What exactly is our victory scenario here? We just keep screwing things up when we intervene, how about trying something new?
Doing noting means you are saying that the tyrants like Putin and Erdogan get to decide the fate of the world.
The people can decide, when theyâre ready.
Iâm sympathetic to the Kurds, too, but what do you want to do? Declare war on Turkey, Syria, Iran, and Iraq all at the same time to defend them? Maybe just Turkey, our supposed ally? Just arming the Kurds isnât enough by a long shot. First of all a new country would have to be carved out for them, which can only be done through a) a passed UN resolution with accompanying peacekeeping forces, or b) conquering literally all their neighbors who hate the Kurds and wonât cede territory for a Kurdish nation. Obviously both these options are impossible.
The Kurds now are like the Vietnamese in the 1960s. They deserve help, but they just happen to live in a place where thereâs not much we can do for them. If we try too hard to help them, weâll end up looking like the aggressors and the rest of the world will turn against us. Weâll lose the ability to do good elsewhere in the world where we could be more effective.
Yeah, this isnât a âwhen theyâre readyâ kind of thing. Rather, itâs when a good opportunity presents itself, and it hasnât. The people are ready now, but the time isnât right for increased US involvement.
There are few good options re: Turkey and Afrin, and those that are good are very limited in utility (such as ineffectively providing arms as noted above). Right now, Turkeyâs attempt to inextricably tie Rojava with the PKK needs to have a light shone on it. The Kurds are not a monolithic people (as Iâm sure everyone here knows) despite how Erdogan paints things, and Turkey is now invading Syria or the wannabe Kurdistan to kill âundesirablesâ and essentially annex land (remove it from the control of the resident government, and against the will of Syria). Perhaps sanctions will come of this, although that would likely seal off any hope of normalized relations in the near future. I guess the question is how normalized could those relations be, given the state of the nation.
Thatâs one way of looking at it I suppose. I agree the Kurds in general have a pretty solid case for at the very least being able to have some degree of self-determination (and, like, not get massacred and stuff). Iâm not sure South Vietnam in the early sixties rises to the same level. The Diem government was pretty horrible, the country was run as a fiefdom of Francophone elites, the former colonial bourgeoisie, who had zero interest in the majority of the population, their culture, or their religion, and the main reason anyone gave a damn was Vietnamâs potential importance in trade and the generalized Cold War fear of Bad Things happening if the commies took over.
And if only we had realized that there was ânot much we can do for them.â Instead we poured hundreds of thousands of people and billions of dollars into that country for pretty much no return. Ironically, years after the conflict and the victory of the reds, Vietnam is actually a strong trading partner and player in the region and has evolved a society that while not perfect (whose is?) is a lot better than either that of the RVN or the hard-line communists.
But I do agree with your general assessment about the Kurds. Not a damn thing we can really do about it. The problem is weâve acted like we could do something and have made promises we canât keep. Again.
Minimally, Iâd give the Kurds some serious firepower.
Not for nothing, but ATGMâs suddenly found their way into their inventories. Allegedly, MANPADâs also did, but thatâs disputed.
Problem with firepower alone (unless itâs like a Deathstar I guess, or an OGRE) is the benefits are sort of proportional to the existing power of the faction you are arming. If the Kurds are strong enough to really make use of the firepower, they probably are in solid enough shape (bases, logistics, front lines, worthwhile targets, manpaower, etc.). If they are in dire straits, firepower alone may prolong things but is unlikely to reverse anything.
That depends of course on a lot of factors, but you will always have some blowback from providing weapons, and the more powerful the weapons, the more blowback. Said blowback is only worth it if the ROI is reasonable, and again, that gets back to the chicken/egg thing above.
Not that I necessarily disagree with arming the Kurds, but I would prefer it be part of a real strategy with real possibilities for success.
They can give a small group power to make things messy for a powerful invader. See Afghanistan for the Soviets, or Vietnam for the US.
On some level, I think in situations like this, I say âFuck the blowback.â
I mean, really, what is Erdogan gonna do? He ainât gonna start a fight with us directly. Heâs not gonna get any kind of international support against us for this stuff.
In this kind of Proxy war, itâs silly to worry about making folks like Turkey or Russia angry. We know theyâre in there fucking stuff up⌠who gives a shit if they know weâre doing the same? They donât care that we know theyâre doing stuff there.
RPGs are great against tanks these days, at least if your infantry want to be heroes. But they donât help if youâre being bombed. And if your enemies cut off your trade routes, it doesnât matter how good your guns are.
Anti-aircraft launchers do.
Flak 88. The do everything, fix everything tool every budding nation needs in their Christmas Stocking!
Also, nothing says responsible like hillbillies shooting their own Flak 88 in their backyards!
In Afghanistan we used neighboring Pakistan and their ginormous, rugged border, to funnel Stingers and the like.
The Kurds live surrounded by a bunch of countries that would not want to help us out, as theyâre not big on this idea of Kurdistan in the first place. Iraq? Iran? Turkey? Syria?
Not to mention two of those are serious well-organized nations with enormous armies, while the other two still individually dwarf the Kurdsâ power no matter what weapons they have. Itâs just no possible to create an independent Kurdistan right now.
Thatâs not the blowback Iâm talking about. I agree, who cares about their feelings, as they already pretty much are on the other side. Itâs the other stuffâwhere those weapons go when they donât get into the right hands, where they go because some of the people we give them to canât resist offers of big cash, what happens when we abandon the people we just armed, that sort of thing. Thereâs always consequences, and some are worse than others. But in any case, the consequences have to be more acceptable than what would happen by not doing anything, and thatâs the difficult calculus.
As far as Afghanistan, well, as others have noted, the Mujaheddin had land neighbors to funnel stuff through, lots of territory that was fundamentally inaccessible to the Soviets, and a lot more international support than the Kurds do. And, um, do you really want to use that as an example? The end result of our helping the Afghan resistance to the USSR was, well, the Taliban, Osama, and 9/11.
Better luck next time!
Ah, but in the heady days of the early Reagan years, it felt so good to be âdoing something.â Really, that was a huge part of it. We were taking it to them! Finally! After all those malaise years! No one of course thought to consider the long termâwhen in US history have we ever?âand besides, there was really little to US policy then other than red = bad, anyone opposing red = good.
And of course âdoing somethingâ usually involved some sort of muscle flexing, even if (as in Beirut) the flexing ended up just tearing a muscle rather than impressing the chicks.
I was barely cognisant of the geopolitical subtleties during the 80s - i think i was more concerned with Transformers - but i always had the impression that Afghanistan was really about paying the Commies back for us losing Vietnam, about making Afghanistan âtheirâ Vietnam.