They are running it back

Trump statements... notice a pattern?

I am guessing the better pool is how long before Trump tweets something to challenge/disavow or otherwise muddy the waters on this effort?

He announces firings/resignations on twitter as well as a drastic policy change like the Syrian pull out. He also flipped the whole shutdown and no one expected that.

Not because I don't believe that that trump wouldn't do this in in a heartbeat but because that fool was under the impression that we could just walk away from the situation without plans in place. It took 4 or 5 years to unwind Iraq AFTER they declared they would withdraw troops and that was WITH a plan.

I know the scale of withdrawal was larger there but it's still going to take time and I wager much larger than the 30 day/90 days or whatever stupid ass timeline trump/putin seem to want. These people don't seem to operate in reality at all. Reality requires a little more thoughts, patience and planning than most of the trump administration is capable of.


So, yea we aren't leaving there and no "wall" will ever be built either.

US withdrawal has always been conditioned on those two things. ie. Never mind the orange buffoon. There's no change in US policy.

That's been the pattern: Say something totally absurd, someone else walks it back and it never happens.

This time it was different. It's been several weeks. It seemed like Trump had received his orders, from Turkey, from Russia, and he wasn't going to budge. But then Isreal came into play and we started to see some wiggle room. And now this.

This fucking idiot. I'm sick of hearing him, Trump, and the whole circus of clowns. Morons.

Well maybe they were discussed but they weren't the top priorities.

Trump is in a pickle, Putin ordered him to pull our troops out, but Bibi and Saudi Arabia want us to stay.

The U.S. made a decision many years ago to support the Sunnis over the Shias. Someone explain to me why Iran is more of a threat to us than Saudi Arabia?

How many people believe that Assad gassed his own people? Don't get me wrong, Assad is a butcher, but so was Saddam and we made a mistake by invading Iraq. All of you Tulsi Gabbard naysayers be careful, she may well be the one who is telling the truth.

Why was the U.S. behind a civil war to oust Assad? Try looking up natural gas pipelines and you may get your answer.

some elements of the US likely did encourage a civil war when protests were responded to with severe repression. They likely saw it as an Arab Spring generated opportunity to pull a Russian ally to our side AND Assad used the sarin gas that he had to gas Syrians in areas where his opponents predominated.

In addition, our Gulf allies, including the wealthy Gulf states and Saudi Arabia were funding Sunni jihadis. Even as we fought ISIS, the colation had to put pressure on Turkey, a member of ISIS, from helping them. The point is that this is a dangerous mindfield where there are many bad guys.

Gabbard goes too far in seeing no evil in Assad. He clearly was the source of the 2014 sarin gas use and he also used barrel bombs, which would also violate war crime laws. There is a problem with trying to see sides as black or white. The Obama administration was very aware that, other than the Kurds, most of the people against Assad were willing to fight with Al Nusra, which was an AQ offshoot. From 2014 through 2016, they tried to get the non jihadis opponents to seperate from Al Nusra. The problem was that the Syrian rebels saw their exitenial threat as Assad more than ISIS -- Al Nusra was the strongest, most effective opponent to Assad. This limited the support the US could reasonably give them.

Keep talking Watoos, we need your voice here! Look behind the scenes to see why we are invested in destabilizing the Middle East.

Was there a treaty? This is just a lot of hooey. The inept Trumps are winging it again

Maybe if he says it very forcefully, very loud. Those qualities impress our beloved president.

Then he'll know that peace will break out.

Last edited Sun Jan 6, 2019, 12:19 PM - Edit history (1)

One thing that Trump, using his ability to create chaos did, was to speak of the pull out as if those 2000 soldiers were there because of the Syrian civil war. The US NEVER committed boots on the ground in Syria - though many people have credited Trump for removing them!

He also has said that ISIS is defeated -- because of him and his strong policies. His claim that "he won" is claimed even though the Trump administration did not change the coalition's plan other than allowing a less cautious - ie more "collateral damage" - in the take back of Ragga than in the take back of Mosul. That he claimed to not know who Brett McGurk, the lead US military person was makes it obvious that he probably did not even try to learn the details. Bolton, now, is saying that we will stay while there is a remnant of ISIS. This is a stronger condition than the coalition spoke of when they defined their goals.

The other condition is bizarre - he wants Turkey (!) to protect the Kurds from ... Turkey?? In fact, that could also be a return to the Obama administration using the fact that the Kurds, with our support controlled a significant part of Syria to give us the very small amount of leverage we had to influence the political/diplomatic solution to Syria. Since December 2016, when the Russians excluded the US in negotiations they set up with Iran and Turkey on Syria saying that when they came into office the Trump administration was welcome to join, the US has been absent in all of the conferences on Syria.

The only other leverage that the Kurds and others who fought Assad have is the UN resolution of December 2015 which still seems to be the one referenced by Russia and Turkey. link to UN announcement - https://www.un.org/press/en/2015/sc12171.doc.htm The 2017 Turkey/Russia/Iran talks in Astana cited that resolution as the legal basis of their talks as have subsequent talks. One provision of that resolution is that there will be a UN monitored election where Syrian exiles could vote. It should be noted that before Trump announced the military withdrawal, he never joined the diplomatic effort. We NEVER had a good hand to play in Syria, but the UN resolution was a big deal and likely the best the US could have achieved.

To me, I assume that Bolton, a neo con, is not thinking of the Kurds or anything which could lead to a more peaceful Syria, but the concern that we need a base to attack Iran, his main obsession for at least a decade.

Erdogan obviously believes it because he's not pushing the MBS is a murderer talk like he did before drumpf agreed to let him kill the Kurds. drumpf doesn't give a shit about them and had made that totally clear in the past and Bolton knows they've been sold down the river. What I think will happen is that he will (within the year, maybe within a month of the start of the drawdown) turn a blind eye to Turkey invading and killing thousands of Kurds. Turkey will provide video they say is Kurds carrying out terrorists acts and use that and drumpf will go right along. Russia and Turkey both want us to leave Syria and drumpf is over a barrel with both of them and can't have them leak their damning information as he will lose the presidency and possibly go to jail.

We will pay big in the psyche of loyalty around the world.

Source: Politico