WTF is going on?

[Dric902]

For days he hammered his stupid “end endless wars” talking point on Twitter to defend his decision to retreat from northern Syria before a Turkish onslaught against the Kurds. All I’m doing is keeping a campaign promise, he insisted. I told you on day one that I was going to get American troops out of harm’s way in the Middle East

(did you catch the nuanced changes, “Northern Syria” “out of harms way”)

There were problems with that argument. For starters, he wasn’t actually withdrawing any troops from Syria. He was moving troops stationed in the north to other parts of the country so that they weren’t in Turkey’s way. No one was coming home. Beyond that, there’s the small matter that he not only continues to support the interminable Saudi war on Yemen, he’s actually doing so over congressional objections. Twice now Congress has passed bills demanding that he end American assistance to the Saudis. Trump has vetoed those bills. Congress is making more of an effort to end U.S. involvement in one particular endless war in the Middle East than Trump is.

But for cripes sake, why would he make his stance on Turkey and the Kurds a matter of “ending endless wars” if he knew he was about to deploy more American troops to the region, specifically 1,800 more to Saudi Arabia? He didn’t have to. 

“Secretary Esper informed Saudi Crown Prince and Minister of Defense Muhammad bin Salman this morning of the additional troop deployment to assure and enhance the defense of Saudi Arabia,” Chief Pentagon spokesman Jonathon Hoffman said in a statement Friday. “Taken together with other deployments, this constitutes an additional 3,000 forces that have been extended or authorized within the last month.”

The US has increased the deployment of forces in the region by 14,000 since May…

When the Pentagon announced additional deployments after the Saudi attack, Defense Secretary Mark Esper told reporters that the US troops would be “defensive in nature and primarily focused on air and missile defense.”

What heroic effort did our Saudi friends make at Normandy, apart from continuing business as usual in selling us oil, to justify 1,800 more American troops being sent there now?

Precisely right about the “Normandy Doctrine.” We could justify backstabbing virtually any ally on grounds that “they didn’t help us during [insert previous conflict here].” Even the Brits could be theoretically betrayed for refusing to lend a hand in Vietnam. Remember, in his eagerness to exploit grievances, the president once reportedly reminded Justin Trudeau during a conversation about U.S. tariffs on Canada that troops from his country once burned down the White House. That’s Trump to the core: He’s never the aggressor, never in the wrong. There’s always some slight or supposed malfeasance by his critic, like the Kurds somehow not showing up for D-Day, to justify his own bad policy in terms of just desserts.

The UN Security Council held a meeting yesterday on Turkey’s assault on the Kurds, by the way. Six members joined together to condemn it. The United States wasn’t one of them.

Newsweek has learned through both an Iraqi Kurdish intelligence official and senior Pentagon official that Special Forces operating on Mashtenour hill in the majority-Kurdish city of Kobani fell under artillery fire from Turkish forces conducting their so-called “Operation Peace Spring” against Kurdish fighters backed by the U.S. but considered terrorist organizations by Turkey.

The senior Pentagon official said that Turkish forces should be aware of U.S. positions “down to the grid.” The official could not specify the exact number of personnel present, but indicated they were “small numbers below company level,” so somewhere between 15 and 100 troops.

https://hotair.com/archives/allahpundit/2019/10/11/end-endless-wars-trump-send-1800-u-s-troops-saudi-arabia-abandoning-kurds/

JUST IN from @MarthaRaddatz: ISIS has breached several prisons in northern Syria. Official says Turkey is deliberately targeting American bases so we will depart.

Turkish forces have fired on a declared U.S. military outpost in northern Syria. Turkey knows all of our locations down to the precise grid coordinate as confirmed by SECDEF and CJCS only two hours ago. This was not a mistake.

 

this is not a “wag the dog” like Clinton in Kosovo to change the headlines. Instead of looking at foolish phone calls with Ukraine, we need to start asking about the “deal” with Turkey. Erdogan has been in the news lately justifying the purchase and relation with Russia rather than NATO countries.

something weird is going on

 

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