

The whole situation follows the geopolitical logic of the nations: Assad wants to stay in power. America wants the war to avoid any more religious extremism from forming from any new Syrian state. Russia wants to keep their puppet. Turkey wants to stop the kurds from threatening their national project. ISIS and Al Nusrah wants to establish a shariah state of different levels of religious extremism. Any moderate rebels that are left wants Assad gone and a new state consisting of ???. The Kurds want an independent nation state or something similar to it. Everybody wants the war to end, their enemies to suffer and a new state with their ideology in place.

All these different wants and needs swirl around and inform the decisions on the ground. Each party is acting in their own self interest.


I mean we can blame the western world in general for not having some "anti-dictator shithead" squad ready to deploy as soon as Assad started massacring his own people, we could blame the Kurds for not joining arms with the FSA to topple Assad. Or we could blame turkey for being dicks to the Kurds , or ISIS for existing, or Assad for being a dictator, or we could blame the rebels for becoming more extremist. What's the point though? The situation is what it is, countries and other actors will keep acting in their geopolitical interests. Any real blame should saved for when sides we do support act detrimentally to their own goals.

Duckbag posted:

Yeah, this is part of why I have a lot of trouble parsing the SDF's actual motives. They're trying to walk a very narrow line between the US and Russia that essentially only allows them to fight ISIS and presumably Nusra. They can't just do their own thing because they've got the Turks breathing down their necks and, as we saw last week, that patronage is pretty important to their security and stability. Something has to give as far as the US/Russia/Assad/Turkey relationship and I don't know how it will play out, but I do think it has made it hard to get any real read on what Northern Syria is about. Every message they put out has to be calibrated to not piss off any of the above or else gets taken back (as we saw with that "route to the sea" statement), so it's hard to see what their plans might be in a post-ISIS situation and easy for other people to project all sorts of devious or heroic motives onto them.

They want a Kurdish autonomous region, and it's hoping to appease any parties that can make that happen.

Presumably after the elimination ISIS the US and Russia can come to an agreement. But to broach the subject of culpability will be a real Pandora box. Any moves to usurp Assad will probably be met with a stonewall from Russia... we might be looking at a Ukraine situation, with semi official states run the regions semi officially. That of course leaves Turkey with an axe to grind, but the FSA is the real big question mark. They are the ones really lacking any sort of powerful backer. It could be that Turkey put it on themselves to fund that region in opposition to Kurdish expansion, but that might mean putting themselves in between the US and Russia. I really have no idea, the FSA remnants are in a real tough situation.

GaussianCopula
Jun 5, 2011
Jews fleeing the Holocaust are not in any way comparable to North Africans, who don't flee genocide but want to enjoy the social welfare systems of Northern Europe.
It's also important to keep in mind that Trump really, really, really badly needs IS to get beaten and get beaten fast for internal politics, which means whoever gets him that (probably the Kurds) will get their dicks sucked long and hard by the leader of the free world.

Ardennes
May 12, 2002

White Rock posted:

Presumably after the elimination ISIS the US and Russia can come to an agreement. But to broach the subject of culpability will be a real Pandora box. Any moves to usurp Assad will probably be met with a stonewall from Russia... we might be looking at a Ukraine situation, with semi official states run the regions semi officially. That of course leaves Turkey with an axe to grind, but the FSA is the real big question mark. They are the ones really lacking any sort of powerful backer. It could be that Turkey put it on themselves to fund that region in opposition to Kurdish expansion, but that might mean putting themselves in between the US and Russia. I really have no idea, the FSA remnants are in a real tough situation.

The FSA really hasn't been a independent force for a while, and even was it was more or less a common banner for groups that didn't really fit into other alliances. Also, it didn't have much of a central leadership either especially since most of its force was made up of smaller local militias that were almost completely autonomous.

During the battle of Kobani you had FSA units working with the Kurds, while other units were engaged in combat with them elsewhere.

Granted, it is a real question what the non-ISIS Islamist factions want at this point or if they are even willing to work together.

(Also, Trump has no loyalty to anyone but himself (and that includes his family), and the Kurds know this. It is probably why they are in touch with Russia.)

However, your basic point that almost all the factions have directly competing goals is correct. There is a reason everyone is at each others' throats.

Randarkman
Jul 18, 2011

Rust Martialis posted:

Al-Saqr is really just roleplaying the plucky defenders of Aleppo who even in their most desperate moments kept alive their dedication to hating Kurds by repeatedly attacking the evil, disgusting YPG in Sheikh Maqsood even at the ultimate cost of their freedom from​ Assad. True heroes all.

Seriously your devoted chauvinism, racism and bigotry against Kurds and Shia leads you to the most grotesque statements.

Your cheap crack about a fat white guy making comments on a situation he'll never face ring hollow for someone who is basically exactly that in turn, unless you're about to move to Idlib and sign up, you're in the same boat, you hypocrite.

You know it really goes to show how Arabs can't be trusted to control their own destinies. Even when backed into the corner by a ruthless dictator they can't help but behave like fanatic savages. Really they are quite childlike and must never get the benefit of the doubt about their motives as when expressed and not moderated by a strong ruler they can't be trusted to do anything but indulge in their religious fundamentalism and the destruction of everyone different.

Volkerball
Oct 15, 2009

by FactsAreUseless

White Rock posted:

I don't know what your saying. The US did not want to overpower Assad, because at that point it would potentially let ISIS win large swaths of the country and turn entire Syria into a extremist nightmare. They do not want to fund any extremist organisation that may end up doing some terror or sharia poo poo. Nor does it want to push Putin towards some kind of brinkmanship WW3 bullshit. Or before that, they didn't want a Iraq War V2, electric boogaloo. They have nothing to gain from any of that.

The whole situation follows the geopolitical logic of the nations: Assad wants to stay in power. America wants the war to avoid any more religious extremism from forming from any new Syrian state. Russia wants to keep their puppet. Turkey wants to stop the kurds from threatening their national project. ISIS and Al Nusrah wants to establish a shariah state of different levels of religious extremism. Any moderate rebels that are left wants Assad gone and a new state consisting of ???. The Kurds want an independent nation state or something similar to it. Everybody wants the war to end, their enemies to suffer and a new state with their ideology in place.

All these different wants and needs swirl around and inform the decisions on the ground. Each party is acting in their own self interest.


I mean we can blame the western world in general for not having some "anti-dictator shithead" squad ready to deploy as soon as Assad started massacring his own people, we could blame the Kurds for not joining arms with the FSA to topple Assad. Or we could blame turkey for being dicks to the Kurds , or ISIS for existing, or Assad for being a dictator, or we could blame the rebels for becoming more extremist. What's the point though? The situation is what it is, countries and other actors will keep acting in their geopolitical interests. Any real blame should saved for when sides we do support act detrimentally to their own goals.

You can certainly blame the US and the West for having the same narrow-minded security centric approach to diminishing the role of jihadist ideology in the middle east that they had in Iraq. They completely dismissed what a lot of analysts were saying from the get go, which was that Assad was at the center of this. That there was a clear link between his tyranny (and the tyranny of Maliki for that matter), and terrorism. This war was not going to end quickly if he remained in power, and the longer it went on, the more it would draw in the region and international actors, the more devastating the humanitarian toll would be, and the greater the radicalizing effect would be on the Syrian people. All of that was very clear, and we've seen it play out before. But instead of recognizing that, we adopted a different strategy that allowed all these problems to stagnate, which was the worst possible thing that could've happened, and it led to what will likely have been the strongest, most vibrant jihadist organization the world has ever seen. Really served our interests with that smooth move.

Sure, countries will act in what they perceive to be their best interest, but that doesn't mean they're always going to make decisions that benefit their national interests. So there's plenty there that people can affect, by demanding strategies that work. Ultimately, this sort of thing boils down to the opinions of leaders, not some predetermined course necessitated by an aim to serve the national interest. So people need to be engaged and hold them accountable.

That said, Syria is transitioning into more of a case study rather than a fluid problem, unfortunately. In all likelihood, almost no refugees will ever return to Syria. It's unlikely to return to its former standard of living anytime soon. And we will continue to see jihadists finding room to grow there due to Assad's tyranny. And sooner or later, Syria will be in massive internal conflict again. It's a horrible situation, and who caused it, the mistakes and missteps made, and who was part of the problem rather than the solution, are important to analyze and understand so we can prevent something like this from happening again.

Volkerball fucked around with this message at 13:49 on May 16, 2017

Duckbox
Sep 7, 2007

White Rock posted:

They want a Kurdish autonomous region, and it's hoping to appease any parties that can make that happen.

Presumably after the elimination ISIS the US and Russia can come to an agreement. But to broach the subject of culpability will be a real Pandora box. Any moves to usurp Assad will probably be met with a stonewall from Russia... we might be looking at a Ukraine situation, with semi official states run the regions semi officially. That of course leaves Turkey with an axe to grind, but the FSA is the real big question mark. They are the ones really lacking any sort of powerful backer. It could be that Turkey put it on themselves to fund that region in opposition to Kurdish expansion, but that might mean putting themselves in between the US and Russia. I really have no idea, the FSA remnants are in a real tough situation.

I think it was logical five years ago to assume that Rojava was angling to become a sort of KRG in Syria, but now I'm not so sure. Kurdish autonomy is very much still on their agenda, but a few key things have changed since then. The first is that the KDP -- a party defined by center-left militant nationalism -- has been pretty much kicked out of the government and the dominant faction has a very different political philosophy. Now, we can argue up and down over whether the "multiculuralism" line is just propaganda, but the PKK's origins are in Marxist-Leninism, which preached global revolution and have evolved under the influence of Bookchin's "Democratic Confederalism" model. Confederalism can best be described as radical pluralism and the TEV-DEM clique has insisted over and over that it's the model they see as the future of Syria and one they've implemented across their territory. There is no place for the Baathists in such a model, of course, even though "the regime" is very much still present for now.

The next thing that seems to have changed things was a combination of the siege of Kobani, the alliance with the US, and the establishment of the SDF. The SDF serves a couple obvious roles: it provides a fig leaf to show that this isn't just Kurds fighting Arabs and it provides the US, Russia, and the rest of the "anti-ISIS coalition" with a force that they can rely upon to serve as their proxy for this particular mission and not take their weapons and use them against someone else. What's going to be an interesting question going forward, however, is whether the SDF is just another temporary alliance with the YPG as the main force, or if it will evolve into a military that truly represents the whole territory of The State Formerly Known As Rojava. The role of the US and others here is not to be underestimated. There's a long (and of course spotty) history of US forces organizing and embedding with Arab and Kurdish fighting forces and I don't think they're going to just withdraw if ISIS falls apart tomorrow.

To me, things like taking "Rojava" out of the name, the constitution of the SDF, and the constant trumpeting of multiculturalism in Northern Syria suggest that the US and allies are grooming Northern Syria to become a democratic counterpoint (and perhaps eventual challenger) to the Assad regime. Western state-building projects in the Middle East have been spotty at best and whether local elements are entirely on-board with this plan is, as always, ambiguous but I really don't think this is just about the Kurds defending Kurdistan anymore.

Fiction
Apr 28, 2011
It was definitely Assad causing the Syrian revolution to become taken over by Islamists and definitely not the US's best ally in the region which has made its mission to spread Wahhabism through funding and arming child-beheading militias. Oh and the US also arming those people definitely had nothing to do with it.

Randarkman
Jul 18, 2011

I'm going to posit that Islamists were very much a part of the revolution from the start. And that being an Islamist is not synonymous with being a child beheading Wahhabi terrorist.

Volkerball
Oct 15, 2009

by FactsAreUseless

Fiction posted:

It was definitely Assad causing the Syrian revolution

Gonna go ahead and stop you there

OctaMurk
Jun 21, 2013
I think it's pretty hosed up that people continue to accuse Al Saqr of being some kind of Arab Supremacist kurd hater. He hasn't blasted the YPG on the basis of being Kurds, but on the basis of being an bunch of ethnonationalists masquerading as egalitarian socialists.

The fact is that the YPG could have made a deal with Turkey to help back the FSA, which would have resulted in rolling back both Assad and ISIS. A deal Turkey offered and the YPG refused, a deal which would have reduced the influence of Nusra-likes in the FSA and which would have stabilized the solution process. But the YPG are a lot more interested in implementing Kurdish Socialism and revanchism against Turkey.

Right now the YPG are the only military force that we can realistically back to finish ISIS in Syria, but they are no angels.

Panzeh
Nov 27, 2006

"..The high ground"

OctaMurk posted:

I think it's pretty hosed up that people continue to accuse Al Saqr of being some kind of Arab Supremacist kurd hater. He hasn't blasted the YPG on the basis of being Kurds, but on the basis of being an bunch of ethnonationalists masquerading as egalitarian socialists.

The fact is that the YPG could have made a deal with Turkey to help back the FSA, which would have resulted in rolling back both Assad and ISIS. A deal Turkey offered and the YPG refused, a deal which would have reduced the influence of Nusra-likes in the FSA and which would have stabilized the solution process. But the YPG are a lot more interested in implementing Kurdish Socialism and revanchism against Turkey.

Right now the YPG are the only military force that we can realistically back to finish ISIS in Syria, but they are no angels.

Why would a new government do anything but turn on the YPG with Turkish backing?

Human Grand Prix
Jan 24, 2013

by FactsAreUseless

Randarkman posted:

I'm going to posit that Islamists were very much a part of the revolution from the start. And that being an Islamist is not synonymous with being a child beheading Wahhabi terrorist.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9WOdnR-Nfs

Human Grand Prix
Jan 24, 2013

by FactsAreUseless

OctaMurk posted:



The fact is that the YPG could have made a deal with Turkey to help back the FSA, which would have resulted in rolling back both Assad and ISIS. A deal Turkey offered and the YPG refused, a deal which would have reduced the influence of Nusra-likes in the FSA and which would have stabilized the solution process. But the YPG are a lot more interested in implementing Kurdish Socialism and revanchism against Turkey.



In what reality are you dust-smoking idiots living in?

OctaMurk
Jun 21, 2013

Panzeh posted:

Why would a new government do anything but turn on the YPG with Turkish backing?

A good question, but before Kobane, the solution process was going alright and the HDP was not heavily persecuted. TEVDEM cantons could have had a similar relationship to Turkey as the KRG.

Now North Syria's fate is in the hands of the USA instead--a well-meaning country that is far away and with a notoriously short attention-span. There is far from any guarantee that the Syria's Arab Socialist government will allow their project to survive any longer than necessary.

It's too early to tell whether the YPG played their cards right or not, but I think its easy to understand where Al-Saqr is coming from as much as I like the idea of a libertarian socialist society.

Human Grand Prix posted:

In what reality are you dust-smoking idiots living in?

The one where Erdogan has been the single best Turkish president for Kurdish right's in the nation's history, where the Turks allowed FSA and Peshmerga reinforcements to enter the city, treated wounded YPG soldiers in their hospitals just across the border from Kobane, and allowed use of Incirlik airbase to support the bombing campaign supporting the YPG. A reconciliation between the YPG and Turkey was not out of the picture, and even now it's still possible.

OctaMurk fucked around with this message at 14:45 on May 16, 2017

Fiction
Apr 28, 2011

OctaMurk posted:

The one where Erdogan has been the single best Turkish president for Kurdish right's in the nation's history,

That's really not saying a lot given the circumstances.

Volkerball
Oct 15, 2009

by FactsAreUseless

Fiction posted:

That's really not saying a lot given the circumstances.

He did rely fairly heavily on the Kurdish vote for a while, and Turkish relations with the KRG are fine.

Fiction
Apr 28, 2011

Volkerball posted:

He did rely fairly heavily on the Kurdish vote for a while, and Turkish relations with the KRG are fine.

Again, not saying a lot considering how the KRG are seen by a lot of Kurds in Syria. This is a pretty asinine line of argument when you're saying that the Kurds should have allied with the regional power that jailed their politicians and invaded Syria to prevent the linking of the cantons. Assad is a brutal dictator but he hasn't been outwardly hostile to the Kurds to the degree Turkey has.

Cat Mattress
Jul 14, 2012

by Cyrano4747

OctaMurk posted:

The fact is that the YPG could have made a deal with Turkey
No.

At least not after the HDP got over 10% of the votes in Turkish legislative elections, causing Erdogan to lose his poo poo and see Kurds as traitors deserving only death. After that, Turkey went fully back on the war against the terrorist PKK and any sort of peaceful deal between them became absolutely impossible. And post-coup Erdogan is a crazy paranoid dictator so just forget it.

Volkerball
Oct 15, 2009

by FactsAreUseless

Fiction posted:

Again, not saying a lot considering how the KRG are seen by a lot of Kurds in Syria. This is a pretty asinine line of argument when you're saying that the Kurds should have allied with the regional power that jailed their politicians and invaded Syria to prevent the linking of the cantons. Assad is a brutal dictator but he hasn't been outwardly hostile to the Kurds to the degree Turkey has.

The negotiations between the PKK and Turkey broke down before all that. I'm not saying they should've made nice with Turkey necessarily, but I think it's pretty clear that it was an option.

Shageletic
Jul 25, 2007

The MidEast, if you will, in a nutshell

Lamebot posted:

funny picture


Duckbag posted:

Man, this is why I used to just lurk.

Please don't. You've posted some enlightening stuff. Ignore Al-Saqr's outbursts. He does that alot.

Shageletic fucked around with this message at 17:01 on May 16, 2017

Count Roland
Oct 6, 2013

Crowsbeak posted:

Considering how much its taken as a given that the USA needs to send troops to kill some arabs in the Washington Establishment, he is right.

This actually pisses me off.

I'm glad Obama didn't bomb Syria. But gloating about it?

He didn't choose not to bomb because of moral reasons. Or because he was worried about the long term consequences.

He didn't because the UK dropped its support at the last minute. He didn't want to go it without a prominent ally, so he punted it weakly to congress, knowing full well they wouldn't agree with him that the sky was blue. If the UK had gone along, he would have launched those strikes.

He did what I wanted, but he did so by backing out of his plan in a cowardly manner. That is not something to be proud of.

Dodoman
Feb 26, 2009



A moment of laxity
A lifetime of regret
Lipstick Apathy
Interrupting the weekly slapfight for something potentially interesting


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOGTJ0zma1E

Dr Kool-AIDS
Mar 26, 2004

Dodoman posted:

Interrupting the weekly slapfight for something potentially interesting


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOGTJ0zma1E



The opening remarks were incoherent even for Trump. Someone's not getting enough sleep.

khwarezm
Oct 26, 2010

Deal with it.

Baloogan posted:

which anime villain is assad most like?

Commander Red.

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Uncle Kitchener
Nov 18, 2009

BALLSBALLSBALLSBALLS
BALLSBALLSBALLSBALLS
BALLSBALLSBALLSBALLS
BALLSBALLSBALLSBALLS

Baloogan posted:

which anime villain is assad most like?

[Insert Gundam Villain Here]

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