U.S. Special Forces in Syria flee for lives from our allies

In an example of just how messed up our War on Some Terror strategy has become, our ability to tell friend from foe has become pretty much impossible.

US special forces soldiers were reportedly forced to flee a town in northern Syria after Free Syrian Army fighters threatened to "slaughter" them for their "invasion", according to videos and reports posted on social media on Friday.
The US soldiers were working with Turkish forces as they advanced on al-Rai, Aleppo, in preparation for an offensive against nearby al-Bab, which is controlled by the Islamic State group.
The FSA is allied with Turkish forces and ostensibly supported by the US as a "moderate" rebel group fighting against the government of Bashar al-Assad.
However, Friday's confrontation highlights the complex nature of the war in Syria.
In the video, fighters from the FSA chant that US forces are "pigs", "crusaders" and "infidels".
"Dogs, agents of America," one man can be heard to say in Arabic, while others chant "They are crusaders and infidels", "Down with America", "'Get out you pigs" and "They are coming to Syria to occupy it"...
One US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters that initial reports appeared to confirm the incident.

Pigs, crusaders, and infidels. Maybe it's a catchy tune in Syria, like Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves.
Let's pause and consider for a moment that these are our allies, working directly alongside our NATO ally Turkey and supposedly are "moderates".
relationship.PNG
The real kicker is that the Turkish/FSA Operation Euphrates Shield isn't so much aimed at ISIS as it is the SDF, our Syrian Kurdish allies.

The operation, labeled Euphrates Shield, is also aimed at pushing back U.S.-allied Kurdish forces. The fighting pits a NATO ally against a U.S.-backed proxy that is the most effective ground force battling IS in Syria....
Turkey is part of the U.S.-led coalition fighting IS, but the airstrikes that began Saturday marked the first time it has targeted Kurdish-led forces in Syria.

Therefore there is a real, distinct possibility that U.S. forces could be on both sides of this war in the near future.

Another thing to keep in mind is that our "moderate" allies in the FSA were drawn directly from Idlib province, which is controlled by Fateh al-Sham (i.e. al-Qaeda) and its allies.
Well, there is a conditional cease-fire in Syria right now. That condition is that these "moderates" cut their ties with al-Qaeda.

This new truce, while again excluding Nusra, is supposed to be different, with the US demanding all of its rebel allies to totally cut ties with Nusra immediately. Sources within the Syrian military, however, say that so far there is no sign of that happening.

To be fair, these aren't the only allies threatening to shoot us. The Iraqi Shia militias want us to leave too.

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Amanda Matthews's picture

Intentionally or otherwise.

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I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

RantingRooster's picture

the bank bailouts were a master piece, no? Not a single CEO went to jail for the obvious fraud they committed, not to mention the bonuses ta boot! (snark)

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Amanda Matthews's picture

From the time he jumped off the campaign trail to support the bailout (OOOOH I was angry) to ensuring that Jamie and Lloyd still got their bonuses, he did everything possible to make certain that the transfer of wealth from the lower/middle/upper middle classes to the 1% came off without a hitch.

I really cannot stand the sight of the man or the sound of his voice. How lucky was he that the Pritzker family saw his amazing potential for lies and dissembling.

This is a bizarre thing I've had two of my son's friends, one black, one black/Hispanic BOTH tell me that because of Obama, a black man will never get elected to the White House again. They said he's done nothing for black people or anyone who wasn't rich. Well actually, Nick practically had a list but I was so stunned that he would say that the only other thing I can remember is that there is anger over his refusal to decriminalize pot.

These guys are in their early 20s. I wonder if this is true?

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I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

RantingRooster's picture

book marks, all lead to one thing, the case for impeachment. But that's a non-starter, heck Pelosi had a perfect opportunity, and cover (bailouts) to go after GWB and his blatant violations of our constitution, which by my untrained calculations, amount to crimes against humanity for launching an illegal war in Iraq.

Obama was like, hey, why look back, when we can skirt this under the rug right quick, and I'll get to do more damage (Kill list Tuesdays) and be assured I won't get prosecuted either.

Obama's like...

RR Drinks

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of policy pursued by 'crackpot realists'; moral imbeciles like Kissenger, Kagen, neocons and neolibs alike.
The phrase was coined about 60 years ago by C. Wright Mills, who stated:
"For the first time in American history, men in authority are talking about an 'emergency' without a foreseeable end,...Such men as these are crackpot realists: in the name of realism they have constructed a paranoid reality all their own."
This madness was a-borning then, it's fully grown today, and nobody in politics or media even mentions it, with very rare exceptions.
Pity policy in there hands of paranoid crackpots and you get regards were have in Syria and the world over.

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Orwell: Where's the omelette?

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Orwell: Where's the omelette?

cameraman with them to record what happened. Then we should make a documentary of it and require everyone who's about to join the military to watch it. Sure, a few would dig the adrenaline rush, but I'd hope many would say, "No, thanks. Looks way too complicated for me."

Our foreign/military policy has reached a point where it's become a parody of an already bloody historical past.

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You mean like this one?

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It was funny back in 1971 (when I was in college ROTC). Now, not so much.

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"We've done the impossible, and that makes us mighty."

Wikileaks or Anonymous just might run across some GoPro or phone cam videos these "Special" Forces will take of their "victories" to demonstrate what manly men they are.

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joe shikspack's picture

they love us everywhere we go.

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snoopydawg's picture

The opposition emerged following an announcement by US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter early July that his country will send an additional 560 military personnel to Iraq to which radical cleric Sadr responded: “They will be our target.”
Sadr’s Mahdi Army was one of the main Iraqi groups fighting American troops in Iraq from 2004 until a couple years before their withdrawal from Iraq.

I'm sure that ISIL is quaking in their boots at the thought of the US degrading them. What does that even mean?

The Americans remain persistent that their role is advisory for the shared goal of degrading and defeating ISIS.

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lotlizard's picture

and siccing dogs on them?

the US degrading them

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GreyWolf's picture

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snoopydawg's picture

for the oil companies after all.

Despite pressure from Republicans, Barack Obama balked at hiring out young Americans to die as mercenaries for a pipeline conglomerate. Obama wisely ignored Republican clamoring to put ground troops in Syria or to funnel more funding to “moderate insurgents.” But by late 2011, Republican pressure and our Sunni allies had pushed the American government into the fray.

Has Obama ever stood up to anyone during his almost 8 years in office?
The GOP and the MICC treat him like their puppet.
Joe provided this link in last nights EBs and hopefully people read it. It is written by RFK Jr and describes what the Syrian conflict is about, who is going to profit from it and the reason that Assad must go.
He also details how the CIA has overthrown so many governments and installed brutal dictators who can do whatever they like as long as they do the US' bidding. But once they slip up, bye bye dictator and off to The Hague with you.
http://www.politico.eu/article/why-the-arabs-dont-want-us-in-syria-midea...

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k9disc's picture

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“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu

Ravensword's picture

Let them become Israel's bitch. Let them waste money, equipment and manpower in the anal wart of the world. Let them become the target of Islamic extremists.

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I don't think Russia wants to match that.

I can think of some water systems; school districts; bridges; lowered tuition; action against climate change, etc where $8 Billion would be better spent.

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"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"

The US didn't learn the lesson of Vietnam unlike the Russians who did learn from the quagmire of Afghanistan. The Russian tenure in Afghanistan is already much shorter than the duration the US continues to extend to "occupy" that sorry excuse for a nation.

Want to know why Uncle Scam can't leave AFghanistan?

http://reliefweb.int/report/afghanistan/un-chief-says-discovery-vast-min...

http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-pentagon-s-map-of-afghanistan-an-eldora...

https://www.newsecuritybeat.org/2012/07/new-usgs-report-and-maps-highlig...

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/world/asia/14minerals.html?_r=0

'Nuff Said?

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Ravensword's picture

Not gonna lie, it's probably the way to make the place useful, and it would probably be an improvement of the place. Middle East: exploit or ignore. I prefer the latter since it's probably cheaper, less labor-intensive, pisses off fewer Islamic radicals, and just better for everyone else, but I'm just saying that if the place were strip mined, nothing of value would be lost.

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China is mining copper there

Guess whose troops are defending operations there from the Taliban. You pay for them.

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Ravensword's picture

This seems to be China's MO—they're exploiting foreign countries for their natural resources, big time in Africa, and African countries are okay w/ this b/c at least it's not Europe that's exploiting them.

Not okay with American Forces being used for guarding China's extraction concerns there. It would be best if we pulled out and let China bring their own goddamn army in there.

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snoopydawg's picture

Before the US invaded Afghanistan , the Taliban had almost wiped out the poppy fields.
Now they are bigger than ever and the troops are defending them.
This article shows pictures of the troops guarding the fields and getting the opium ready to ship.
At the end of this article, an oil CEO is testifying before congress and telling them what needs to be done to make it safe so that he can get his company working in Afghanistan. Here is proof that congress take its orders from the businesses who own our government.
http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/dyinginafghanistan.php
A US soldier guarding the poppy fields.
image_177.jpeg

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RantingRooster's picture

this is a well, tried and true true strategy of the US Foreign policy.

From NYT:

Forty years ago, the Central Intelligence Agency, under President John F. Kennedy, conducted its own regime change in Baghdad, carried out in collaboration with Saddam Hussein.

The Iraqi leader seen as a grave threat in 1963 was Abdel Karim Kassem, a general who five years earlier had deposed the Western-allied Iraqi monarchy. Washington's role in the coup went unreported at the time and has been little noted since. America's anti-Kassem intrigue has been widely substantiated, however, in disclosures by the Senate Committee on Intelligence and in the work of journalists and historians like David Wise, an authority on the C.I.A.

You see, there's a pattern here if you look closely. William Bloom does a fine job (imho) in his work, Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since WWII, chronicling intervention, after intervention, and even providing this golden nugget of info about 13,000 American troops fighting the Russians during the Bolshevik revolution in the introduction,

The remarkable international goodwill and credibility enjoyed by the United States at the close of the Second World War was dissipated country by country, intervention by intervention. The opportunity to build the war-ravaged world anew, to lay the foundations for peace, prosperity and justice, collapsed under the awful weight of anti-communism.

The weight had been accumulating for some time; indeed, since Day One of the Russian Revolution. By the summer of 1918 some 13,000 American troops could be found in the newly-born Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Two years and thousands of casualties later, the American troops left, having failed in their mission to “strangle at its birth” the Bolshevik state, as Winston Churchill put it.

Snip

History does not tell us what a Soviet Union, allowed to develop in a “normal” way of its own choosing, would look like today. We do know, however, the nature of a Soviet Union attacked in its cradle, raised alone in an extremely hostile world, and, when it managed to survive to adulthood, overrun by the Nazi war machine with the blessings of the Western powers. The resulting insecurities and fears have inevitably led to deformities of character not unlike that found in an individual raised in a similar life-threatening manner.

We in the West are never allowed to forget the political shortcomings (real and bogus) of the Soviet Union; at the same time we are never reminded of the history which lies behind it. The anti-communist propaganda campaign began even earlier than the military intervention. Before the year 1918 was over, expressions in the vein of “Red Peril”, “the Bolshevik assault on civilization”, and “menace to world by Reds is seen” had become commonplace in the pages of the New York Times.

A tried and true geopolitical strategy. It's a 3 step process of Problem, Reaction, Solution.

From StormCloudsGathering.com:

Step 1: Build up a dictator or extremist group which can then be used to wage proxy wars against opponents. During this stage any crimes committed by these proxies are swept under the rug. [Problem]

Step 2: When these nasty characters have outlived their usefulness, that's when it's time to pull out all that dirt from under the rug and start publicizing it 24/7. This obviously works best when the public has no idea how these bad guys came to power.[Reaction]

Step 3: Finally, when the public practically begging for the government to do something, a solution is proposed. Usually the solution involves military intervention, the loss of certain liberties, or both. [Solution]

[video:https://youtu.be/oMjXbuj7BPI align:center]

With US foreign Policy, it's either cluster bombs, like Saudi Arabia is doing with US made cluster bombs in Yemen...

From
ABCNews.Com:

Congress has opted to continue selling cluster bombs to Saudi Arabia, citing a need not to "stigmatize" the weapon. But human rights advocates pointed to the close vote, 216 to 204, as progress towards ending the U.S.-Saudi trade of cluster munitions, which advocates say causes indiscriminate carnage.

The House of Representatives voted Thursday against an amendment that would have blocked the transfer of American-made cluster munitions to Saudi Arabia.

Or it's cluster fuck, like the entire ME region (Ukraine, China...), and to a larger extent, the world, is today.

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snoopydawg's picture

I don't know what it is going to take to get the American people to quit believing that the US goes around the world spreading peace and democracy or that it's policing the world.
It has been interfering in countries in the Middle East for over a century or longer.
Here's another excellent article about the CIA's history in the Middle East and how it has been instrumental in overthrowing governments and installing the dictators you wrote about.

Why the Arabs don’t want us in Syria
They don’t hate ‘our freedoms.’ They hate that we’ve betrayed our ideals in their own countries — for oil.

http://www.politico.eu/article/why-the-arabs-dont-want-us-in-syria-midea...
Truman had told the CIA not to take part in overthrowing Iran's government, but Eisenhower let them off the leash and they helped install the Shah to f Iran in 1953 until the Iranians finally overthrew him in 1979.
And the CIA has been interfering in the Middle East since then.
The Arab Springs weren't people all of a sudden deciding to remove their government, the CIA helped them along.
Of course if this country is attacked again, people will ask why?
Just like they did when Paris and Brussels were attacked. Even after the people who committed the attacks told them that it was because of the attacks that had killed innocent civilians.

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RantingRooster's picture

just does not sink in

Even after the people who committed the attacks told them that it was because of the attacks that had killed innocent civilians.

It's almost like we can't, or just plan refuse, to acknowledge reality. When one goes around the world bombing the shit out of people, they will get pissed and sooner or later will bomb your back. (Blowback)

We should have learned that lesson years ago, but I reckon there's not much profit in it. Who would our arms manufacturers sell all their weapons too?

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So will she align with Turkey, and screw over the Kurds. Or align with the Kurds and screw over Turkey. Invading Syria will give her some excuse to say Iranian troops and Hezbollah are shooting American soldiers, and thus she is compelled to bomb Iran and parts of Lebanon. Not sure what Russians will do--maybe leave and just watch Hillary send troops to fight in Syira, Iraq, and Iran. Maybe send in troops to Ukraine also. I go by what Gates said about bombing Libay to Hillary to the effect of "let's finish one war before starting another". She has no judgement, nor restraint.

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Erdoğan wants to convert Turkey to an Islamic "Republic" which follows Sharia Law.

Erdoğan has embraced the Islamic part but long ago dispensed with democracy. It might have sounded bombastic even a year ago, but as the new constitution takes shape, perhaps it is time to consider whether Turkey, in its second century, will be an Islamic republic.
-Mewsweek, 4/27/16

“The reality is that Turkey is neither a democracy nor a secular republic,” said Yuce Kabakci, a pastor in Istanbul. “There is no division between government affairs and religious affairs.

[snip]

Turkey, which once boasted two million Christians, has barely 120,000 now, fewer even than Iran. But what shocked people most about July 15’s attacks was how much hatred still remains after almost 10 years.

[snip]

“Turkey is like Iran in 1975,” said one Iranian in Istanbul. “I’m sure we will see it become an Islamic Republic very soon.
-Christians pay price as extreme Islam surges after attempted coup, The Daily Express, Mon, Aug 1, 2016

And the GOP thought Benghazi was big. Wait until all Christians, foeign and domestic, are openly persecuted in Turkey. It would make any Syrian investigation pale in comparison. And if these Islamists manage to steal a US nuke from Incirlik?

Oh, the Humanity!

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