Category: Civil War

About 18 Years Too Late

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Joe Biden has announced that he will be withdrawing all US troops from Afghanistan by September 11, roughly 19 years and 11 months since we invaded the small Asian nation nicknamed, “The Graveyard of Empires.”

I think that “all ” in the statement is likely narrowly defined, but he has specifically eschewed basing it on the conditions on the ground, which can be manufactured by both our own military, and Pakistan’s ISI for their own benefit.

Assuming that this stands, and the soldiers are not relabeled as “Freedom Constables” ore some-such, this is good news:

President Biden will withdraw all American troops from Afghanistan over the coming months, U.S. officials said, completing the military exit by the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that drew the United States into its longest war.

The decision, which Biden is expected to announce Wednesday, will keep thousands of U.S. forces in the country beyond the May 1 exit deadline that the Trump administration negotiated last year with the Taliban, according to a senior administration official who briefed reporters Tuesday under rules of anonymity set by the White House.

While the Taliban has promised to renew attacks on U.S. and NATO personnel if foreign troops are not out by the deadline — and said in a statement it would not continue to participate in “any conference” about Afghanistan’s future until all “foreign forces” have departed — it is not clear whether the militants will follow through with the earlier threats given Biden’s plan for a phased withdrawal between now and September. The Taliban has conducted sputtering talks with the Afghan government, begun under the Trump deal, since last fall. It was also invited to an additional high-level inter-Afghan discussion in Turkey later this month.

Officially, there are 2,500 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, although the number fluctuates and is currently about 1,000 more than that. There are also up to an additional 7,000 foreign forces in the coalition there, the majority of them NATO troops.

………

The goal is to move to “zero” troops by September, the senior administration official said. “This is not conditions-based. The president has judged that a conditions-based approach . . . is a recipe for staying in Afghanistan forever. He has reached the conclusion that the United States will complete its drawdown and will remove its forces from Afghanistan before September 11th.”

About damn time.

We lost, get over it, and get the f%$# out.

Told Ya!

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Last night, I said that Syria was a clusterf%$#, and that the Turkish invasion made it worse.

Tonight, we learn that the Turks gave no warning before launching their invasion:

When Turkish ground forces delivered a lightning strike on Islamic State fighters in Syria last week, the Pentagon hailed what it described as close U.S.-Turkish coordination.

But behind the scenes, cooperation between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization partners broke down at senior levels, according to officials on both sides. The two countries weren’t as aligned on the operation as their public statements indicated.

While the White House was preparing to consider a secret plan to have American special forces join the Turks, Ankara pulled the trigger on the mission unilaterally without giving officials in Washington advance warning. When clashes started between Turkish and Syrian Kurdish fighters—who are directly backed by U.S. Special Forces—the Pentagon issued unusually blunt calls for both to stand down.

U.S. officials say the Turks’ decision undercut a behind-the-scenes effort to clear rival Syrian Kurdish elements out of the conflict zone first and created a prickly, new challenge for the U.S. as two of its most important partners in the campaign fight each other instead of Islamic State. The breakdown in coordination adds a new layer of tensions between Washington and Ankara on top of those sparked by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s crackdown since the July coup attempt in Turkey.

Officials in Washington said they warned their Turkish military counterparts Monday that the U.S. won’t provide air support to Turkish forces pushing southward, deeper into Syrian territory. The U.S. will continue to provide air support to Turkish forces moving westward, into the border area threatened by Islamic State. Likewise, U.S. officials told the Kurds that U.S. air support hinged on their forces moving east of the Euphrates River and on advancing south toward Islamic State’s self-declared capital, Raqqa, to ensure they wouldn’t come into conflict with the Turks, according to the officials. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said Monday that the Kurdish forces had begun to move eastward, easing the friction between the two sides.

(emphasis mine)

Just lovely. More clusterf%$#s in the Levant.

You have Jihadis, a Turkish president who makes Charles deGaulle look humble trying to reinstate the Ottoman Caliphate, the antediluvian kleptocratic Persian Gulf monarchies, which are terrified at both the possibility of a successful secular Arab state and any non-Sunni regime, you have the Iranians trying to protect the Shia across the Arab world, the Russians trying to preserve an allied government, and the US both supporting and opposing pretty much all these elements.

All the while, the refugees created by this situation is destabilizing both the EU and NATO,

Like I said, a complete clusterf%$#.

So, We Are Bombing ISIS, and Supporting the Kurds, and a Group That Was Al Qaeda, Which Is Fighting the Kurds………

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And now our NATO “ally” Turkey has invades Syria to fight the Kurds and support ISIS and the group that was al Qaeda.

This is completely f%$#ed up:

In recent years, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ordered plans drawn up for a Turkish military incursion into Syria. At every turn, though, military commanders, already fighting a war inside Turkey against Kurdish militants, pushed back.

And then last month a rebel faction of the military tried to stage a coup, and that changed everything.

In the aftermath of the coup, which failed but claimed more than 200 lives, Mr. Erdogan purged thousands of officers from the ranks, leaving the military seemingly depleted. It also provoked worry from Western allies, including the United States, that Turkey would either be unwilling or unable to be a reliable partner in the fight against the Islamic State.

Instead, the opposite happened on Wednesday, as Mr. Erdogan ordered Turkish tanks and special forces soldiers into Syria, under cover of American and Turkish warplanes, to assist Syrian rebels in seizing the city of Jarabulus, one of the last border strongholds of the Islamic State.

More Turkish tanks rumbled into northern Syria on Thursday to support rebels there, and the Turkish military seemed to be succeeding in clearing the border area of Islamic State militants, and preventing Kurdish militias from seizing more territory in the region — a primary goal of Turkey in the campaign.

The operation, coming so soon after the failed coup, has highlighted how Mr. Erdogan, even after the purge, secured more operational control of the military. It allowed him to undertake Turkey’s most ambitious role yet in the long Syrian civil war and to bolster the flagging fortunes of rebel groups, of which Turkey has been one of the most consistent supporters.

Other factors holding back Turkey’s ambitions in Syria were also recently resolved. A feud with Russia, which began last year after Turkey shot down a Russian warplane near the border, ended after Mr. Erdogan expressed regret for the episode. After Ankara’s relations with Moscow deteriorated, a Turkish incursion into Syria could have risked war with Russia, which has been bombing rebels in support of the Syrian government. And the United States, which had previously been opposed to Turkey’s intervention, agreed to support it.

Seriously.  This is f%$#ed up and sh%$.

We are supporting sides at war with each other and our allies are supporting different sides that are fighting each other.

The only foreign powers with a coherent policy are Iran and Russia, they both support Assad, which is truly scary.

And Not a Peep from the Nobel Peace Prize Winner

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In response to massive and indiscriminate bombings of civilian targets in Yemen by the Gulf States, there was a massive march in Yemen’s capital, Sana’a.

So, the Saudis bombed them:

The Houthi Ansarullah Movement that controls most of north and west Yemen staged what was by all accounts an enormous demonstration in the capital of Sanaa on Saturday. It may have been the single largest demonstration in the country’s history. While it was unlikely actually to have involved a million people, it did probably tens of thousands, and it showed how strong grassroots support for the Houthis is in the north.

The massive demonstration in Sab`in Park in downtown Sanaa was intended to send a signal to Saudi Arabia and its coalition that the Houthis are enormously popular in the north and that the General People’s Congress, the parliament of Yemen in its present form, shares in that popularity.

If so, Saudi Arabia did not get that message. Its fighter-bombers targeted downtown Sanaa in the midst of the demonstration, which arguably was a war crime (you aren’t allowed to endanger large numbers of civilians in war if you don’t have to). The Saudis are at war with rebel supporters of the Houthis, whom Saudi Arabian inaccurately depicts as a cat’s paw of Iran.

I get that they have a lot of oil, but the House of Saud is arguably the worst government, and their war in Yemen is destabilizing the region, creating a humanitarian catastrophe, and making the United States less secure.

Our support for the House of Saud is worse than a crime, it is a mistake.

Russia Pulls Out of Iranian Air Base

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The airstrike from Iran was was intended to serve a diplomatic purpose, not a military one:

The Russian military said on Monday its aircraft operating from an Iranian air base to conduct strikes in Syria had completed their tasks, but left open the possibility of using the Hamadan base again if circumstances warranted.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry said Russia had stopped using the base for strikes in Syria, bringing an abrupt halt to an unprecedented deployment that was criticized both by the White House and by some Iranian lawmakers.

“Russian military aircraft that took part in the operation of conducting air strikes from Iran’s Hamadan air base on terrorist targets in Syria have successfully completed all tasks,” a Russian Defence Ministry spokesman, Major-General Igor Konashenkov, said in a statement.

“Further use of the Hamadan air base in the Islamic Republic of Iran by the Russian Aerospace Forces will be carried out on the basis of mutual agreements to fight terrorism and depending on the prevailing circumstances in Syria,” Konashenkov said.

While the use of the recent use of the Hamedan air base in Iran  might be more convenient than flying from Russian bases, there is very little military utility for a one off deployment like this.

This was a demonstration by Iran and Russia of a changes in the Middle East order, and it certainly has folks at the Pentagon and Foggy Bottom sitting up and noticing.

And the Middle East Gets Even More Pear Shaped………

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Today in an interview, Yemen’s former president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, the guy who got deposed by the guy that the House of Saud is supporting, just said that Russia can have access to all of Yemen’s facilities:

In a TV interview today, Yemen’s ex-president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, appeared to invite Russian military intervention in the country’s conflict. He talked of reactivating old Yemeni agreements with the Soviet Union and offfered “all the facilities” of Yemen’s bases, ports and airports to Russia.

Saleh seemed to be advocating something similar to what happened in Syria, where Russia and Iran joined the conflict on the Assad regime’s side under the guise of fighting terrorism. A video of the interview is here, with a transcript in Arabic here.

Saleh, who was ousted from the presidency in 2012, is allied to the Houthis who currently control the Yemeni capital and large parts of the country, especially in the north. For more than a year Saudi-led forces, who back Saleh’s exiled successor, Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, have been bombing Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen. Meanwhile the Houthis, who have some Iranian backing, have attacked Saudi territory in the border area.

………

“We extend our hands to Russia. We have agreements with the Russian Federation which were with the Soviet Union. The legitimate heir to the Soviet Union is the Russian Federation, we are ready to activate these treaties and agreements that were between us and the Soviet Union.

“We agree on a principle, which is the struggle against terrorism … We extend our hands and offer all the facililties, and the conventions and treaties … We offer them in our bases, in our airports and in our ports – ready to provide all facilities to the Russian Federation.”

The most recent negotiations broke down, which is not a surprise, since the only offer on the table was unconditional and complete surrender by the Houthis.

I don’t expect Russia to take up this offer, but once again, our “Allies” in the Middle East find a way to make a conflict a complete cock up.

This is Getting Insane

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We are now scrambling jets to defend its allies in Syria against the Assad regime:

U.S. fighter jets scrambled to eastern Syria this week when Syrian bombers attacked in the vicinity of American and coalition Special Operations forces working with Kurdish and Arab opposition fighters, the Pentagon said Friday.

The unprecedented incident, near the Syrian city of Hasakah, did not result in a direct confrontation or any injury to U.S. or coalition forces.

But it illustrated the increasingly tense and ambiguous Syrian battlefield, where aircraft and ground troops from multiple countries — with multiple agendas and loyalties — are fighting overlapping wars.

Following the initial Thursday incident, the coalition began “actively patrolling the airspace nearby,” a Defense Department official said. Early Friday, “two Syrian SU-24 aircraft attempted to transit the area and were met by coalition fighter aircraft,” which “encouraged” the Syrians to depart “without further incident,” said the official, who spoke on a Pentagon-imposed condition of anonymity.

The Syrian military, engaged in a five-year civil conflict, has generally given a wide berth to U.S. aircraft targeting the Islamic State, as have Russian jets aiding their Syrian ally. But local fighters being assisted by U.S. Special Operations forces on the ground are often opposed to both the Islamic State and the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

………

Marine Maj. Adrian Rankine-Galloway said that the Syrian strikes targeted Kurdish forces in Hasakah on Thursday. Social-media reports indicated that several Kurds were killed in the bombing.

U.S. forces initially contacted Russia, using “deconfliction” channels established to ensure that Russian and U.S. planes over Syria avoid each other, but were told that the bombers in question were not Russian. Ground forces received no response to attempts to contact the planes through a recognized radio channel.

The United States then launched a “combat air patrol,” Rankine-Galloway said. It arrived in the area as the Syrian Su-24 ground-attack aircraft were leaving. While he would not specify from where the U.S. aircraft were launched, the United States maintains a contingent of F-15 fighter jets at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey.

So, now the Syrians are bombing the Kurds.

My guess is that this is a result of the recent Turkish and Russian rapprochement:  The Turks see any form of Kurdish state as an existential threat to their state, and so the Syrian attacks on Kurdish positions are likely an artifact of this.

The US is clearly unamused by this development, since there are reports that fighters sent to intercept the Syrian aircraft was an F-22, probably because they were concerned about Syrian and Russian SAMs.

The US forces are in a bit of a bind though, because the Turks are implacably opposed to any Kurdish autonomous regions.

The only way the US wins this game is not to play.

Well, Our Adventure in Syria is Working So Well

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In addition to flying missions from the Khmeimim Air Base in Latakia, Russia is now flying missions from against Isis from Syria as well:

Russian warplanes on Tuesday flew out from an Iranian air base to conduct strikes against jihadist groups in war-torn Syria, the defense ministry in Moscow said.

The raids are the first Russia has reported carrying out from a base in Iran since the Kremlin launched its Syrian bombing campaign in support of long-time ally Bashar Assad last September.

“On August 16 Tu-22M3 long-range bombers and Su-34 frontline bombers, flying with a full bomb load from the Hamedan air base (Islamic Republic of Iran), conducted a group air strike against targets of the Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra terrorist groups in the provinces of Aleppo, Deir Ezzor and Idlib,” the ministry said in a statement.

The strikes resulted in the destruction of “five large warehouses with weapons, ammunition and fuel” and jihadist training camps near Aleppo, Deir Ezzor, the village of Saraqeb in the Idlib region and Al-Bab, an IS-held town in Aleppo province, the statement said.

First, this means that Iran and Russia military ties have become significantly tighter.

What this also means is that Iraq allowed their aircraft to transit their airspace, which also says something about the direction of that nation’s foreign policy.

Yeah, that whole Syrian adventure of ours is bearing such wonderful fruit.

F%$# Me. I Agree with Rand Paul.

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I guess that we file this under that even a stopped clock is right twice a day, because Senator Aqua Buddha is opposing the massive arms sale to Saudi Arabia because of their indiscriminate brutality in Yemen:

Citing concerns over Saudi Arabia’s human rights record, Republican Senator Rand Paul says he’s looking for ways to stop a $1.15 billion weapons deal with Riyadh that would include the sale of 130 Abrams battle tanks, 20 armored vehicles, and other military equipment.

Paul’s pledge comes as Saudi Arabia resumed its bombardment of the Yemeni capital of Sanaa following the collapse of peace talks in Kuwait between representatives of the government and the Iran-backed Houthi rebels.

“I will work with a bipartisan coalition to explore forcing a vote on blocking this sale,” Paul told Foreign Policy in a statement. “Saudi Arabia is an unreliable ally with a poor human rights record. We should not rush to sell them advanced arms and promote an arms race in the Middle East.”

Humanitarian organizations are criticizing the proposed weapons sale as a setback for efforts to bring pressure on Riyadh to throttle back its military campaign. The U.N. estimates that at least 6,400 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in the conflict while more than 2.8 million have been displaced from their homes.

He’s right.

Saudi Arabia provided support for the 911 bombers, and they created ISIS.

They are not our allies, and we should not be helping them in Yemen, which, among other things, has resulted in a massive increase in the power of al Qaeda in that nation.

Remember When I Suggested That Some Hillary Supporters Were a Bit ……… Hinky?

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Well, former acting CIA Director Michael Morell, who wants very much to be the next CIA Director, who recently endorsed Hillary Clinton, is calling for the assassination of Russians and Iranians in Syria:

Former acting CIA Director Michael Morell said in an interview Monday that U.S. policy in Syria should be to make Iran and Russia “pay a price” by arming local groups and instructing them to kill Iranian and Russian personnel in the country.

Morell was appearing on the Charlie Rose show on PBS in the wake of his publicly endorsing Hillary Clinton on the New York Times opinion pages.

Clinton has expressed support for increased military intervention in Syria against Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian government. Iran and Russia are backing Assad.

“What they need is to have the Russians and Iranians pay a little price,” Morell said. “When we were in Iraq, the Iranians were giving weapons to the Shia militia, who were killing American soldiers, right? The Iranians were making us pay a price. We need to make the Iranians pay a price in Syria. We need to make the Russians pay a price.”

Morell said the killing of Russians and Iranians should be undertaken “covertly, so you don’t tell the world about it, you don’t stand up at the Pentagon and say ‘we did this.’ But you make sure they know it in Moscow and Tehran.”

Morell also proposed that U.S. forces begin bombing Syrian government installations, including government offices, aircraft and presidential guard positions. The former acting CIA director said that he wanted to “scare Assad.” Morell clarified that he wasn’t actually calling for Assad’s assassination.

………

Morell’s endorsement of Clinton was quickly seen as a sign that he was interested in a role in a possible Clinton administration. He wrote that Clinton would be a “highly qualified commander in chief” and a “strong proponent of a more aggressive approach” to the conflict in Syria.

………

This weekend, Hillary Clinton touted Morell’s endorsement on her Twitter page:

“She will deliver on the most important duty of a president—keeping our nation safe.” —Michael Morell on Hillary https://t.co/zmI3BOCH9Y

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) August 7, 2016

Anyone can say that they endorse you, but the fact that you are touting the endorsement of this Fruitloop does engender confidence in your judgement.

When Donald F%$#ing Trump can make an argument that he is the peace candidate, you are doing something seriously wrong.

I Did Not Expect This from This Circuit

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The full court of appeals for the 5th circuit just suspended most of Texas’ voter suppression law:

A federal appeals court ruled Wednesday that Texas’s strict voter-ID law discriminates against minority voters, and it ordered a lower court to come up with a fix for the law in time for the November elections.

 The full U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, one of the most conservative in the country, declined to strike down the law completely but said provisions must be made to allow those who lack the specific ID the law requires to be able to cast a vote.

 Nine of the 15 appellate judges who heard the case generally upheld a district court’s finding that 600,000 people, disproportionately minorities, lack the specific kind of identification required — a driver’s license, military ID, passport or weapons permit, among them — and that it would be difficult for many to secure it.

 African American, Hispanic and poor voters were most likely to be affected, the court found.

 ………

 “It would be untenable to permit a law with a discriminatory effect to remain in operation” for the coming election, wrote U.S. Circuit Judge Catharina Haynes for the majority, made of up five judges nominated by Democratic presidents and four nominated by Republicans.

This is good news and responsible Jurisprudence.

You don’t generally get that from the 5th circuit, which can give the late Antonin Scalia a run for his money on bile inspired craziness.

Truth be told, the dissent took it to a level that would have made “Fat Tony” feel inadequate:

“By keeping this latter claim alive, the majority fans the flames of perniciously irresponsible racial name-calling,” wrote Judge Edith J. Jones. She compared the majority with “Area 51 alien enthusiasts who, lacking any real evidence, espied a vast but clandestine government conspiracy to conceal the ‘truth.’”

I could make a statement about her choking on her own bile, but ……… Hell, she is showing signs of spiritual bile toxicity.  It’s undeniable.

Well, this is Reassuring

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Did you know that there is a bunker at Incirlik air base that contains dozens of nuclear weapons?

With the attempted coup and other recent developments in Turkey, this fills me with a sense of dread:

The U.S. and NATO face serious questions about the wisdom of stationing nuclear weapons in Turkey after commanders at Incirlik air base, which houses potentially as many as 50 B61 thermonuclear weapons, were implicated in the attempted overthrow of President Recep Erdogan.

………

Incirlik is located outside of Adana in southern Turkey, just 100 nm from the so-called Islamic State terrorist group’s headquarters in Aleppo, Syria. Since Turkey agreed to allow counter-Islamic State air operations from the base one year ago, it has become an epicenter for attacking ground targets within Syria.

Now, as Erdogan “purges” his military and police ranks of opposition elements, and as the commander of Incirlik is arrested and replaced, how does America reconcile the fact that a longstanding NATO ally lost control of its military with U.S.-owned nuclear weapons in the mix?

“I can’t remember another time when a base where the U.S. has nuclear weapons was directly involved in a coup, and also where the host government cut off the ability to operate in and out of the base,” says Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists. “The physical protection of the weapons is not the issue because they have their own security unit and backup power, but it’s a precarious situation that requires the U.S. to rethink why it has nuclear weapons in Turkey. The situation is so unique, and it’s evolving so rapidly that this is just not a place you want to have nuclear weapons deployed.”

As an FYI, the B-61 is a “dial bomb”, and it’s yield can vary from 0.3 to 360 kilotons.

And it’s in a country that just had a violent attempted coup which is run by a paranoid megalomaniac who has been given carte blanch by the attempted coup.

Pleasant dreams.

The Coup Fizzles, and Things in Turkey got Worse

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Now the coup has been put down, the crackdown on innocent members of the opposition begins:

Turkey widened a crackdown on suspected supporters of a failed military coup on Sunday, taking the number of people rounded up in the armed forces and judiciary to 6,000, and the government said it was in control of the country and economy.

 President Tayyip Erdogan and the government accused the U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, a former ally whom Erdogan accuses of trying to create a “parallel structure” within the courts, police, armed forces and media, of orchestrating the coup.

 Erdogan’s supporters of gathered in front of his Istanbul home to call for the plotters to face the death penalty, which Turkey outlawed in 2004 as part of its efforts to join the European Union.

 ………

 With expectations growing of a heavy clampdown on dissent, European politicians warned Erdogan the coup attempt did not give him a blank cheque to disregard the rule of law, and that he risked isolating himself internationally as he strengthens his position at home.

 Broadcaster NTV cited Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag as saying more arrests were expected.

 By Sunday evening, authorities had rounded up nearly 3,000 suspected military plotters, ranging from top commanders to foot soldiers, and the same number of judges and prosecutors after forces loyal to Erdogan crushed the attempted coup on Saturday.

Arresting 3000 judges and prosecutors?

Tell me that Erdogan is not using this an excuse to further buttress his his grip on power.

It also looks like he’s going to use the events of this past weekend in an attempt to blackmail the US into extraditing a political opponent of his living in exile in Pennsylvania:

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, newly emboldened after crushing a coup attempt, is testing his country’s key defense relationship by demanding the U.S. turn over a cleric he accuses of inspiring the uprising.

Erdogan on Sunday repeated his challenge to the U.S. to extradite Fethullah Gulen, an Islamic preacher who lives in exile in rural Pennsylvania, as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry balanced comments about considering such a request with criticizing the Turks for implying the U.S. had involvement in the coup attempt.

“If we’re strategic partners, I’m saying, carry through on your strategic partner’s request,” Erdogan said in Istanbul. “When you wanted a terrorist, we delivered him to you. Now we’re saying deliver this guy who’s on our terrorist list to us.”

………

An immediate point of tension in the partnership was resolved Sunday when the U.S. resumed flights out of Incirlik Air Base, a staging point for the fight against Islamic State in both Syria and Iraq, according to Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook. Operations at Incirlik were halted Saturday after the Turkish government closed its airspace to military aircraft and cut off commercial power to the base, which hosts about 1,500 American military personnel and aircraft.

………

“You have to begin to be concerned that if the U.S. continues to resist the extradition request and other requirements, would the Turkish government restrict use of Incirlik, would they start impacting our operations against ISIS,” said Heather Conley, director of the Europe Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “They are a crucial ally — the location is very, very important, but they have been an extremely challenging ally to work with.”

Kerry said Turkey would have to submit a formal request for extradition and prove its accusations. “Give us the evidence, show us the evidence,” he said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” program.

………

The chances of the U.S. extraditing Gulen, who has lived in the country for nearly 20 years, are slim, said Brett Bruen, a former official in Obama’s National Security Council and now president of the Global Situation Room consulting firm.

“I don’t see a scenario at the moment at least in which he is extradited to Turkey,” Bruen said. “The evidence that has been presented that he was somehow behind this coup is still not there. And obviously there would be very real concerns about what would befall him if he were turned over to Turkish authorities.”

This has turned into a complete clusterf%$#.

There is an Ongoing Coup Attempt in Turkey

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There is Civilian Resistance

As is frequently the case, the picture of what is going on is unclear:


A military coup attempt plunged Turkey into a long night of violence and intrigue on Friday, threatening its embattled president and injecting new instability into a crucial NATO member and American ally in the chaotic Middle East.

The coup attempt was followed hours later by an equally dramatic public appearance by the president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose whereabouts was unknown for hours after the plotters claimed to have taken control. Flying into Istanbul Ataturk Airport from an undisclosed location early Saturday, Mr. Erdogan signaled the coup was failing.

“A minority within the armed forces has unfortunately been unable to stomach Turkey’s unity,” Mr. Erdogan said, after the private NTV television channel showed him greeting supporters. Blaming political enemies, Mr. Erdogan said: “What is being perpetrated is a rebellion and a treason. They will pay a heavy price for their treason to Turkey.”

There were indications that the coup’s leaders, at a minimum, did not have a tight grip on many parts of the country. Supporters of Mr. Erdogan took to the streets of Istanbul to oppose the coup’s plotters. More than 130 people have been arrested in connection with the coup attempt, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said in comments to CNN Turk.

Nonetheless, the abrupt turn of events in Turkey left Mr. Erdogan’s grip on power uncertain. The country has been reeling from a wave of deadly extremism by the Islamic State militant group, struggling to accommodate hundreds of thousands of refugees from the war in neighboring Syria and fighting a resurgent Kurdish rebellion in the Turkish southeast.

Martial law was declared in the country, which has been convulsed by military takeovers at least three times in the past half-century. Mr. Erdogan, an Islamist who has dominated politics for more than a decade and sought to exert greater control over the armed forces, was forced to use his iPhone’s FaceTime app from a secret location to broadcast messages beseeching the public to resist the coup attempt.

Erdogan has been a disaster for Turkey and the Middle East:  He has systematically dismantled the already meager protections of civil rights in Turkey, and has (at least until recently) been a supporter, along with the House of Saud of the Islamic State terrorist group.

Additionally, he has taken to stoking ethnic tensions with the Kurds, and re-initiated operations in Kurdish regions that is brutal even by the standards of the Turkish-Kurdish convlict.

If he were to leave the political stage it would be a good thing for pretty much everyone who has to deal with him.

On the other hand, a coup d’etat by the military is not a good thing.

There is no upside to this.

This Fetish with “Freedumb Bomz” Is Becoming Tiresome

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It turns that for much of the State Department, the lesson to be learned from the disaster that is Iraq, where we used violence to institute regime change, and the disaster that is Libya, where we used violence to institute regime change, and the disaster that is Syria, where our support for Saudi and Turkish use of violence to institute regime change, is yet more violence to institute regime change:

Robert S. Ford, a former ambassador to Syria, said, “Many people working on Syria for the State Department have long urged a tougher policy with the Assad government as a means of facilitating arrival at a negotiated political deal to set up a new Syrian government.”

Mr. Ford, who is now a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, resigned from the Foreign Service in 2014 out of frustration with the administration’s hands-off policy toward the conflict.

In the memo, the State Department officials wrote that the Assad government’s continuing violations of the partial cease-fire, known as a cessation of hostilities, will doom efforts to broker a political settlement because Mr. Assad will feel no pressure to negotiate with the moderate opposition or other factions fighting him. The government’s barrel bombing of civilians, it said, is the “root cause of the instability that continues to grip Syria and the broader region.”

“The moral rationale for taking steps to end the deaths and suffering in Syria, after five years of brutal war, is evident and unquestionable,” it said. “The status quo in Syria will continue to present increasingly dire, if not disastrous, humanitarian, diplomatic and terrorism-related challenges.”

The memo acknowledged that military action would have risks, not the least further tensions with Russia, which has intervened in the war on Mr. Assad’s behalf and helped negotiate a cease-fire. Those tensions increased on Thursday when, according to a senior Pentagon official, Russia conducted airstrikes in southern Syria against American-backed forces fighting the Islamic State.

The State Department officials insisted in their memo that they were not “advocating for a slippery slope that ends in a military confrontation with Russia,” but rather a credible threat of military action to keep Mr. Assad in line.

Because declaring war on the Assad regime, and their Russian allies is clearly the road to peace.

In this case, the memo mainly confirms what has been clear for some time: The State Department’s rank and file have chafed at the White House’s refusal to be drawn into the conflict in Syria.

Because there is something clearly wrong about not going to war in a country with little or no strategic significance because we do not like the guy in charge.

Hey, it doesn’t matter that all the military forces, excepting the Kurds, who oppose Assad are affiliated with either ISIS or al Qaeda, or that the Kurds are being bombed by our “allies” the Turks, who are supporting ISIS, the solution to the problem is clearly more war.

Let’s also be clear that this sort of unilateral action, which absent a security council resolution would be illegal under international law, would likely entail a response from the Syrians with significant Russian aid, which is their right under international law.

The “Moar Bomz” crowd have a 3 decade long record of failure.  Perhaps it is time to tell them to shut the f%$# up and get another job in a different industry.

They need to be asking, “Do you want fries with that,” for a living.

Operation Ridiculous Clusterf%$#

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Speaking of US military, intelligence, and foreign policy failures, it appears that our efforts to overthrow Assad are failing, in part because CIA’s and the Pentagon’s proxies are literally at war with each other:

Two Department of Defense officials told The Daily Beast that they are not eager to support the rebels in the city of Aleppo because they’re seen as being affiliated with al Qaeda in Syria, or Jabhat al Nusra. The CIA, which supports those rebel groups, rejects that claim, saying alliances of convenience in the face of a mounting Russian-led offensive have created marriages of battlefield necessity, not ideology.

“It is a strange thing that DoD hall chatter mimics Russian propaganda,” one U.S. official, who supports the intelligence community position, wryly noted to Pentagon claims that the opposition and Nusra are one in the same.

But even if the rebels were completely separated from Nusra, there would still be something of a strategic conflict with U.S. military goals. The rebels in Aleppo, these Pentagon officials note, are fighting the Bashar al-Assad regime; the American military effort, on the other hand, is primarily about defeating the self-proclaimed Islamic State.

………

The intelligence community, which backed opposition forces in Aleppo, believes ISIS cannot be defeated as long as Assad is in power. The terror group, they say, thrives in unstable territories. And only local forces—like the ones backed by the CIA—can mitigate that threat.

………

“The U.S. has two isolated programs that are not mutually supporting each other and are actually sometimes at odds with each other,” said Jennifer Cafarella, a Syria analyst at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War.

Following the lead of the House of Saud, and allowing the CIA to engage in its regime change fantasies are no way to run a foreign policy.

That’s Gotta Be Driving the Turks Crazy

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Green Berets assisting the Kurds in Syria are wearing Kurdish militia insignia on their uniforms:

Photos have emerged of American special operations troops in Syria wearing uniform insignia affiliated with a Kurdish rebel group known as the YPG, whose connection to Turkish terrorists could could fuel tension between the U.S. and a key ally in the Islamic State fight.

The images were taken in a village about 40 miles north of the Islamic State group’s self-declared capital of Raqqa, which is the target of a newly announced offensive being led by a disparate group of Kurdish and Arab fighters, and backed by American military advisers and air support. They highlight the complicated network of alliances the U.S. is trying to forge in Syria, and the ethnic and sectarian tensions that could tear apart this fragile coalition.

Speaking Thursday, a top Pentagon official said it’s fairly common for Green Berets and other operators to wear allies’ patches.

This has got to be putting some kinks in Erdogan’s mustache.

This is a Big F%$# You to Turkey

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Russia may be reducing its military presence in Syria, but they have started shipping weapons to the Kurds.

That sound you hear is the sound of Turkish heads exploding:

Russia delivered the first of five planned shipments of anti-aircraft weapons to Kurdish troops in northern Iraq. According to Russian experts, Moscow officially revealed this fact for the first time with the intention to change its Middle East policy and emphasize the importance of the Kurds in the region.

In Iraq arrived first shipment of Russian weapons to Kurdish volunteer movement “Peshmerga”, who fight against the “Islamic state” terrorist organization in the region. Senior officials of the Russian Foreign Ministry handed over anti-aircraft weapons ZU-23-2 (23 mm caliber) to the forces of resistance.

„Shipment of weapons arrived on March 14. It is intended for Peshmerga in Iraqi Kurdistan. At the handover of weapons was held with the presense of Ambassador and Consul General of Russia in Iraq, and Deputy Chief of Staff of “Peshmerga”, RIA Novosti quoted Artjomova Grigorjan, attaché of the Russian general consulate in the Iraqi city of Erbil.

According to him, the parties discuss the further delivery of the weapons. “After the handover of weapons Russian ambassador said that this is not the last delivery. He stressed that Russia hopes “Peshmerga” and the Iraqi armed forces will use this weapon to win against “Islamic state”, said the Russian attaché.

Do not confuse the ZU-23-2 with the ZSU23-4 radar guided self-propelled antiaircraft system.

The ZU is optically guided towed system.

In a modern battlefield, its antiaircraft capabilities are limited, but it is relative mobile and capable in a surface to surface mode.

More importantly, it implies that the Russians might be willing to send more capable surface to air systems, such as the ZSU, or surplus SA-6 or SA-8 systems, which they could  use against Turkish air strikes.

Let the shrieks or outrage from Ankara begin.