Update on Syria: Americas Latest Perpetual War

Lindsay Graham is trying to fight this.

Wasn't his rationale for leaving that the US had beaten ISIS?!

Senator Graham is learning who leads when you dance with the devil.

If Congress ever finally does their job, then it won't be an issue.

Why waste money on military at border? Because Congresscrits are useless cowards and failed to secure border.

Why did Trump ban "bump stocks" using an (unconstitutional) ex ord? Because Congresscrits are useless cowards and failed to ban.

Why shouldn't our soldiers be in middle east? Because Congresscrits are useless cowards, and did not declare war.

Congress are perennial political cowards; so Graham finally stepping up means perhaps the country will finally have a long overdue discussion about whether America is to have our armed forces continue in Mid East - and if so, decide to what purpose, on what terms, and with what defined objectives.

U.S. envoy to coalition fighting ISIS resigns in protest of Trump’s Syria decision
https://wapo.st/2EJ0FTh

this is the point in the show where Columbo drops the hammer on Trump!

Though I agree with his decision I think the award he is looking for comes from Putin's crotch.

Melania's head is Trump's award? A lot less kinky/creepy than Ivanka's I guess!

Crabs?

Apparently, there was a bit of an internal trope with the writers of TNG that found itself turned up to 11 when DS9 took off. It was called "O'Brien must suffer." It always seemed like everyone's favorite Chief had to always be dealt the short end of the stick. If anything at all went wrong, it was O'Brien that paid the price. It even earned him a semi-annual episode every season where something horrible happened to Miles. Over the last half-century, that's been the Kurds in real life.

Russian crabs with little hammers to pound trump's tiny little testicles.

Seems there's a bit of a Mexican standoff going on in the Manbij area. Turkey has been amassing troops for awhile now in an anticipated conquest of north-eastern Syria to eradicate Kurdish ethnic nationalists. With the imminent US withdrawl the Kurds in desperation negotiated the invitation of Syrian government forces into the Manij region despite hilarious American objections to not being consulted. Gee if only the broken US government could be bothered to consult with regional allies before major policy decisions like complete withdrawl.

So now we have Turkish forces ready to invade. US forces still sitting in the city proper. And Syrian forces waiting west of the city to occupy the whole region.

No one should have expected our troops to be there forever, which is how long these conflicts will go on. Hence why we should never have involved ourselves in the first place.

Hopefully the U.S forces will be gone soon and then armchair generals like yourself can bitch about us leaving right after complaining about how horrible we were for being involved.

Far be it for me to speak on behalf of @Grandtheftcow but I think the point here is the parties involved can hardly be expected to consult with the US.

I personally agree there's no future in ongoing involvement after involvement in the middle east, but perhaps the withdrawal could have been negotiated as multilateral?

If the US had a more conventional President I'd argue we could have been facing perpetual ground/air or financial support for Kurdish and Islamic militant groups in Syria. Thankfully this administration doesn't care much for the old Bush doctrine.

But you clearly missed the point behind my snide remark. Trumps order to withdraw was made with no warning to local or western allies involved in the region. Drawing obvious complaints about a lack of coordination or consultation. Having the Americans turn around and shoot those same complaints towards the Kurds who are now forced to try and avoid Turkish attack and occupation is damn funny.

On the involvement in Syria I completely agree. In fact I had argued similar points up the thread.

You must be confusing me with another poster.

Graham seems to think he's convinced Trump to slow the withdrawal.

So is ISIS destroyed or not? They seem confused.

If they want to ensure ISIS will not become resurgent they pretty much have to stay there forever.

Or they can hand the job off to the Iranians, who probably hate ISIS more than anyone else.

Or let Assad take care of it himself. Of course he’s the murderous dictator whose airfields we supposedly destroyed. And he’s definitely not going to stop with ISIS... he’ll finish the Kurds off too.

Or maybe Turkey will do that?

What about the ISIS forces in Iraq? Are they defeated too? If not they will eventually try to expand into Syria again.

Yeah I’m confident we have the situation under control.

US soldiers killed in Syria.

Naturally, Trumpites will shout "fog of war!" whilst ignoring 1) Trump said the war is over and 2) they didn't buy that during the Benghazi bullshit.

"okay, we have some good news and some bad news about leaving Syria! The bad news first...."

Yes I would say that's a "heavy lift" if that orange aircraft on the map is to scale! Might need a very long, heavily reinforced runway for that bird!

Questions about if there was a poison gas attack in Syria have arisen.

A copy of the report mentioned in the article can be found here.

Tulsi Gabbard and Jimmy Dore have been talking about this for months. I think I posted something about it in the primary thread and basically was called a conspiracy theorist.

Which attack though? There’s been more than one claimed.

Funny, in "Bipartisan Support for War" thread you and I both raised the possibility that the Syria gas attack story may have been contrived as a pretext for war (that Assad gassed his own people), and a couple of Wf leftists disagreed with us.

But it was only quest and 14doc, and they couldn't be arsed to actually craft any reply to us. Just click a little 'i hate you' box. They didn't exactly call us 'conspiracy theorists', but OTOH you might have been remembering another example where you questioned the accuracy of the 'Assad gassed'; we just got hit with a drive-by 'fantasy - face palms' or disagree.

And in their defense, both 14doc and quest were deep in the Orange Man Bad hysteria at the time, it now seems such a long time ago, back before the veil had been lfited.

Snap. There have been questions about this from the very start.

Yes because I said Assad is a good guy.