The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.
Albert McGloan
8 months ago
The SDF are a military occupation force of “ethnic outsiders” locals rightly want rid of; too bad the ungrateful natives “resent” their colonial administrators. Aris might long for Kurdish communist rule but even The Independent (!) has reported on their abuses and ethnic chauvinism. The muted language used to describe this violence and injustice speaks volumes.
Jürg Gassmann
8 months ago
Let us bear in mind that the US occupation of eastern Syria, its theft of Syrian oil, and its environmental destruction in the region, are all breaches of international law and war crimes.
Word on paper. Until there’s a unified world government, this is how geopolitics is conducted. War is not nice, not fair, and almost never confined to a set of rules written down in any book. Games of geopolitical power such as the one described here are just low scale warfare conducted covertly through proxies which makes it all the nastier. You can tut-tut all you want but nobody acting on the geopolitical stage is pure as driven snow. America does bad things, we get it. Most Americans who aren’t idiots already know that. There’s a reason most of us don’t trust our own government. Still as much as I don’t like the elites that run the US, I have to concede they are still at least marginally less evil than the people running China and Russia.
America’s wealthy ruling caste is openly hostile to Americans and is currently using every ‘legal’ means to ensure they aren’t humiliated by a narcissistic, orange-hued confidence man for the second time. The voice that tells us ‘America’s not so bad as the others’ is getting ever fainter.
I think you are right. Who would have thought that there were worse alternatives than Saddam or the Taliban? but the neo-cons managed to find them.
Tyler Durden
8 months ago
The State Department already got the US military out of Afghanistan to focus on Biden’s favoured section of Eurasia. If they want to bed in in the Ukraine and create a client buffer-state around Kiev, then these disaster-prone bureaucrats had better make sure the Russians don’t open another geopolitical front elsewhere.
I’m not sure Russia is in any better position actually. They probably don’t want to open a second front either, which is kind of the point the author was making. Neither side wants to deal with crap like this right now as there are bigger fish to fry.
I see Biden basically as a businessman and if Ukraine is good business for American corporations then so be it. Perhaps he convinced Obama in 2014 that they could return to the question of Crimea further down the line because long-term conflict over a buffer state would be profitable to American interests.
The Syrian conflict seemed to be completely ceded to Russia because Turkey (and Iran) were available to work with the West to deal with the problem of Islamic State. Rumours were that H Clinton wanted a no-fly zone installed there to expel Assad as well as Moscow, but the powers that be envisaged a resulting nuclear escalation.
Samuel Ross
8 months ago
Kurdistan should be a thing, but if there was a Kurdistan, the land (unjustly stolen from the Kurds) would come from 5 other countries. A tough circle to square!
Jim McDonnell
8 months ago
I’d be willing to bet Erdogan is egging on these Arab tribal leaders. He’ll do anything to bedevil the SDF and if it makes things worse for the Arabs he couldn’t care less.
America invading Syria good
Russia invading Ukraine bad
The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.
The SDF are a military occupation force of “ethnic outsiders” locals rightly want rid of; too bad the ungrateful natives “resent” their colonial administrators. Aris might long for Kurdish communist rule but even The Independent (!) has reported on their abuses and ethnic chauvinism. The muted language used to describe this violence and injustice speaks volumes.
Let us bear in mind that the US occupation of eastern Syria, its theft of Syrian oil, and its environmental destruction in the region, are all breaches of international law and war crimes.
Word on paper. Until there’s a unified world government, this is how geopolitics is conducted. War is not nice, not fair, and almost never confined to a set of rules written down in any book. Games of geopolitical power such as the one described here are just low scale warfare conducted covertly through proxies which makes it all the nastier. You can tut-tut all you want but nobody acting on the geopolitical stage is pure as driven snow. America does bad things, we get it. Most Americans who aren’t idiots already know that. There’s a reason most of us don’t trust our own government. Still as much as I don’t like the elites that run the US, I have to concede they are still at least marginally less evil than the people running China and Russia.
America’s wealthy ruling caste is openly hostile to Americans and is currently using every ‘legal’ means to ensure they aren’t humiliated by a narcissistic, orange-hued confidence man for the second time. The voice that tells us ‘America’s not so bad as the others’ is getting ever fainter.
President Assad has WON, and jolly good to!
Why?
Because the others were FAR worse.
I think you are right. Who would have thought that there were worse alternatives than Saddam or the Taliban? but the neo-cons managed to find them.
The State Department already got the US military out of Afghanistan to focus on Biden’s favoured section of Eurasia. If they want to bed in in the Ukraine and create a client buffer-state around Kiev, then these disaster-prone bureaucrats had better make sure the Russians don’t open another geopolitical front elsewhere.
I’m not sure Russia is in any better position actually. They probably don’t want to open a second front either, which is kind of the point the author was making. Neither side wants to deal with crap like this right now as there are bigger fish to fry.
I see Biden basically as a businessman and if Ukraine is good business for American corporations then so be it. Perhaps he convinced Obama in 2014 that they could return to the question of Crimea further down the line because long-term conflict over a buffer state would be profitable to American interests.
The Syrian conflict seemed to be completely ceded to Russia because Turkey (and Iran) were available to work with the West to deal with the problem of Islamic State. Rumours were that H Clinton wanted a no-fly zone installed there to expel Assad as well as Moscow, but the powers that be envisaged a resulting nuclear escalation.
Kurdistan should be a thing, but if there was a Kurdistan, the land (unjustly stolen from the Kurds) would come from 5 other countries. A tough circle to square!
I’d be willing to bet Erdogan is egging on these Arab tribal leaders. He’ll do anything to bedevil the SDF and if it makes things worse for the Arabs he couldn’t care less.