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Trump orders rapid withdrawal from Syria in apparent reversal

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zinfamous said:
It is, but don't you think that is designed to really stick in Trump's Craw?
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At first it pissed me off, then I thought about it for a moment and realized it actually is about the worst thing you could say to Trump about his "policy". In quotes cause I have a feeling no one knows what that is.
 
dank69 said:
I am willing to bet his actual base wants us to GTFO of the ME. He campaigned on it. A list of campaign promises very recently made the rounds in the media and I wouldn't be surprised if Trump reacted to that without consulting anyone other than a few of his racist advisers like Miller who only give a shit about domestic policy.
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What I recall from the campaign was him saying we need to focus on ISIS, not on ousting Assad. Yet we haven't defeated ISIS yet as he now claims.

If his base really wants to to GTFO the ME, then why criticize Obama for "leaving Iraq too soon." Now Trump wants to leave a significant remnant of both ISIS and AQ in Syria. Conservatives want us killing these radical Muslims, not pulling out.

Even if this really is a campaign promise and really is what his base wants, he can deliver on it in a year. No need to do it now.

So far no other explanation makes sense to me except this:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/20/world/europe/putin-trump-syria.html
 
woolfe9998 said:
What I recall from the campaign was him saying we need to focus on ISIS, not on ousting Assad. Yet we haven't defeated ISIS yet as he now claims.

If his base really wants to to GTFO the ME, then why criticize Obama for "leaving Iraq too soon."
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Conservatives these days aren't exactly known for their consistency.

Now Trump wants to leave a significant remnant of both ISIS and AQ in Syria. Conservatives want us killing these radical Muslims, not pulling out.
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Trump's base, I mean his real, die hard base, does not want us wasting money killing brown people halfway across the planet. If we were getting the kills over there for free, then great, but we can get a lot more kills locally focusing on immigration and establishing white authoritarianism. Plus, think of all the brown people we can deport back to the ME where they can all kill each other!

Even if this really is a campaign promise and really is what his base wants, he can deliver on it in a year. No need to do it now.
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But the TV said yesterday that he failed to keep this promise, and god dammit it's only because he forgot about it and now that the TV said it, it is top priority and since we don't care one single shred about what happens over there it is an easy win to just pull everything out now. If he waits a year then people might say "hey he must have forgotten and only started working on it when the TV mentioned it" but if he does it now he can claim he has been working on it all along and here are the fruits of his big brain.

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So far no other explanation makes sense to me except this:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/20/world/europe/putin-trump-syria.html
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Of course I am exaggerating here a tiny bit and he is probably just doing as Lord Putin wants.
 
zinfamous said:
Oh I agree. Graham deserves absolutely no quarter for anything. I'm just saying that if the intent was to piss off Trump, I bet he succeeded.
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He did, but then that doesn't require much effort with a low IQ snowflake like Trump. I just wish that corrupt southern belle Graham could have expended just a little effort to enlighten us. All those times Obama cut State and Defense out of the loop entirely, while conducting troop deployments via twitter. Obama didn't shit on our allies like this, and he sure as hell didn't check off Putin's wish list like dipshit continually does. Looks like Putin, in addition to getting sanctions lifted, gets the oilfields in the East and it won't cost him any more mercenaries.

My heartfelt apologies to the peshmerga. They deserve better, as do our troops. "Bringing them home" is fine, but you do that when the job is done. And now, even the Brits and French are questioning how much American resolve and words are worth. If I had my druthers there would be a relocation program similar for what we did with the Hmong in effect right now.

What a shitshow, just like Helsinki.
 
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Donald - "Does the USA want to be the Policeman of the Middle East, getting NOTHING but spending precious lives and trillions of dollars protecting others who, in almost all cases, do not appreciate what we are doing? Do we want to be there forever? Time for others to finally fight"....

This is literally the only thing Trump has EVER said, in the right circumstances that I could actually somewhat agree with...
 
VRAMdemon said:
Donald - "Does the USA want to be the Policeman of the Middle East, getting NOTHING but spending precious lives and trillions of dollars protecting others who, in almost all cases, do not appreciate what we are doing? Do we want to be there forever? Time for others to finally fight"....

This is literally the only thing Trump has EVER said, in the right circumstances that I could actually somewhat agree with...
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For starters, we basically are the ones responsible for ISIS. I know he doesn't give a flying fuck about responsibility, but some people do. And uh, get nothing in return? Didn't the dumbass tout a like hundred billion dollar arms deal with Saudi Arabia? Didn't they invest several billion dollars in American countries recently? Does he realize Israel is in the Middle East? For others to finally fight? WTF? He does realize that every time we've been involved others have been as well and that we were there literally training others to fight?

Then there's bullshit like that when he wants unquestioned support of Saudi Arabia and Israel. They're literally trying to legislate the latter.
 
kage69 said:
He did, but then that doesn't require much effort with a low IQ snowflake like Trump. I just wish that corrupt southern belle Graham could have expended just a little effort to enlighten us on those times when Obama cut State and Defense out of the loop entirely, while conducting troop deployments via twitter. Obama didn't shit on our allies like this, and he sure as hell didn't check off Putin's wish list like dipshit continually does. Looks like Putin, in addition to getting sanctions lifted, gets the oilfields in the East and it won't cost him any more mercenaries.

My heartfelt apologies to the peshmerga. They deserve better, as do our troops. "Bringing them home" is fine, but you do that when the job is done. And now, even the Brits and French are questioning how much American resolve and words are worth. If I had my druthers there would be a relocation program similar for what we did with the Hmong in effect right now.

What a shitshow, just like Helsinki.
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Graham could grow a backbone instead of being the cowtowing blustering bitch he is. But we know that won't happen.

Since they've stayed through multiple genocides, I'd guess that the Kurds don't want to leave (let alone to go to America where our own fucking President has made it clear they are not wanted). That's why they're literally putting their lives on the line to protect the land they've been able to get.
 
UglyCasanova said:
ISIS wants us to be there.
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So, be wary of the group that just got pulped, who has lost the vast majority of it's territory and numbers - but no worries about doing exactly what Putin or Tehran wants?

OBL wanted us to invade a poor Arab country to enrage jihadi worldwide, and said as much. Didn't seem to bother republicans in their charge into an elective war turned worst foreign policy blunder ever.
 
kage69 said:
So, be wary of the group that just got pulped, who has lost the vast majority of it's territory and numbers - but no worries about doing exactly what Putin or Tehran wants?

OBL wanted us to invade a poor Arab country to enrage jihadi worldwide, and said as much. Didn't seem to bother republicans in their charge into an elective war turned worst foreign policy blunder ever.
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I don’t care what Putin or Tehran want. We don’t need to be there. Stop policing the world.
 
darkswordsman17 said:
Since they've stayed through multiple genocides, I'd guess that the Kurds don't want to leave (let alone to go to America where our own fucking President has made it clear they are not wanted). That's why they're literally putting their lives on the line to protect the land they've been able to get.
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The Hmong (and others) felt that way, but priorities change in the face of overwhelming opposition and dwindling areas of safety. Forces without air cover and armor tend not to last long against those willing to use chemical weapons. A line already crossed by Syria and Russia and one I expect will be crossed again. Wouldn't expect Erdogan to be too upset either, unless some Turkmen are involved.

I just wish it were an option for those who would want it. I think after generations of struggle and persecution, then doing a lot of the legwork against ISIS, dealing with the likes of Trump and the MAGA crowd would be borderline amusing for most Kurds, certainly ex-peshmerga. If how we've been treating our interpreters is any indication, in addition to the blatantly racist agenda in the White House, yeah it'll never happen. It's a shame.
 
UglyCasanova said:
I don’t care what Putin or Tehran want. We don’t need to be there. Stop policing the world.
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Yeah it's a shame we can't just crank up the WayBackMachine and avoid that whole only super power thing, but this is the world we find ourselves in. One in which we have allies and interests to protect, one where we know what happens when we go isolationist.

How about we correct the mistakes we make? Or do entire ethnic groups like the Yazidi get to be wiped out because you and yours don't want to buy what you broke? Don't like the current mess? Take it up with Dick Cheney.
 
kage69 said:
So, be wary of the group that just got pulped, who has lost the vast majority of it's territory and numbers - but no worries about doing exactly what Putin or Tehran wants?

OBL wanted us to invade a poor Arab country to enrage jihadi worldwide, and said as much. Didn't seem to bother republicans in their charge into an elective war turned worst foreign policy blunder ever.
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He's a dumbass. This will play right into ISIS hands. Us running off and then doing drone and air strikes is a major propaganda tool for ISIS. They get to gloat about scaring the US off, and also get to shout to the disenfranchised (like the Kurds) that America has and will keep abandoning you.
 
kage69 said:
The Hmong (and others) felt that way, but priorities change in the face of overwhelming opposition and dwindling areas of safety. Forces without air cover and armor tend not to last long against those willing to use chemical weapons. A line already crossed by Syria and Russia and one I expect will be crossed again. Wouldn't expect Erdogan to be too upset either, unless some Turkmen are involved.

I just wish it were an option for those who would want it. I think after generations of struggle and persecution, then doing a lot of the legwork against ISIS, dealing with the likes of Trump and the MAGA crowd would be borderline amusing for most Kurds, certainly ex-peshmerga. If how we've been treating our interpreters is any indication, in addition to the blatantly racist agenda in the White House, yeah it'll never happen. It's a shame.
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The Kurds have had those opportunities over the years (and some of them have taken them) but the majority has not. And they've dealt with chemical attacks, multiple attempts at genocide on them, and they've remained. They're not going anywhere.

That's just a moot discussion for a variety of reasons (not just because Turmp is an anti-immigration other than rich white people racist dickhead). I don't even know how much Turmp could realistically do about it since his attempt at blocking asylum pleas got slapped down. If things go that way (there's another attempted genocide of Kurds), its gonna reflect on him. He's not going to be able to hide from taking the blame on that, and then if he keeps trying to double down by preventing them from claiming asylum, people will see it for what it is: outright evil. If he tried to pull that shit, I think we might genuinely get a military coup (not where they overthrow him, but where military command straight up ignores his orders; guess that wouldn't be a coup).

And that's what gets me. Here is a group going "nope, we're not going anywhere, we're not trying to become refugees somewhere else, we're staying and fighting" and yet we have people supporting Turmp's completely full of shit comment about others need to do the fighting (so anyone supporting what he said doesn't know the situation). They fucking were. It wasn't even taking much for us to help them (that we weren't or aren't going to still be doing). Just total fucking idiocy.

This was not us playing world police. This was us helping an ally. This in no way fucking changes the shit that people saying we need to stop doing as world police. We're still fucking doing that even with us pulling the people we had in Syria out. This is purely just fucking the Kurds. And there's a very good chance that this will have ramifications that lead to us having to go back in be world police some more.

Actions like this means that, regardless of the outcome, everyone in that region is going to distrust us and tell us to go fuck ourselves. I know some people think that was already true and always will be (it wasn't), but this is just going to make things more difficult for us in the future.

For the isolationists: sorry its too fucking late, you cannot have American isolationism and still expect to get all the positives that our global outreach brought us. The so called "greatness of America" has always come via global outreach, that will never change. Yes that requires things of us too. So either piss off and go live in a fucking cave or accept that we're gonna have to do something when shit happens.
 
Jhhnn said:
I'm sure they've really enjoyed the airstrikes, artillery & drone attacks.
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They actually do as that was a major recruitment tool for them (basically calling us chickenshit motherfuckers that aren't even willing to face them head on). Plus because of how often those led to collateral damage, it helped turned people that otherwise didn't give a shit about us into having a reason to want to skullfuck us after we killed their loved ones.

I think even our own military admitted the airstrikes weren't really doing jack shit and that we were just pissing away tens of millions of dollars. Now when we have a fighting force (like the Kurds) that can actually go in and mop up the ISIS fighters, it greatly enhances the effectiveness of that stuff.
 
UglyCasanova said:
ISIS wants us to be there.
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No they don't, that ridiculous. With us out of the area, ISIS will rebuild and Putin will let them. I see that Trump is pulling out half out troops from Afghanistan so the Taliban and Al Qaeda will come back and also strengthen Iran's position. Trump has handed the ME to actual terrorists and earned great praise from Putin. This is a catastrophe in the making and our worst enemies could not have done better in aiding real terrorism to spread. While legal because it's Trump, his act is that of treason with real harm coming.
 
Would he walk this back like he moon walked his way out of so many other knee jerk impulsive decisions he's made in the immediate past?

Stay tuned.
 
Well, seems not too many in the loop are happy with Trump.
And frankly with his generals jumping ship, it puts Donald Trump's finger that much closer to the nuclear button.
And don't doubt Donald would have no problem pressing it.
Thing is, where would he aim it?
Russia? Pakistan? Mexico?
Or how about somewhere right here in the good old US of A ???
THAT seems most likely.
Lets see... what states DID NOT support Trump in the last election?
As they say... duck and cover, people.

But we know Donald Trump only too well by now.
This military departure will only become another self praising rant Donald can make during the upcoming January state of the union address.
THATS IT !!!!!!
Donald Trump wants to pretend he achieved everything on his political plate, short of parting the Red Sea.
So whats next for Donnie?
A white robe? Sandals? Walking on water? Claiming to be god?
What else will Donald duck claim to have accomplished?
 
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