U.S. and Turkey trade ultimatums
Trump's promise to stop arming the Kurds in Turkey was not enough.
Turkey has called on the United States to withdraw its military personnel from northern Syria's Manbij region after announcing Ankara's plan to push Syrian Kurdish fighters from the area, according to local media.
Mevlut Cavusoglu, Turkey's foreign minister, said on Saturday that it was "necessary for them [US] to immediately withdraw from Manbij" as well as take "more concrete steps rather than words" to end its support for the Syrian Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) armed group.
Around this time last year I wrote how Manbij was destined to be a point of conflict between Turkey and the Kurds.
Turkey's proxy army to take Manbij is 10,000 strong.
In a surprise to me, the Pentagon appears to be calling Turkey's bluff.
US troops will not withdraw from Manbij, a strategically important city in northern Syria, a leading US military figure told CNN Sunday.
This means that US troops risk being caught up in Turkey's military push into northern Syria should Ankara follow through with a pledge to advance into the area.
Gen. Joseph Votel, commander of the United States Central Command, said that withdrawing US forces from Manbij is "not something we are looking into."
...
Two US defense officials told CNN earlier in January that the US military was carrying out overt patrols in the Manbij area, with the primary mission of deterring conflict.
The officials added that Turkish-backed rebels in the area regularly fire on these patrols and US forces occasionally return fire. One military official said US troops in the Manbij area had come under fire from Turkish-backed rebels "within the last week," and had returned fire in self-defense.
While the U.S. has the premier military here, we do not have significant forces in Syria. If Turkey came down on Manbij with a full-on military offensive they would sweep our forces aside, but not before killing some of them.
I predicted that Trump's War would be with Syria and/or Iran, but there's a chance here that Trump could go to war with Turkey, which I don't think anyone could have predicted.
How long will it be until they notice on TOP?
Comments
Whoa! Russia might step in and save our asses
How ironic is that?
How long until it's noticed at ToP?
If it isn't about Trump and Putin or his tweets, it will slip into oblivion. I rarely see them write anything about the wars or the number of civilians being killed by drones.
Russia is bombing the route so Turkey can't bring the army vehicles into the area? What happens if somebody gets killed? Will Turkey respond with military actions? What will we do?
What will the military tell the families if their sons get killed by Turkey? Do they even know where they have been deployed to or for what reason?
What a flustercluck!
The Washington Generals should probably sue the Democrats for copyright infringement.
Entangling Alliances + Cultural Zeitgeist = WWIII
Heh, pretty simple RealPolitik entry to war:
Russia hits Turkey's army, we respond.
Dark thought, eh?
Given the backdrop of the US Russia trade war in Arms and Petroleum, Putin as Emmanuel Goldstein, and the mad nationalist, Erdogan, I'm afraid this is a real possibility.
“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu
It's entirely possible, k9disc.
We could also be one asassination away from WW111. We do have a penchant for killing two birds with one stone.
Really dark, but not beyond the realm yada yada yada....
I can hear the MSM now.......the Russians did it, the Russians did it!
Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.
Our military forces
that have been supporting the Kurdish fighters against ISIS have also been at war with Al Qaeda forces supported by the CIA, Turkey, and the Gulf States. That's our CIA, the one at Langley, VA. That one. I sincerely hope our military wins this war against the CIA and its blood-soaked allies.
This is sad. Regardless of what side we join
we’ll be bombing ex-allies. We’ve played with and against everyone over there. Some we saw as allies not all that long ago.. This is from 5 months ago and it shows how big a cluster this was even before the Turks decided to tell us to kiss their collective fanny and go after the Kurds.
The is turning into a free-for-all with ammo.
EDIT: daw/saw
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