Hell, as far as I know, it’s still illegal in Turkey to admit the Armenian genocide occurred.
What was the deal with the Turkish Airlines Super Bowl pre-game show last night? That was a really political sponsorship IMO.
Well TA is still partly state owned, so it would have to be…
This a hundred billion times.
The US was never engaged in Afghanistan, it provided funds and limited armament to Pakistan’s ISI for it to funneled to several radical islamist insurgent parties.
And when we went into Afghanistan in 2001, we restarted those ops in Pakistan…only this time, the ISI was mostly on the side of the people we were fighting, those, um, same radical parties from way back when. So you had the sort of Kafka-esque surrealism of American forces using Pakistani bases and infrastructure to wage a war against people who were simultaneously getting assistance from the very Pakistanis who were also helping us fight them. Sort of. Eventually the drone war was a way of lessening dependence on the Pakistanis and giving us a more or less covert way of occasionally striking targets inside Pakistan without pushing the ISI into a corner.
But fundamentally, it’s another example of the utter clusterfuck our so-called policy in the region has become.
Unfortunately, from what I’ve read, the ISI was on the side of those people even in the 80s and the CIA were well aware of such.
I think it’s yet another example of getting priorities wrong, not particularly dissimilar to Saudi Arabia.
Part of the problem in getting American priorities right is that there are few consistent priorities, because there is little consistency to our policy. Different administrations since the Cold War have taken different paths often, but none of them have stuck as a definitive direction or set of guidelines. So you have this accumulation of priorities that often contradict new ones that come along, but which are firmly entrenched and can only be changed at great cost. It’s definitely a form of the tail wagging the dog, in that often we are blocked from doing things that are necessary or desirable because the dead hand of past agreements has created a situation where it’s nearly impossible to extract ourselves without a lot of bad stuff happening.
The ISI and Pakistan like to think of Afghanistan as their playground. They can’t really screw around with India, and Bangladesh isn’t worth it. But Afghanistan is their backyard, and they want to control it.
Any attempt to establish an independent Afghan government is anathema to especially the ISI. They’ve been fucking around in Afghanistan for decades.
Afghanistan was historically hostile to Pakistan from what I’ve been able to discern.
Afghanistan under Daoud was hostile to both Pakistan and the Soviet Union, and it was this hostility that led to the Soviet-backed & Pakistan supported coup in 1978. Even before this, Pakistan had begun arming and providing intensive support to Haqqani & Hekmatyar/Hezbi Islami and following Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, successfully lobbied the US to do likewise using the ISI as the conduit.
It’s argued that the Taliban were created by Pakistan simply because Hezbi Islami was unable to unite the country.
That’s where leadership and principle come into play. Unfortunately, they’re always in short supply in Washington.
I’m a believer in ripping off the band-aid. Sometimes you don’t get they luxury of a smooth transition. I remember arguing with a libertarian 10 years ago about the War on Drugs. I suggested that society and welfare systems would collapse if we didn’t get those right before ending the war on drugs. But he was right. You just need to end it and deal with the consequences. Otherwise it goes on for eternity. Which is the situation we’re in.
Some times yeah that does seem to be for the best. It’s tough to tel when those cases occur, but as you note, leadership. Which, um, as you also note, we ain’t got.
"Turkey is currently conducting a military operation in northwest Syria, where it is fighting the People’s Protection Units, a predominantly Kurdish organisation that is one of the United States’ main allies in the fight against the Islamic State (ISIS).
This contradiction has led to an extraordinary possibility: if Turkey fulfils Erdoğan’s vow to extend the operation to Manbij, it could mean a direct confrontation with the troops deployed there by their NATO ally, the United States.
Such a confrontation would weaken the U.S. position, and heighten the risk of an ISIS resurgence in the region, wrote Pearson."
Having a moron in office emboldens all our enemies.
While I’m no fan of our current Narcissist in Chief, I think it’s deeper than this. Having no consistent, well-articulated, and implemented policy of any sort emboldens our enemies. At least with a competent president, and functioning diplomatic system, we can sometimes mitigate the damage. Now, though, we can’t even do that.
It’s a free for all for bad actors. The only thing you have to do is passingly praise Trump and he’ll let you do anything.
Mass murderer? You’re a great guy, cause you said something nice about me.
It’s going to be challenging to have a NATO member that is also a Russian satellite. I guess this is the reverse of the situation the Russians found themselves in with the Baltics.
At this point maybe we should think about cutting Turkey out of NATO.