"President Trump is thinking outside the box!"

What else is new, Lindsey? Senator Lindsey Graham is now expressing optimism, after talking with Trump. Reuters reports,

Republican U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham, who has been one of the most vocal critics of President Donald Trump’s decision to move U.S. troops out of northeastern Syria, said on Sunday he now believed “historic solutions” were possible.

In an interview with Fox News, Graham said a conversation he had with Trump over the weekend had fueled his optimism that a solution could be reached where the security of Turkey and the Kurds was guaranteed and fighters from Islamic State contained.

“I am increasingly optimistic that we can have some historic solutions in Syria that have eluded us for years if we play our cards right,” Graham said on “Sunday Morning Futures.”

Graham said Trump was prepared to use U.S. air power over a demilitarized zone occupied by international forces, adding that the use of air power could help ensure Islamic State fighters who had been held in the area did not “break out.”

Senator Jim Inhofe, a Republican who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, said on Saturday that Trump understood the need for the United States to maintain air power in the region.

“The U.S. must retain air power to keep the pressure on ISIS, prevent our adversaries Russia and Iran from exploiting this situation and protect our partners on the ground,” he said in a statement. ISIS is an acronym for Islamic State.

Graham also said he believed the United States and Kurdish forces long allied with Washington could establish a venture to modernize Syrian oil fields, with the revenue flowing to the Kurds. “President Trump is thinking outside the box,” Graham said of Trump’s thinking on oil.

“The president appreciates what the Kurds have done,” Graham added. “He wants to make sure ISIS does not come back. I expect we will continue to partner with the Kurds in eastern Syria to make sure ISIS does not re-emerge.”

Graham, referring to the Kurdish fighters in the region, previously warned that Trump’s decision to pull out U.S. troops would lead to their “destruction.”

"Complicated business, folks, complicated business!"

In the Conservative Treehouse, Sundance explains,

...As a gatekeeper between radical Islamist elements and Europe, President Erdogan holds the ultimate leverage and blackmail over his NATO allies. If Europe does not acquiesce to the whims of Erodogan, he can open the gates and flood the EU with extremists. Erdogan loves to play this power game against the EU and ultimately against the U.S.

President Obama embraced President Erdogan because ideologically the Obama administration and Erdogan both supported political Islam, The Muslim Brotherhood.

Erdogan’s regional arch-nemesis is Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. As a general al Sisi had to deal with the outcomes of Muslim Brotherhood extremism, and ultimately remove Mohamed Morsi from office. President Sisi formed the Arab coalition that is now aligned with President Donald Trump against the radical elements of political Islam known as The Muslim Brotherhood.

The U.S. Arab coalition includes Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and Yemen. Additionally, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) are aligned against the radical elements within political Islam (The Brotherhood), and the U.S. is supporting the coalition with self-defense military purchases.

...Unfortunately, Europe will not defend itself; will not kick Erdogan out of NATO; will not take their own ISIS fighters back for trial and punishment; and instead, just like Lindsey Graham, the EU demands the U.S. remain as perpetual zookeepers.

...Instead, President Trump is going to support the Arab coalition and the GCC that has been assembling a military coalition to protect itself from the Muslim Brotherhood.

That is why President Trump is willing to support Saudi Arabia with more troops, while withdrawing from Syria where the U.S. was having to stand alone to protect the interests of Europeans who will not protect themselves.

In one regional area the U.S. will support and defend Israel, Egypt and Jordan. In the Southern region the U.S. will support the Gulf Cooperation Council (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Yemen, Bahrain and Qatar).

...Instead, President Trump is going to support the Arab coalition and the GCC that has been assembling a military coalition to protect itself from the Muslim Brotherhood.

That is why President Trump is willing to support Saudi Arabia with more troops, while withdrawing from Syria where the U.S. was having to stand alone to protect the interests of Europeans who will not protect themselves.

In one regional area the U.S. will support and defend Israel, Egypt and Jordan. In the Southern region the U.S. will support the Gulf Cooperation Council (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Yemen, Bahrain and Qatar).

At 4:11 p.m. yesterday Sundance wrote on Twitter, "President Trump's decision will likely mean the Kurds will form an agreement with Bashir Assad. This is a good thing. Assad and the Kurds will be united against Turkey. They can work the rest out within internal Syrian politics."

At 4:19 p.m. yesterday, the BBC announced that the Kurds and Syria made a deal in which Syrian government forces will be deployed along Syria's northern border "to halt Turkey's assault."
Read more here.


"Complicated business, folks, complicated business!"

"Trump avoided war with Turkey this week. And he began extracting America from an open-ended commitment to the Kurds it never made and never intended to fulfill."

Carolyn Glick wrote in FrontPage Magazine,

The war in Syria broke out in 2011 as a popular insurrection by Syrian Sunnis against the Iranian-sponsored regime of President Bashar Assad. The Obama administration responded by declaring US support for Assad’s overthrow. But the declaration was empty. The administration sat on its thumbs as the regime’s atrocities mounted. It supported a feckless Turkish effort to raise a resistance army dominated by jihadist elements aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood.

President Barack Obama infamously issued his “red line” regarding the use of chemical weapons against civilians by Assad, which he repudiated the moment it was crossed.

As ISIS forces gathered in Iraq and Syria, Obama shrugged them off as a “JV squad.” When the JVs in ISIS took over a third of Iraqi and Syrian territory, Obama did nothing.

As Lee Smith recalled in January in The New York Post, Obama only decided to do something about ISIS in late 2014 after the group beheaded a number of American journalists and posted their decapitations on social media.

The timing was problematic for Obama.

In 2014 Obama was negotiating his nuclear deal with Iran. The deal, falsely presented as a nonproliferation pact, actually enabled Iran – the world’s greatest state sponsor of terrorism – to develop both nuclear weapons and the missile systems required to deliver them. The true purpose of the deal was not to block Iran’s nuclear aspirations but to realign US Middle East policy away from the Sunnis and Israel and toward Iran.

...Under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey has stood against the US and its interests far more often than it has stood with it. Across a spectrum of issues, from Israel to human rights, Hamas and ISIS to Turkish aggression against Cyprus, Greece, and Israel in the Eastern Mediterranean, to upholding US economic sanctions against Iran and beyond, for nearly 20 years, Erdoğan’s Turkey has distinguished itself as a strategic threat to America’s core interests and policies and those of its closest allies in the Middle East.

...Despite the compelling, ever-growing body of evidence that the time has come to reassess US-Turkish ties, the Pentagon refuses to engage the issue. The Pentagon has rejected the suggestion that the US remove its nuclear weapons from Incirlik airbase in Turkey or diminish Incirlik’s centrality to US air operations in Central Asia and the Middle East. The same is true of US dependence on Turkish naval bases.

Given the Pentagon’s position, there is no chance that the US would consider entering an armed conflict with Turkey on behalf of the Kurds.

The Kurds are a tragic people. The Kurds, who live as persecuted minorities in Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran, have been denied the right of self-determination for the past hundred years. But then, the Kurds have squandered every opportunity they have had to assert independence. The closest they came to achieving self-determination was in Iraq in 2017. In Iraqi Kurdistan, the Kurds have governed themselves effectively since 1992. In 2017, they overwhelmingly passed a referendum calling for Iraqi Kurdistan to secede from Iraq and form an independent state. Instead of joining forces to achieve their long-held dream, the Kurdish leaders in Iraq worked against one another. One faction, in alliance with Iran, blocked implementation of the referendum and then did nothing as Kurdish-controlled Kirkuk was overrun by Iraqi government forces.

The Kurds in Iraq are far more capable of defending themselves than the Kurds of Syria. Taking on the defense of Syria’s Kurds would commit the US to an open-ended presence in Syria and justify Turkish antagonism. America’s interests would not be advanced. They would be harmed, particularly in light of the YPG’s selling trait for Obama – its warm ties to Assad and Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The hard truth is that the 50 US soldiers along the Syrian-Turkish border were a fake tripwire. Neither Trump nor the US military had any intention of sacrificing US forces to either block a Turkish invasion of Syria or foment deeper US involvement in the event of a Turkish invasion.

Apparently, in the course of his phone call with Trump on Sunday, Erdoğan called Trump’s bluff. Trump’s announcement following the call made clear that the US would not sacrifice its soldiers to stop Erdoğan’s planned invasion of the border zone.

But Trump also made clear that the US did not support the Turkish move. In subsequent statements, Trump repeatedly pledged to destroy the Turkish economy if Turkey commits atrocities against the Kurds.

If the Pentagon can be brought on board, Trump’s threats can easily be used as a means to formally diminish the long-hollow US alliance with Turkey.

Here it is critical to note that Trump did not remove US forces from Syria. They are still deployed along the border crossing between Jordan, Iraq, and Syria to block Iran from moving forces and materiel to Syria and Lebanon. They are still blocking Russian and Syrian forces from taking over the oil fields along the eastern bank of the Euphrates. Aside from defeating ISIS, these missions are the principle strategic achievements of the US forces in Syria. For now, they are being maintained. Will Turkey’s invasion enable ISIS to reassert itself in Syria and beyond? Perhaps. But here too, as Trump made clear this week, it is not America’s job to serve as the permanent jailor of ISIS. European forces are just as capable of serving as guards as Americans are. America’s role is not to stay in Syria forever. It is to beat down threats to US and world security as they emerge and then let others – Turks, Kurds, Europeans, Russians, UN peacekeepers – maintain the new, safer status quo.

...The best move Trump can make now in light of the fake narrative of his treachery toward the Kurds is to finally retaliate against Iran. A well-conceived and limited US strike against Iranian missile and drone installations would restore America’s posture as the dominant power in the Persian Gulf and prevent the further destabilization of the Saudi regime and the backsliding of the UAE toward Iran.

As for Syria, it is impossible to know what the future holds for the Kurds, the Turks, the Iranians, Assad, or anyone else. But what is clear enough is that Trump avoided war with Turkey this week. And he began extracting America from an open-ended commitment to the Kurds it never made and never intended to fulfill.

Read more here.

WSJ video critical of President Trump for pulling out of Syria

Trump should now support our allies the Kurds in their effort to create a sovereign nation.

Jordan Schachtel reports at Conservative Review that President Trump should follow the lead of President Truman in 1948. Truman ignored the advice of the foreign policy establishment and recognized the nation of Israel. Trump should now support our allies the Kurds in their effort to create a sovereign nation.
Read more here.

Our moral cowardice

Spengler is beyond angry at Washington's foreign policy elite for not supporting the independence vote today by the Kurds in Iraq.

Since September 11, 2001, we've been told that America has to ally with moderate Muslims against "extremism." There are in fact moderate Muslims in the world. The Kurds are "moderate Muslims." The Kurds do not persecute nonbelievers. They don't hate Jews and Christians. They don't forbid women to leave the house without a male relative; in fact, their militias are the only effective fighting force in the world that includes women in front-line combat units. They protect Iraqi Christians against ISIS, and Iraq's Christians in turn support Kurdish independence. They have excellent and long-standing relations with the State of Israel. Jewish life is flourishing in the Kurdish Autonomous Region in the north of Iraq.

Most of all, Kurdish fighters are the spearhead of American-backed ground forces fighting ISIS in Syria and Iraq. They do not only act the way we say we want Muslims to act, protecting Christians and Jews and promoting the equality of women. They shed blood for what they believe in.

The Kurds are everything that George W. Bush and Barack Obama told us we should find in the Islamic world, and more. They want nothing but friendship with the United States of America. And we have thrown them under the bus. There isn't an Appalachian outhouse that stinks worse than our foreign policy Establishment.

Read more here.

Anti-coup

The Zman observes that the media are having a hard time

fitting the attempted coup in Turkey into their standard narrative. Turkey is supposed to be different from the rest of the Muslim world. Turkey is a real country with elections and globalism. Sure, the political leaderships sounds a lot like the lunatics from the Arab world, but that’s just an act. It’s their version of boob bait for the bubbas. Instead of guns and abortion, their rednecks want to hear about Allah and the Jews. Turkey is a real country, not a banana republic.

Following along via SkyNews, the BBC and CNN, I had to laugh at the confusion of the news people covering this thing. They did not know which side they were supposed to support. Initially, they were just baffled, as they don’t know anything about the world that is not fed to them through their earpieces. They were reduced to stuttering through live images of people walking around the streets waving flags. Then Obama came out in defense of the Islamists and the rest of NATO followed suit. Instantly, the new media was anti-coup.

...Erdogan is the leader of the new order, the Islamists that believe they can have a modern technological society, under medieval Islamic moral codes.

...The Turks are faced with a choice. They can be fully Western and go quietly into that good night. Or, they can be Eastern and fight against the dying of the light. The former means modern technology and prosperity, for a little while at least. The latter means men in robes ordering homosexuals thrown off buildings. That’s what’s happening inside Turkey today. It’s a version of what’s happening in the West, but only in a country that culturally is closer to Byzantium than Brussels.

Read more here.

They will get even

A Turkmen soldier with a machine gun is seen as taking aim in the Bayirbucak region in northern Latakia province of Syria Photo: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

About that Russian plane shot down by Turks, David Goldman writes,

The Russian Su-24 probably was attacking Ankara-backed Turkmen militia in northern Syria, notes the Telegraph. That helps explain why the Turks wanted to shoot it down. Now a lot of Russian-language media suggest that Russia will back an independent Kurdish state (which Turkey is hard put to stop). There will be no DIRECT retaliation, just a proxy war where the demographics are on the Kurdish side.

US Special Forces and Kurdish Commandos free 70+ ISIS prisoners about to be executed

Ace of Spades reports,

US Special Forces and Kurdish Commandos Free 70+ ISIS Prisoners Believed to Be Facing Imminent Execution; At Least One US Casualty Reported.

... WASHINGTON – A U.S. service member died after a commando raid Thursday freed about 70 hostages who were believed to face imminent execution by Islamic State fighters in northern Iraq, according to the Pentagon. It was the first American combat death in Iraq in four years.

Kurdish commandos and U.S. special operations forces conducted the raid, which came at the request of the Kurdish regional government, Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said in a statement.

...

The 70 hostages, including 20 members of the Iraqi security forces, were released. Five fighters from the Islamic State, also known as ISIL, were captured, Cook said. U.S. forces also recovered valuable intelligence from the ISIL camp near the northern Iraqi town of Hawija, he said.

They won't get into specifics, but they say the plan was for 30 American special forces to "advise" around 30 Kurdish commandos. You'll see what "advise" means in reality in the next paragraph.

ISIL fighters held the hostages in a walled compound, the official said. The helicopters flew in from the south and west of the complex, and troops encountered heavy gunfire. The Kurds were pinned down before American troops took the lead and killed 15 ISIL fighters, the official said. U.S. troops wounded several more fighters as they freed the hostages.

ISIS had already dug the mass grave in preparation for the execution.

Ah, CNN says it was an "advise-and-assist mission."

"There was not a lot of time," one U.S. official told CNN on condition of anonymity Thursday. "The threat of execution was imminent."

The firefight represents the first time U.S. forces stepped into combat against ISIS in Iraq, the U.S. official said.

The American troops, who were on an advise-and-assist mission, stepped in after Kurdish Peshmerga soldiers came under fire, the official said.

One U.S. service member was mortally wounded -- the first American combat death in Iraq since November 2011 -- during the rescue mission at a prison of the Islamist militant group ISIS near Hawija in the northern province of Kirkuk, the Pentagon said. Four Peshmerga soldiers were wounded.

There were no Kurds among the hostages, the Kurdistan regional government said in a statement. The U.S. had claimed earlier that about 70 Kurdish hostages were rescued.

So the Kurds, like us, were in there freeing people who aren't part of their tribe.

The location was northern Iraq.

The pre-dawn raid targeted a school near the northern town of Hawija that was believed to have been used as a base by senior military commanders from the group. There were unconfirmed reports that one of Isis's most senior leaders, Nema Arbid Nayef al-Jabouri, was one of the targets of the raid.

Jabouri, also known as Abu Fatima was not present when US, Kurdish and Iraqi troops descended on the small village of Fedeekha east of the town, Iraqi officials said.

The Guardian mentions a tactical detail: The US had bombed the roads into the area before the raid, so that the helicopter-borne US and Kurdish forces would be the only new entrants into the fight.

American military commanders are blocking arms transfers to Kurds

Con Coughlin, Defense Editor of The Telegraph, reports that

US blocks attempts by Arab allies to fly heavy weapons directly to Kurds to fight Islamic State. Some of America’s closest allies say President Barack Obama and other Western leaders, including David Cameron, are failing to show strategic leadership over the world’s gravest security crisis for decades.

They now say they are willing to “go it alone” in supplying heavy weapons to the Kurds, even if means defying the Iraqi authorities and their American backers, who demand all weapons be channelled through Baghdad. “If the Americans and the West are not prepared to do anything serious about defeating Isil, then we will have to find new ways of dealing with the threat,” said a senior Arab government official. “With Isil making ground all the time we simply cannot afford to wait for Washington to wake up to the enormity of the threat we face.”

...The Peshmerga have been successfully fighting Isil, driving them back from the gates of Erbil and, with the support of Kurds from neighbouring Syria, re-establishing control over parts of Iraq’s north-west.

But they are doing so with a makeshift armoury. Millions of pounds-worth of weapons have been bought by a number of European countries to arm the Kurds, but American commanders, who are overseeing all military operations against Isil, are blocking the arms transfers.

...The US has also infuriated its allies, particularly Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the Gulf states, by what they perceive to be a lack of clear purpose and vacillation in how they conduct the bombing campaign. Other members of the coalition say they have identified clear Isil targets but then been blocked by US veto from firing at them.

.
Read more here.

He believed in opposing evil

Hundreds of grateful Kurds lined the streets of Kobani to pay respects to the first American to die inth eir fight against ISIS.

Sophie Jane Edwards writes in Daily Mail,

Hundreds of grateful Kurds have bid a hero's farewell to a U.S. soldier who died fighting against the Islamic State in Syria after traveling to the war-torn country because he felt it was 'God's will'.

Residents waved flags and applauded as Keith Broomfield's casket was driven through the streets of Kobani in a white van on Thursday - more than a week after he died in a battle between Kurdish forces and ISIS.


On Thursday, the soldier's father, Tom Broomfield, told reporters that his son had felt 'led by the Lord' to travel overseas to fight ISIS.

Speaking at a news conference outside the family home, Mr Broomfield said his son had known 'the risk, but believed in opposing evil', ABC reported.

Meanwhile, Keith Broomfield's mother, Donna Broomfield, told NBC tearfully that her son believed it was 'God's will' for him to fight against ISIS in Syria and that she had been desperate for him not to go.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3120870/Hundreds-grateful-Kurds-bid-hero-s-farewell-soldier-died-fighting-ISIS-Syria-traveling-overseas-God-s-will.html#ixzz3coibZW4m
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All-female units deployed on front lines by Kurds fighting ISIS

Weasel Zippers quotes from the WSJ:

Battle-hardened after two years fighting Islamic State and other Islamist rebel groups in the multi-sided Syrian civil war, Kurdish guerrillas linked to the PKK have in recent weeks made a series of military gains that have spotlighted their growing sway.

The Kurdish region of Syria was largely left to its own devices by the army of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, drawing accusations the PKK’s Syrian branch was in league with Damascus. PKK officials in Syria have denied those accusations.

Last week, the PKK’s Syrian-based units advanced into Iraq and punctured Islamic State lines to help tens of thousands of Yazidis escape an encircled Mount Sinjar. [...]

Syrian commanders say the security and quality of life is improving as their guerrilla forces expand rapidly, propelled by thousands of young volunteers. Recruitment is boosted by the deployment of women soldiers on the front line, often in all-female units.

“The jihadists don’t like fighting women, because if they’re killed by a female, they think they won’t go to heaven,” said one female fighter.

Read more here.