No, I don’t think so. I admit though, I’m a bit fuzzy on the specifics of the claim “we convinced them to get rid of them”, and I’d be interested in reviewing a reference or two on that subject you felt like providing them. To offer a rough historical analog, we convinced Ukraine to give up their nuclear weapons after the collapse of the USSR, but I don’t think that puts us under an obligation to risk American lives to protect them from Russian aggression either.
We convinced the Kurds (these specific ones…as opposed to the ones in Iraq we got to help us there) to fight our battles in Syria, then, in an example of truly monumental stupidity we upended the status quo that had held everyone in check and basically enabled the Turks to go in and slaugher them. Oh, and let the Syrians and Russians start pushing north again. Oh, and probably have given ISIS their second, or perhaps third chance to take advantage of the chaos.
How this helps America is a mystery to me.
Without false equivalences, Republicans would have no equivalences.
So if you tell your neighbor that he should get rid of his guns because you will maintain the peace on his property, and he gets rid of his guns, you maintain that you are not obligated to maintain the peace on his property?
Because… Ukraine?
Oh yeah, that ABC News video sure does sow doubt that any of this is happening. :rolleyes:
In case it wasn’t clear, the request for a cite was with regard to “the Kurds have few defenses against a Turkish invasion, specifically because we convinced them to get rid of them”. Did we do something to convince the Kurds to reduce / eliminate defenses against a Turkish invasion (aside from withdrawing the American troops in the area that have been essentially acting as human shields)?
And it’s not that I disbelieve k9bfriender’s claim necessarily, I just haven’t heard any specifics about what defenses we may have convinced the Kurds to get rid of, and I’m curious what that refers to.
Do you mean deaths of brown people very far away?
Well, I’ll let him answer that one, but WE destroyed a bunch of our bases to keep them out of anyone’s hands. We also did convince the Kurds not to fortify from the north (i.e. from where the Turks would be coming from), saying we’d be there and the Turks wouldn’t attack while we were there. Which was true enough. If you need a cite for that I can probably dig it up, but it’s pretty widely known. This goes back to police that predates Trump in fact.
Yes. Under a deal agreed a couple of months ago - brokered by the U.S. - Kurdish military forces withdrew from the border area with Turkey and removed fortifications.
Oh, so y’all didn’t just fuck 'em, you fucked 'em right in the face then. Cool. Cool.
XT answered the Kurdish part but I feel I should mention that the Ukraine deal was entirely a non-interference agreement. Give up the nukes and we’ll leave you alone.
I almost still don’t believe the letter is real, even after reading about it on foxnews. The only thing this letter didn’t have was boxes at the bottom labeled “yes” “no” and “maybe”.
“call me, maybe?”
:smack:
Also, Trump trying to persuade authoritarian “strongman” leader Erdogan to change his mind by saying: “don’t be a tough guy.”
And then Trump deliberately leaking that letter so everyone knows that if Erdogan backs down and stops the invasion, he’s “not a tough guy”.
:smack:
Jim Sciutto, CNN:
Sarah Ferris, Politico:
How is it not our responsibility to discuss such matters with our allies before taking an action that literally got our allies killed?
Protecting American assets from attack by bombing them themselves first. LOL.
Sounds like Rawanda
Sounds like a Milo Minderbinder operation.
Trump’s sudden decision to greenlight the Turkish invasion and pull out U.S. troops from Syria was made without consultation with his advisers and the military, who were caught by surprise by it. The Erdogan letter is also clearly personally dictated by Trump, rather than being written in a formal way by policy-making staff as is the norm when writing a letter to another head of state. It’s a one-man foreign policy, and that man is both profoundly ignorant and unhinged.