Syrian Hmong

[Dill]

Thanks for the thoughtful answers, 6.

Here's my thoughts on some of yours, if you are interested.

(10-16-2019, 07:51 PM)6andcounting Wrote: We ally with and send all kinds of money to Pakistan. We also simultaneous didn't trust them enough to have them help with Bin Laden. We armed the Syrian rebels in the civil war against Assad. John McCain compared them to the founding fathers that fought England. They became ISIS. We partnered with them because they helped us fight a common enemy. Being the locals - they knew the land, culture, language and probably way more about the enemy than any drone could tell us.

Pakistan is a broken state, but in a unique way. The civilian gov has repeatedly tried to be a good international citizen, but it cannot control the military, which at times works at cross purposes with the elected gov. Neither the civilian government nor the military can control their Intel services and their clandestine operations, which include support for US enemies. Still, the state, in part, was indispensable in the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. US forces in A-stan were supplied from land routes through Pakistan. etc. The P-intel was supporting AQ and others in Pakistan, sure, but its military was killing hundreds in the tribal areas and interdicting the flow of weapons and recruits (sometimes).

The Kurds, on the other hand, are not a state but an ethnic group, thousands of whom have fought shoulder to shoulder with thousands of individual US military members over the last 3 decades. To repeat--THOUSANDS of American ground troops personally know and trust THOUSANDS of Kurdish soldiers and commanders on a one-to-one basis. Kurdish soldiers in the field have bled in the same trenches as American. There has simply been no more reliable partner in the Middle East.  Not even ISRAEL. The Kurds, at present, have NO AFFILIATION with ISIS or Al Qaeda, whom they have been killing for the last decade.

Actually, ISIS was not formed from Syrian rebels we helped, but from a nucleus of former Saddam military. Because of the Syrian civil war, they had a vacuum in which to operate. Obama was frequently criticized for NOT helping Syrian resistance precisely because he could not know in whose hands US weapons might end up. So far as I know, we did not "partner" with ISIS. We, with the Kurds, destroyed 85% of them in Syria.

On "being the locals."  Kurds have been one of our (and Israels) primary source of intel on terrorist and Iranian activity in the Levant. When we leave them behind, we are also leaving behind our eyes and ears in the region. If we have to go back in the future, we may be punching blind.  And we will have to go back if ISIS reconstitutes itself, almost a 100% given now that Kurds cannot hold the prison camps.

Final point for the moment--we were in A-stan because Al Qaeda attacked the US from there and will continue to do so where and whenever they can re-constitute. We have ISIS because of a totally unnecessary war with Iraq. I am totally with you in opposing that kind of intervention. Stupid and an example of emotional policy, going from lets get all out of there to let's kill them all and then back to lets get all out. Remember that Obama gave into pressure to "get the troops back home," and ISIS filled that vacuum. 

So I am also with you on the importance of diplomacy. But as things stand now, we have to prevent the re-consolidation of these groups. That means some military presence at least, and maintaining friends and allies.

We just ditched our truest ally, left our comrades-in-arms exposed to Turkish air power, and confused the hell out of our allies. If two years from now Americans are again dying from internet-radicalized ISIS/Al Qaeda followers in the US or terrorist attacks on Americans abroad, we will probably have to go back in again. Without our friends. We won't be leading allies; we'll be paying VERY EXPENSIVE MERCENARIES who know they can only trust the money now.