Thoughts on how Trump "gets out" of Syria

[elucidator]

And if these stunted but modest efforts are the best Projammer can offer? We of the Mother’s March Against Cognitive Dissonance hold such victims to be innocent by reason of inanity, they cannot help it.

There, there, Projammer. Here, have a hanky! It’s Colibri’s, but he won’t mind. A bit crusty, but sure that’s nasal. Pretty sure. No, you can keep it.

[Projammer]

@elucidator

This needs to be said. The Board practice of dragging unwilling participants into a discussion must stop! It is clear that friend Projammer does not want to be coerced into unwilling involvement, yet he is compelled by forces outside of his control. This is unfair, unjust, and must cease!

If Projammer has nothing to say worth the effort of typing, he/she should not be compelled to reveal that fact, yet again! No fair!

Nah. It’s all good. Sunny Daze pointed out that I had missed his thread over in another thread so I’m happy to resolve that for him. I don’t want to make anyone feel that they aren’t appreciated for their efforts.

[Bruce_Wayne]

@Colibri

Man, you’re an idiot.

@Colibri

This is lame even for threadshitting.

I realize this is the pit but you are to culture of this place as Trump is to American political discourse.

I do appreciate the thoughtfulness of the OP but the fact remains Okrahoma is absolutely correct. Trump doesn’t have to do a thing concerning Syria. He can let the place burn down and pay lip service to a diplomatic solution which is not really all that different than what’s been happening since the start of the civil war. The only difference is that Trump will order missile strikes every time Assad uses chemical weapons which I consider a small step up from Obamas policy. There aren’t 50k plus U.S. troops to pull out of a quagmire with dignity, no face to save, no promises made.

[elucidator]

Yet.

[Sunny_Daze]

Well, first, thank you for my trophy. I will treasure it.

Second, the notion that Trump doesn’t have to do anything about Syria flies in the face of the fact that we are doing something about Syria. We are in Syria - literally, boots on the ground. We blow things up there every day. We are deeply involved in their refugee situation, whether we want to be or not, just be virtue of what we do or don’t do, or by virtue of what we encourage our allies to do or not do.

We are also under tremendous international pressure to do something about Syria. Even here domestically, despite all of the America First talk you hear, Trump’s approval ratings finally went up when he did something about Syria.

Even if all we did was pack up our toys and went home, that would still be doing something about Syria. Saying we don’t “have” do anything ignores a lot of things that we are already doing. Trump can continue to vacillate, but the Syrian situation isn’t going away. The entire Middle East situation isn’t going away. For better or worse, we are right in the thick of it.

[DinoR]

@Bruce_Wayne

There aren’t 50k plus U.S. troops to pull out of a quagmire with dignity, no face to save, no promises made.

The US has troops in Syria, and here’s what they’re doing
Not 50k, but we’ve been boots on the ground since October 2015.

The troop cap is currently 503 covering the special operations advisor mission but “temporary” forces for mission requirements are not included under that. That currently includes around 400 US Marines to provide artillery support in of the Raqqa offensive. I haven’t seen a number for the Rangers sent to stare down Turkey and their proxies to prevent attacks on our proxies. We are likely in the 1000 troop range at his point. Again it’s not 50k. Most of the US seems to be blissfully ignorant of what the US military has been doing on the ground there. That makes it easy to ignore any possible face saving issues…

unless Americans wake up and notice yesterdays story about “U.S. Raid Killed a ‘Close Associate’ of Islamic State Leader, Military Says”

Probably won’t change anything. Almost nobody’s paid attention to all the other media coverage about the ground operation against IS inside Syria. One of these days the news is going to stick and twitter will go crazy.

[Sunny_Daze]

Yeah, not much coverage. It’s annoying and no doubt contributes to this perception that “nothing” is happening there. I hear about 1000 troops as well, FWIW.

[septimus]

@DinoR

Not the EU but there’s a big overlap between the EU and NATO. Following last summer’s meeting of the NATO Russian Council the Secretary General’s comments included:
It’s been a pretty consistent position even through this Spring’s NATO summit. Turning that on it’s head would be a big challenge. Poland, especially, is likely to go ape-shit over recognizing the Crimean annexation. It’s still common to think of Poland as relatively weak European power. They aren’t.

Poland, at full mobilization (all their trained and organized reserves called to duty), is the fourth largest military in NATO behind only the US, Turkey, and Greece. They are close to twice the size of a fully mobilized Germany. They are almost as big as the combined forces of a fully mobilized UK and France. They upgraded their old Soviet equipment for greater capability following the end of the Cold War. They’ve been replacing it with even more modern western built equipment such as the German Leopard 2 main battle tank. They have veteran leadership after conducting Brigade level deployments to Iraq and later Afghanistan. They’ve quietly become full partners in their own defense and an important part of the rest of Europe’s defense.

I don’t think there are conditions that could make Poland accept recognizing Crimea happily. I seriously doubt any of the other major European powers are willing to have to carry the extra load required if Poland comes to a separate accommodation with Russia. It’s one thing for the alliance to ignore the concerns of nations like Hungary or Romania. It’s a whole other thing to try and ignore Poland.

You seem to be arguing that a rational U.S. President, honoring old alliances, would not happily give up Crimea to the Exxon-Trump klepto-colleague Vladimir. Are you in the wrong thread?

[Bear_Nenno]

@Okrahoma

Trump doesn’t need to “get out” of anything. There was chemical weapon use. United States punished Syria for it. Unless there is repeated use of chemical weapons, that episode is finished (Spicer’s recent blurt-outs notwithstanding).

Are you ignorant to the fact that the United States has several hundred troops in Syria!? Should they stay forever? Or should they eventually “get out”?

[Nawth_Chucka]

@Bear_Nenno

Are you ignorant to the fact that the United States has several hundred troops in Syria!? Should they stay forever? Or should they eventually “get out”?

They should create a framework for getting contractors rich and their stockholders even more insanely wealthy w/o risking anything but the worthless lives of people they wouldn’t use for toilet paper. They should do this under the guise of Crusading for Jesus so those who hate killing but hate brown people more can enjoy themselves, too.