U.S. about to be kicked out of much of the Middle East

Submitted by gjohnsit on Wed, 10/23/2019 - 10:04pm

Just a few days ago the plan was for the U.S. to retain control of oil and gas fields in eastern Syria and the Al Tanf base in the south. Everyone wins - except for people in Syria.
It isn't going to work out that way.

After five days of bloodshed, Turkey agreed to a temporary ceasefire at the behest of the Russians. Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan then flew to Sochi to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin, where the two agreed to a deal that benefits everyone except the U.S.

Under that deal, Turkey will stick to its newly acquired buffer zone in Northern Syria, the Kurds will be allowed to withdraw with their lives, and Assad won’t attack the Turks, who have been fighting the regime in collaboration with Syrian rebels.

And all that oil that’s in the north--Syria’s fossil fuel heartland--will go to Assad one way or another, with Russia the beneficiary with the exclusive rights to exploit Syrian oil.

IOW, the Kurds have no choice but to stand aside and let Assad take back Syria's oil.
Russia is also demanding that we leave al-Tanf as well.

That's OK because those troops are only being withdrawn to Iraq.
Or not.

U.S. forces relocating from Syria to Iraq need to exit Iraq within four weeks, according to Iraq’s defense minister.

U.S. troops “transiting” in Iraq must depart the country before moving to Kuwait, Qatar or the U.S., Iraq’s Defense Minister Najah al-Shammari told The Associated Press Wednesday after meeting with Secretary of Defense Mark Esper.

The statement comes after Iraq’s military said Tuesday that U.S. troops were not welcome to permanently stay in Iraq.

Esper, who arrived in Baghdad earlier on Wednesday, initially said over the weekend that U.S. troops would head to Iraq where they would conduct counterterrorism operations against the Islamic State. Although he said things could change, he said that was the “game plan” at the time.

But on Tuesday, Esper said during an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour that U.S. troops would “temporarily” head to Iraq before ultimately heading home. He also expressed similar sentiments to reporters later.

Thank Gawd!

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Submitted by k9disc on Wed, 10/23/2019 - 10:16pm
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The American president just gifted 2.5 billion barrels of oil to long-time Syrian enemy Bashar Al-Assad and, by default, Iran and Russia.

As far as gifts go, it was both well-received and unexpected given the ‘Deep State’ designs on Syria for years...

And all that oil that’s in the north--Syria’s fossil fuel heartland--will go to Assad one way or another

The exceptional arrogance is breathtaking. “Gifting” them their own oil... unreal.

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Submitted by joe shikspack on Wed, 10/23/2019 - 10:39pm
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@k9disc

it's all the empire's oil that god mysteriously placed under syria's sand.

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Submitted by gjohnsit on Wed, 10/23/2019 - 11:04pm

link

Trump was visibly "not impressed" by the previous efforts of the US and its allies in the stabilization of Afghanistan, Snodgrass wrote.

"Seriously, who gives a s--t about Afghanistan," Trump remarked, according to Snodgrass. "So far we're in for $7 trillion, fellas ... $7 trillion including Iraq. Worst decision ever and we're stuck with it."

link

The Pentagon recently began drawing up plans for an abrupt withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Afghanistan in case President Donald Trump surprises military leaders by ordering an immediate drawdown as he did in Syria, three current and former defense officials said.

The contingency planning is ongoing, the officials said, and includes the possibility that Trump orders all U.S. troops out of Afghanistan within weeks. Officials cautioned, however, that the planning is a precaution and there is currently no directive from the White House to pull U.S. troops out of Afghanistan.

One of the officials called it "prudent planning."

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Submitted by The Wizard on Thu, 10/24/2019 - 7:16am

It looks like the latest agreement between presidents Erdogan and Putin may resolve the quagmire in Syria. I have been reading the media in the US and out. The stories are totally at odds. Outside media is reporting that the Turks are happy that there will be a buffer zone where armed Kurds will not be allowed and where Turkey can set up resettlement cities for their millions of refugees. Apparently Turkey is willing to invest a huge amount of capital to develop this. The Kurds have been forced to reconcile with the government in Damascus, which has always been willing to assimilate and protect the Kurds. Assad will get back all of the territory of Syria to the North East and her oil fields. Russia will get to play an important role in keeping the peace and in keeping terrorists out of Russia. This part of Syria borders on Turkey, which borders on Georgia which borders on Russia, about 400 miles to Sochi.
Trump is stating that he resolved this problem and he alone. He did contribute to the solution by removing US forces. This, by the way, is the solution to resolving conflict in multiple geographic areas, Korea for instance. The US media is rehashing the lies that Assad gassed his own people, and bemoaning the fact that Assad has survived. I haven't yet heard a thank you to Russia for helping to resolve the Syrian crisis in the best way possible. Or praising President Putin for his diplomatic skills in working with various countries to pull this off. We divide the world into "good" countries and "bad" countries - the ones that are independent. We don't talk to the "bad" countries. A totally juvenile behaviour in international statesmanship.

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Submitted by Fishtroller 02 on Thu, 10/24/2019 - 11:43am

the Middle East, my spouse and I have a toast. Let them have it. They don't have the money or the man power to take over all the insanity that lives there and deal with it effectively.

And here's a bonus for all those Dems who buy the Russia interference line.... just think, Putin will be too busy to interfere in our elections and ISIS might target Russia for invasion!

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Submitted by CB on Thu, 10/24/2019 - 3:03pm
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@Fishtroller 02
once and for all, you can expect an automatic 90% decrease in the "insanity that lives there". You only need to look at conditions in these countries pre-US military involvement. It was US intervention on Israel's behalf that has turned the entire region into a hell hole. The name of the game was destabilization - it was outlined in A Clean Break.

Putin is the ONLY statesman that has been welcomed by and has personally spoken with ALL of the leaders in the region mano-a-mano - Syria, Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon, Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Iran.

A New Middle East Thanks to Putin
October 19, 2019

Peace in the Middle East is coming at us fast and we’re going to have Russian President Vladimir Putin to thank for it.

The howls of agony coming from U.S. and European foreign policy centers are deafening...
...
From the moment Putin began his intervention into Syria the U.S.’s punditocracy said he would get bogged down in a quagmire. That he couldn’t afford the coming war with entrenched ISIS fighters.

This was based on the fact that the U.S. couldn’t defeat ISIS. But that logic only held if you believed the U.S. was actually fighting ISIS which I never did. Once Russia moved into Syria it exposed the lie of ISIS’s strength.

Within days of Russian air operations beginning the Syrian Arab Army began taking large chunks of territory from U.S. and Turkish-backed rebels and from ISIS.

The turnaround was striking. And the U.S. was stunned into fumbling silence, complaining that Putin was bombing the wrong people. The efficiency of the Russian air crews was off the charts and the results on the ground spoke for themselves.
...
This isn’t revisionist history or Putin shilling here. These are facts. The Russians were turning their planes over three to four times a day at that point.

It’s clear from the way that Putin has built Russia’s military that it is designed around defense of Russia’s borders not invading or maintaining an Empire.

And that’s why Buchanan’s criticisms of Putin’s victories here ring hollow. Pat rightly points out that if Putin does craft a network of deals that bring regional peace he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.
...
The Russia/China/Iran axis has simply played the ultimate game of attrition, reading the economic and political tea leaves perfectly while executing a pan-Eurasian strategy of integration through disengagement from U.S. and U.K. financial institutions.

Russia is the only country with the unique mix of resources, geography and financial stability, thanks to its policy of de-dollarization and prudent fiscal management, that can make good on any of the promises it makes to its potential partners on the other side of the negotiating table.
...
Putin and Trump are both waiting to see who takes power in Israel. But at this point it’s clear that whoever does will finally be order-takers and no longer order-makers unless Trump is impeached and convicted.

At this point that’s the biggest wild card. And regardless of that outcome, the rest of Putin’s deft use of diplomacy and his efficient military have created a different reality for Israel, that even with a full neocon restoration post-Trump, won’t be favorable to them.

And yes, you can thank Vladimir Putin for that.

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Submitted by gjohnsit on Thu, 10/24/2019 - 3:31pm

@CB

Once Russia moved into Syria it exposed the lie of ISIS’s strength.

Within days of Russian air operations beginning the Syrian Arab Army began taking large chunks of territory from U.S. and Turkish-backed rebels and from ISIS.

The turnaround was striking. And the U.S. was stunned into fumbling silence, complaining that Putin was bombing the wrong people. The efficiency of the Russian air crews was off the charts and the results on the ground spoke for themselves.

Russia bombed al-Qaeda mostly, not ISIS.
That's why we said "Putin was bombing the wrong people". We supported al-Qaeda, not so much ISIS.
As for the "efficiency of the Russian air crews", they killed a whole lot of civilians. Just like we did.

Otherwise the article is good.

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Submitted by CB on Thu, 10/24/2019 - 4:41pm
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@gjohnsit
"Russia bombed al-Qaeda mostly, not ISIS."

Russia's first priority was to support the SAA which meant bombing the jihadis which were rapidly encroaching upon Damascus, Aleppo, Hama, Homs and other highly populated areas to give them some breathing room. But the Russians didn't ignore ISIS. They put a dramatic end to the ISIS oil convoys which put a massive dent in their financing (as well as destroying high value ISIS targets). ISIS would still be fully active in Syria if it wasn't for Russia. The US (and Israel) have been bringing their leaders out in order to protect them.

In the fight against ISIS, Russia ain’t taking no prisoners
18 Nov, 2015

The so-called Islamic State should have learned by now: they've picked a fight against the wrong guys. We have entered "take no prisoners" territory. For Russia, now all the gloves are off.
...
Putin’s message instantly turned heavy metal in the form of a massive, impressive Russian barrage over 140 Caliphate targets, delivered via 34 air-launched cutting-edge cruise missiles and furious action by Tu-160, Tu-22, and the Tu-95MC ‘Bear’ strategic bombers. This was the first time the Russian long-range strategic bomber force has been deployed since the 1980s Afghan jihad.

And there’s more coming - to be stationed in Syria; an extra deployment of 25 strategic bombers, eight Su-34 ‘Fullback’ attack aircraft, and four Su-27 ‘Flanker’ fighter jets.
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The tanker truck riddle

At the G-20 in Antalya, Putin had already, spectacularly, unveiled who contributes to Daesh’s financing – complete with “examples based on our data on the financing of different [Daesh] units by private individuals.”

The bombshell: Daesh’s cash, “as we have established, comes from 40 countries and, there are some of the G20 members among them.” It doesn’t take a Caltech genius to figure out which members. They’d better take the “you can run but you can’t hide” message seriously.

Additionally, Putin debunked - graphically – to the whole G20 the myth of a Washington seriously engaged on the fight against Daesh: “I’ve shown our colleagues photos taken from space and from aircraft which clearly demonstrate the scale of the illegal trade in oil.” He was referring to Daesh’s oil smuggling tanker truck fleet, which numbers over 1,000.
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That jihadi boot camp
...
ISIS/ISIL/Daesh was born in an American prison. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, a.k.a. Caliph Ibrahim did time there, as well as Daesh’s previous number two, Abu Muslim al-Turkmani, and most of all Daesh’s conceptualizer: Haji Bakr, a former colonel in Saddam Hussein’s Air Force.

Hardcore Salafi-jihadist meet former Ba’athist notables and find a common purpose; an offer the Pentagon could not refuse and in fact - willfully - let prosper. GWOT (the Global War on Terror), after all, is a Cheney-Rumsfeld-coined “Endless War”.

The US neocon regime change obsession ended up bolstering Daesh’s reach in Syria.

The whole process exhibits multiple ramifications of imperial folly, past and future, that can be identified like splinters from a suicide bomb; from CIA-trained/weaponized, Wahhabi-drenched mujahedeen (“Reagan’s freedom fighters”) metastasizing into ‘Al-CIAada’, to Hillary Clinton admitting Saudi Arabia is a top source of terrorist financing.

Paris 2015 – as well as Sinai 2015 – essentially is a side effect of Baghdad 2003. Putin knows it. For now, the task is to smash those mongrel imperial offspring once and for all.

Bombing runs on an enemy that uses civilians as hostages and shields in urban areas is bound to have civilian casualties - no way around that. But if you have followed the many ceasefires and busing out of the jihadis in order to minimize civilian casualties you will understand that the Russians tried their best. When have Americans done something similar? Look what they did to Raqqa. Completely obliterated the town without any concern for the civilian population.

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Submitted by gjohnsit on Thu, 10/24/2019 - 4:55pm

@CB

Russia's first priority was to support the SAA which meant bombing the jihadis which were rapidly encroaching upon Damascus, Aleppo, Hama, Homs and other highly populated areas to give them some breathing room. But the Russians didn't ignore ISIS.

You are correct in every way.
It's just that in every single example you list that was al-Qaeda, not ISIS.
In fact it was al-Nusra's success in Idlib that was what brought Russia into the war.
The ISIS exceptions that Russia engaged with were Palmyra and Deir Ezzor.

But if you have followed the many ceasefires and busing out of the jihadis in order to minimize civilian casualties you will understand that the Russians tried their best. When have Americans done something similar? Look what they did to Raqqa. Completely obliterated the town without any concern for the civilian population.

Believe me, I noticed

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Submitted by CB on Thu, 10/24/2019 - 6:13pm
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@gjohnsit
success in obliterating ISIS establishment in Syria.

Syrian Army Closes-in on the Kuweires Military Airport as the Russians Pound ISIS in East Aleppo

For the first time since the latter part of 2012, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and their allies are within 6km of the besieged Kuweires Military Airport in the Aleppo Governorate’s eastern countryside; this news comes in three days after the Syrian Armed Forces restarted their large-scale offensive in the Deir Hafer Plains.
...
The primary unit leading this massive operation in east Aleppo is the Syrian Arab Army’s “Cheetah Forces” (branch of the Tiger Forces) – they are currently under the direction of Colonel Lu’ayy Sleitan and his military advisors from the Russian Marines and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Command (IRGC).

In a matter 24 hours, the Syrian Arab Army’s Cheetah Forces – in coordination with Liwaa Imam Al-Baqeer (Imam Al-Baqeer Brigades) of the National Defense Forces (NDF) and the Russian Air Force – liberated the imperative city of Jabboul (6km from the Kuweires Military Airport) after intense firefights with the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham (ISIS).
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Much of their success at this front in east Aleppo is owed to the Russian Air Force, who can be seen directly above the advancing soldiers from the Syrian Armed Forces.
...

The Russians did a lot more damage to ISIS than the US did.

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