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Ikasuhito posted:I sort of wounder what the deal is with those last dozen guys who got turned into confetti. It looks like they were just milling around until they saw the truck turn the corner. "I'm telling you guys, its just another false alarm, don't run like those losers. Oh shi--"
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Jan 23, 2018 18:43
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If this is accurate, it almost seems like it's probably doing the YPG a favor since sending in more guys to get owned by Turkey probably wouldn't help anything. It'll be interesting to see what happens to Manbij though; Russia and the SAA were involved in blocking the TFSA last time they threatened to invade, but they're obviously not on great terms with the SDF these days. https://twitter.com/TRTWorldNow/status/955856623905525761
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Jan 23, 2018 20:00
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Sinteres posted:If this is accurate, it almost seems like it's probably doing the YPG a favor since sending in more guys to get owned by Turkey probably wouldn't help anything. It'll be interesting to see what happens to Manbij though; Russia and the SAA were involved in blocking the TFSA last time they threatened to invade, but they're obviously not on great terms with the SDF these days. syria.liveuamap.com currently has this to say "There are some unconfirmed rumors that Russian and Syrian troops have withdrawn from villages and fronts manned by them in west Manbij" If thats true its probably not a good sign. The Kurds may be looking at losing all land West of the Euphrates. I wonder if that happens will a lot of the Kurdish population of Afrin migrate to the 'main' Kurdish territory.
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Jan 23, 2018 20:03
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Blut posted:I wonder if that happens will a lot of the Kurdish population of Afrin migrate to the 'main' Kurdish territory. How much of that will be left is still an open question too. https://twitter.com/OliveBranchOp/status/955788354536296448
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Jan 23, 2018 20:23
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Sinteres posted:If this is accurate, it almost seems like it's probably doing the YPG a favor since sending in more guys to get owned by Turkey probably wouldn't help anything. It'll be interesting to see what happens to Manbij though; Russia and the SAA were involved in blocking the TFSA last time they threatened to invade, but they're obviously not on great terms with the SDF these days. Sinteres posted:How much of that will be left is still an open question too. Saladin Rising fucked around with this message at 20:37 on Jan 23, 2018 |
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Jan 23, 2018 20:27
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Saladin Rising posted:And the "Turks are the new ISIS" comparisons would write themselves. And despite inevitable censures, I doubt anything will happen in the short-term.
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Jan 23, 2018 20:38
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Saladin Rising posted:If this is legit then Erdogan has completely lost his loving mind and all semblance of reality. Oh yes, a Turkish attack on Kobani will go over just swimmingly with the rest of the world, it's not like Kobani is famous for being a 4 month slog between the YPG and ISIS, and ISIS's first defeat. And the "Turks are the new ISIS" comparisons would write themselves. I assume at least some of it is a bluff/maximalist position they don't expect to get all of, but it's probably worth taking Turkey seriously at this point even if we don't take them literally. Turkey's picked up some support in Europe too: https://twitter.com/TRTWorldNow/status/955862438192304135
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Jan 23, 2018 20:46
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Haha so much for any real censure then. This is interesting: quote:Iran Halts Private Lender Permits After Crisis Fueled Protests I really don't know how to interpret the economics and the high-stakes power politics. I've heard of shady banking in Iran - a major reason why I think dropping sanctions would force significant transparency in account and a very good thing - but this seems extreme and probably negatively affects the rich sort of folks who operate these banks. I suspect there will be some similarly extreme reforms to follow to keep lending accessible and keep capital circulating.
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Jan 23, 2018 20:55
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Saladin Rising posted:I'm trying to figure out if the statement means "hey if you guys go to Afrin you're on you're own, you can't call in airstrikes or expect artillery support", or if it's a veiled "don't go to Afrin or you risk losing your hold on the Kobani-Cizire area as well", or a third "you can go, but we may not work with you when (if) you come back". How many people will care though? How much of the general population knows what Kobani is or who the Kurds are? The media will cry about it, but I don't know how much of an impact it will have. I think it depends on how rough the Turks are in this. If they can keep civilian casualties to a minimum (or at least create that appearance) they could very well get away with this.
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Jan 23, 2018 22:11
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Sinteres posted:How much of that will be left is still an open question too. If the Turks think they’re giving up Kobani and Qamishli without a fight hoooooo boy
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Jan 23, 2018 22:12
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Turkey has offered a map like that sometime around Euphrates Shield so that is definitely their aim. Manbij will be illuminating for how this debacle is going to work out. ~~rumors~~ and all that but I saw some reports that Assad's forces pulled back from the front west of Manbij and even if that's bullshit it is very likely to happen. If the Turks roll over Afrin then it's a bad omen for how far they will try to take things. uh oh, ISIS *keeps borders open forever* uh oh, Kurds *invades Syria to destroy the decadent brown*
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Jan 23, 2018 22:27
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Saladin Rising posted:If this is legit then Erdogan has completely lost his loving mind and all semblance of reality. Oh yes, a Turkish attack on Kobani will go over just swimmingly with the rest of the world, it's not like Kobani is famous for being a 4 month slog between the YPG and ISIS, and ISIS's first defeat. And the "Turks are the new ISIS" comparisons would write themselves. Given it took years of bloodshed in the Balkans, before the first reports of poo poo like Srebrenica and all the ethnic rape camps came out that led to international response, this could very well be a long slog and Erdogan could easily be going for the exact same thing as was done back then by Milosevic in the name of 'rational protection from terrorism'. poo poo, it might take longer because the west in this case is far more interested in appeasing a straight up openly genocidal dictator that happens to be a part of NATO in a vain attempt to hope he doesn't go over to the Russian side (something they've already lost, considering the EU talks are not gonna go anywhere which is Turkey's main interest from the west). As to how it'll turn out tho, it depends. The Kurds very likely have expected this and to be thrown under the bus by the international community, so it won't be like they won't be prepared for it, and all those warnings coming from abroad mean little when the enemy promises to just take away everything you bled and died for to defend from the genocidal death cult they tacitly supported before (and still do with this move). I wouldn't be surprised if the rest of the SDF goes back at america: "Okay, we won't move our forces to Afrin. We'll instead take them to the middle and try to link the cantons while these idiots wear themselves out on our fortified region while ISIS takes back its poo poo in the east and you guys look like fools, how's that?" Tho I'm not sure if they have the manpower for that without air support and unless they're willing to use the kind of tactics like SVBIEDs and poo poo. I dunno, we'll see. But I am pretty sure this poo poo will not be over within the space of a year and quite possibly not even 5 years. CrazyLoon fucked around with this message at 22:53 on Jan 23, 2018 |
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Jan 23, 2018 22:40
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Saladin Rising posted:I'm trying to figure out if the statement means "hey if you guys go to Afrin you're on you're own, you can't call in airstrikes or expect artillery support", or if it's a veiled "don't go to Afrin or you risk losing your hold on the Kobani-Cizire area as well", or a third "you can go, but we may not work with you when (if) you come back". Actually, the world won't give a poo poo. There will be "concerned world leaders urging restraint" and thats about it. Turkey is more important than an anarchist militia with ties to the PKK.
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Jan 23, 2018 22:51
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OctaMurk posted:Actually, the world won't give a poo poo. There will be "concerned world leaders urging restraint" and thats about it. Turkey is more important than an anarchist militia with ties to the PKK.
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Jan 23, 2018 23:37
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New Butt Order posted:The world won't stand for this. Just like how the Republican Party is gonna collapse any day now, especially after Obama won in 2012. The revolution is just around the corner and everybody is gonna live their lives like you want them to. I don't know, I bet Erdogan's worried that Samantha Power might write a mean book about how ethnic cleansing is bad now that she's not working for the government anymore.
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Jan 23, 2018 23:46
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suddenly a lot of interventionists in here
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Jan 24, 2018 00:01
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catfry posted:suddenly a lot of interventionists in here I don't think anyone's saying the US should bomb Turkey's forces in Afrin or anything. We've literally already intervened elsewhere though, and since our troops are already with the SDF in the eastern part of the country, and are being used to ensure that Assad won't capture that territory, going ahead and letting Turkey do it because we're buds would be pretty hosed up (which isn't to say it wouldn't be understandable). Maybe we won't, and panicked predictions that we sold out the YPG in Manbij have obviously been wrong in the past, but we'll just have to wait and see what happens.
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Jan 24, 2018 00:07
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Do you guys think Erdogan waited until IS was 95% defeated because Trump asked him directly, because he assumed the US wouldn’t care enough to interfere at this point without direct communication, or just because it took a long time to prepare for the attack? I’m betting there was direct coordination, if not with Trump than with Tillerson or Kelly or someone else
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Jan 24, 2018 00:07
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catfry posted:suddenly a lot of interventionists in here yeah, funny how now that it's not filthy Arabs who made the mistake of having all of their leftists and socialists murdered en masse then having islamists in their ranks because everybody else literally died given the death machine coming after them and being murdered by the thousands and gassed, suddenly the empathy meter turns on for some people here once it's an ethnicity they dont find fundamentally abhorrent. how surprising. Al-Saqr fucked around with this message at 00:11 on Jan 24, 2018 |
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Jan 24, 2018 00:07
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Squalid posted:Do you guys think Erdogan waited until IS was 95% defeated because Trump asked him directly, because he assumed the US wouldn’t care enough to interfere at this point without direct communication, or just because it took a long time to prepare for the attack? I’m betting there was direct coordination, if not with Trump than with Tillerson or Kelly or someone else Attacking our proxy forces as they were engaged in regular combat with ISIS would have been a bit too on the nose even for Erdogan. Assurances were made to him about what would happen after ISIS was defeated though, and the US lied every time. He has reason to be upset, especially after Tillerson walked out and made it clear that we saw what we were doing with the SDF east of the Euphrates as a permanent commitment not tied to ISIS anymore. I don't really have a firm position on what exactly we owe the YPG, but neither did Obama, and neither it seems did Trump. This is the kind of poo poo we should have had some idea what our position would be before we worked with them, but the US has never at any point had a strategy in Syria that looked past tomorrow. It's not as catastrophic as the failure to plan for the occupation before we invaded Iraq, but it's almost as short sighted and stupid, especially since (for the US) it was a slow moving crisis that gave us plenty of time to figure out what the hell we were doing. The post-Cold War hyperpower bullshit made us stupid and incapable of thinking strategically. Dr Kool-AIDS fucked around with this message at 00:18 on Jan 24, 2018 |
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Jan 24, 2018 00:11
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I don’t think the SDF getting smashed by Turkey is necessarily a catastrophic failure of US policy. At least not from Trump’s perspective. He got what he wanted. Even if the current situation causes them to lose territory back to IS Assad is positioned to follow up and take that space himself. US and SDF relationship was always one of convenience. Turkey is working hard to make it inconvenient atm, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t productive while it lasted.
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Jan 24, 2018 00:29
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Squalid posted:I don’t think the SDF getting smashed by Turkey is necessarily a catastrophic failure of US policy. At least not from Trump’s perspective. He got what he wanted. Even if the current situation causes them to lose territory back to IS Assad is positioned to follow up and take that space himself. I don't think there's really a significant lose condition in Syria for the US either, as long as ISIS more or less stays dead, just because it wasn't ours to start with. Just making it up as we go the whole time is still stupid though.
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Jan 24, 2018 00:37
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Sinteres posted:I don't really have a firm position on what exactly we owe the YPG We owe the YPG absolutely nothing. The USA saved Kobane, connected two of the cantons, gave them tons of MRAPs and guns, trained thousands of their soldiers, gave them thousands of airstrikes, helped them capture half of Syria's oil, and brought them to zenith of their power. If we hadn't done this, then the YPG and its allies would have taken thousands more casualties than they did, and ISIS would control the border from Kobane to Qamishli. It is the YPG which owes us.
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Jan 24, 2018 00:58
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Al-Saqr posted:lol seeing those fascists running and making GBS threads their pants before being blown up is super satisfying. How many of those fascists do you think are former rebels, who fought against the regime for years before taking an amnesty on condition of finishing their term as a conscript? How many do you think are helpless Hazara refugees from Iran, desperate to keep their families from being deported back into villages where Taliban have sworn to send them all to the graveyard? How many spent thousands of dollars on a desperate trip to Europe trying to escape the war, only to be stranded for years in a squalid Greek refugee camp before giving up and going home? lol yes I'd sure love to see the look in their widows and mothers faces lmao
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Jan 24, 2018 01:04
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OctaMurk posted:We owe the YPG absolutely nothing. The USA saved Kobane, connected two of the cantons, gave them tons of MRAPs and guns, trained thousands of their soldiers, gave them thousands of airstrikes, helped them capture half of Syria's oil, and brought them to zenith of their power. If we hadn't done this, then the YPG and its allies would have taken thousands more casualties than they did, and ISIS would control the border from Kobane to Qamishli. It is the YPG which owes us. It was a mutually beneficial relationship. The YPG didn't have any particular need to go as far south as they did, and clearing out all the Arab territory and capturing the oil fields won't benefit them much if Turkey takes the areas they actually care about, unless getting ethnically cleansed and having all the Kurds moved to those parts of the country (which will still be vulnerable to attack by other neighbors if the US doesn't defend against them forever) is also part of the deal. It's unclear what exactly we offered them to go to Raqqa, but the YPG were dragging their feet for a while on it because of the concern that they needed to save their strength to fight Turkey. At some point if they don't believe in US guarantees they can always just defect to Assad anyway. Dr Kool-AIDS fucked around with this message at 01:13 on Jan 24, 2018 |
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Jan 24, 2018 01:09
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Squalid posted:How many of those fascists do you think are former rebels, who fought against the regime for years before taking an amnesty on condition of finishing their term as a conscript? How many do you think are helpless Hazara refugees from Iran, desperate to keep their families from being deported back into villages where Taliban have sworn to send them all to the graveyard? How many spent thousands of dollars on a desperate trip to Europe trying to escape the war, only to be stranded for years in a squalid Greek refugee camp before giving up and going home? lol yes I'd sure love to see the look in their widows and mothers faces lmao If you fight for assad you dont deserve any sympathy. Period. I dont give a poo poo, it's either freedom or fascism, they chose fascism, gassing children and mass killing and mass torture. they dont deserve any kindness or consideration. Nobody gives a rats rear end about the widows of Nazi's or the people who died fighting for them due to circumstance. I'm super glad that some of them get suffer and die the way the same way they gladly killed and gassed the Syrian opposition for defying their fascist regime. Sorry if you're willing to give them the kindness they would never show other human beings who committed the crime of not letting themselves remain under a torture fascism regime. Al-Saqr fucked around with this message at 01:33 on Jan 24, 2018 |
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Jan 24, 2018 01:23
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Sinteres posted:It was a mutually beneficial relationship. The YPG didn't have any particular need to go as far south as they did, and clearing out all the Arab territory and capturing the oil fields won't benefit them much if Turkey takes the areas they actually care about, unless getting ethnically cleansed and having all the Kurds moved to those parts of the country (which will still be vulnerable to attack by other neighbors if the US doesn't defend against them forever) is also part of the deal. It's unclear what exactly we offered them to go to Raqqa, but the YPG were dragging their feet for a while on it because of the concern that they needed to save their strength to fight Turkey. 
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Jan 24, 2018 01:34
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OctaMurk posted:We owe the YPG absolutely nothing. The USA saved Kobane, connected two of the cantons, gave them tons of MRAPs and guns, trained thousands of their soldiers, gave them thousands of airstrikes, helped them capture half of Syria's oil, and brought them to zenith of their power. If we hadn't done this, then the YPG and its allies would have taken thousands more casualties than they did, and ISIS would control the border from Kobane to Qamishli. It is the YPG which owes us. This is a overly cynical but I agree that the YPG/SDF/Rojova wouldn't have survived if the USA hadn't intervened just like the US would have absolutely no reliable partners in the region without the Kurds. They both saved themselves from ISIS in a very real sense. It was a fortuitous partnership *narrator voice* until it wasn't *theme music plays* Tillerson is completely undermined by the Trump administration when it comes to North Korea but I wonder if it's equally true with Syria where the military, ever holding Trump's ear, has a preference towards the SDF. If Erdogan forces the choice between Turkey and the Kurds does he carry enough weight to end the American relationship with the SDF?
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Jan 24, 2018 01:37
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Saladin Rising posted:Turns out they were 100% right about that! Conversely the US backed them with their push to Manbij and gave them a real shot at connecting the cantons. Raqqa itself was a push shoved onto the YPG by the United States and, perhaps, so too was the race for the oil fields but I'm not certain for how much of the ride the YPG wasn't fully engaged. And Raqqa could well still be worthwhile for the Kurds if it really did get them a real chip to play with the United States now. Afrin was strictly in the orbit of Assad, Turkey and Russia. While it shared the name of SDF it had minimal interaction with the United States and the US would not be the ones to intercede in this conflict.
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Jan 24, 2018 01:43
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Al-Saqr posted:If you fight for assad you dont deserve any sympathy. Period. I dont give a poo poo, it's either freedom or fascism, they chose fascism, gassing children and mass killing and mass torture. they dont deserve any kindness or consideration. Nobody gives a rats rear end about the widows of Nazi's or the people who died fighting for them due to circumstance. I'm super glad that some of them get suffer and die the way the same way they gladly killed and gassed the Syrian opposition for defying their fascist regime. Sorry if you're willing to give them the kindness they would never show other human beings who committed the crime of not letting themselves remain under a torture fascism regime. this. i am sure its more complicated. but the assads should die and their men should be hunted down and shot like the dogs that they are. these fucks were pefectly fine gassing kids to death, not to mention the death camps and the windspread torture. they know what they joined. instead its probaly gonna be war between the fascist Assad and grand sultan erdogan with tons of gassing and massacres on each side while trump sits in his office and fingers his rear end in a top hat to thoughts of his daughter. speaking of monsters. https://twitter.com/rickgladstone/status/955952120209035274 why the gently caress are we defending these assholes. i mean for gently caress sake, we are already a lovely imperial power, why not just go full Britannia and purge this poo poo from Afghanistan. or better yet, just loving leave and let them get slaughter by salafist assholes.
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Jan 24, 2018 01:44
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poo poo like this, if they actually act on it and aren't just using Afrin as a rallying cry to ready a bigger force to defend Rojava, makes me think the YPG aren't really geniuses. Even if Turkey just waited for them to show up in Afrin to bomb them, YPG convoys heading over there would be in for a loving turkey shoot (pun not intended). https://twitter.com/ZeinakhodrAljaz/status/955959626335506432
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Jan 24, 2018 01:47
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I don't understand why the YPG isn't giving the US military an ultimatum on this. Either rein in Turkey or get out of their territory.
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Jan 24, 2018 01:55
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Because they would be completely and utterly alone in a region where everyone hates them. Why would no protection be better than imperfect protection?
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Jan 24, 2018 01:59
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Al-Saqr posted:If you fight for assad you dont deserve any sympathy. Period. I dont give a poo poo, it's either freedom or fascism, they chose fascism, gassing children and mass killing and mass torture. they dont deserve any kindness or consideration. Nobody gives a rats rear end about the widows of Nazi's or the people who died fighting for them due to circumstance. I'm super glad that some of them get suffer and die the way the same way they gladly killed and gassed the Syrian opposition for defying their fascist regime. Sorry if you're willing to give them the kindness they would never show other human beings who committed the crime of not letting themselves remain under a torture fascism regime. Well it looks like if on nothing else at least you and they agree on the worth of sympathy. Though one wonders if this kind of cruel moral absolutism is why so many Syrians came to fear the rebels as much as the regime? Dapper_Swindler posted:why the gently caress are we defending these assholes. i mean for gently caress sake, we are already a lovely imperial power, why not just go full Britannia and purge this poo poo from Afghanistan. or better yet, just loving leave and let them get slaughter by salafist assholes. Taliban aren't really salafists. I haven't read past the headline but this supposedly explosive secret is so open US officers have been openly complaining about it to loving Vice journalists for years.
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Jan 24, 2018 02:07
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Squalid posted:
i know its been open, i just get tired of that poo poo. its loving depressing.
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Jan 24, 2018 02:10
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Squalid posted:Well it looks like if on nothing else at least you and they agree on the worth of sympathy. Though one wonders if this kind of cruel moral absolutism is why so many Syrians came to fear the rebels as much as the regime? Yeah I'm pretty absolutist when it comes to people becoming free from a genocidal fascism that's literally being propped up by other armies and air forces like Russia and Iran. sorry to disappoint you. it must be nice to not actually have to deal with evil people wherever you are, I hope you never one day actually have to risk your life to try reform your country, to have the ability to vote, to say what you want and not be tortured and gassed by a fascist dictator. sorry for being cruel and absolute about people who literally emptied half their country and dropped sarin gas on kids just so that assad and his psycho brother can rule the country incompetently and cruelly forever. Al-Saqr fucked around with this message at 02:19 on Jan 24, 2018 |
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Jan 24, 2018 02:13
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Al-Saqr posted:If you fight for assad you dont deserve any sympathy. Period. I dont give a poo poo, it's either freedom or fascism, they chose fascism, gassing children and mass killing and mass torture. they dont deserve any kindness or consideration. Nobody gives a rats rear end about the widows of Nazi's or the people who died fighting for them due to circumstance. I'm super glad that some of them get suffer and die the way the same way they gladly killed and gassed the Syrian opposition for defying their fascist regime. Sorry if you're willing to give them the kindness they would never show other human beings who committed the crime of not letting themselves remain under a torture fascism regime. I'm not here to say you're wrong for feeling the way you do or anything, but I've seen old American soldiers break down crying for the Nazi soldiers they had to kill because they had a moment of realization at some point along the way that the guys they were fighting were just scared boys like them, even if they were also fighting for a monstrous regime that these old Americans fully believe needed to be wiped from the planet. War is inherently dehumanizing, but soldiers are all humans, and I'm sure even a bunch of ISIS recruits have died in terror calling for their moms. I'm still glad when ISIS fighters get killed though, so I don't know if there's really a point here.
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Jan 24, 2018 02:18
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Sinteres posted:I'm still glad when ISIS fighters get killed though, so I don't know if there's really a point here. I dont give a poo poo about ISIS troops either. War is Dehumanizing but somebody started machine gunning peaceful protesters with tanks to get this blood machine rolling and we know exactly who did it.
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Jan 24, 2018 02:22
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Al-Saqr posted:I hope you never one day actually have to risk your life to try and vote, say what you want and be treated with humanity As do I sincerely hope for you.
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Jan 24, 2018 02:27
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Darkman Fanpage posted:I don't understand why the YPG isn't giving the US military an ultimatum on this. Either rein in Turkey or get out of their territory. US military guys are mostly there as human shields to deter Turkey from bombing them too much. It'd be like deciding to charge a machine gun nest shirtless because you're upset with the manufacturer of your body armor.
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Jan 24, 2018 02:29
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