ska invita
back on the other side
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The Trump presidency
- Thread starter brogdale
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teqniq
DisMembered
emanymton
A cat politely sat on the flaming gardener.
The CIA worrying about promoting extremism. LOL
CrabbedOne
Walking sideways snippily
There's a plan? I suspect it's all just Trump's id loping about in an unbelted bathrobe. It's a Zen thing.
newbie
undisambiguated
"His genius was to promote his clownishness" I'd been counting lucky stars that Johnson didn't become prime minister. Reading the Trump backstory makes me wonder what Hollywood could have done with him, Trump and Putin all at G7 conferences. So many mirrors, so much preening....
ska invita
back on the other side
Bannons plan is blatantly Stir Shit Up and then Hit It With A Hammer.
Trump seems to be happy to go along with that
CrabbedOne
Walking sideways snippily
On TSG IntelBrief: The Complexities of Trump’s Iran Policies
Russia's made quite clear it won't tolerate regime change in Syria. The Kremlin for its policies to work needs the Iranians as auxiliaries in Syria indefinitely. Moscow is likely to intrude on any US-Israeli attempt to attack Teheran just as it finally protected Damascus. Iran likes the cut of Trump's jib and appears quite willing to provoke the Great Satan and test these limits. Such a nasty little Persian move is likely to wreck Trump's second attempt at a reset with Russia as well as sowing discord in DC.
What really renders Team Trump's sabre rattling at Iran completely incoherent is the determined pandering to Russia of it's most ideological faction: Trump, Bannon and Flynn. Trump in particular is passionate in his defence of a Russia that can do no wrong.
Russia's made quite clear it won't tolerate regime change in Syria. The Kremlin for its policies to work needs the Iranians as auxiliaries in Syria indefinitely. Moscow is likely to intrude on any US-Israeli attempt to attack Teheran just as it finally protected Damascus. Iran likes the cut of Trump's jib and appears quite willing to provoke the Great Satan and test these limits. Such a nasty little Persian move is likely to wreck Trump's second attempt at a reset with Russia as well as sowing discord in DC.
bluescreen
tofu eating wokerati
CrabbedOne
Walking sideways snippily
On War On The Rocks THE DOUBLE-EDGED LEGACY OF OBAMAWAR
I'd predict Trump will radically loosen GWOT Rules of Engagement and there'll be a return to capture and torture. Trump's will be a bigger clumsier GWOT ignoring all legal restrictions and regularly treading on Muslim allies toes. As this article points out the GWOT is an area where the President has the sort of Kingly powers Trump probably expected of the Oval Office. It'll be a form of venting and yes that probably will make the terrorism situation worse.
Well Obama basically tweaked Bush's GWOT policy and continued. It's arguable in places like Yemen he made things much worse.
I'd predict Trump will radically loosen GWOT Rules of Engagement and there'll be a return to capture and torture. Trump's will be a bigger clumsier GWOT ignoring all legal restrictions and regularly treading on Muslim allies toes. As this article points out the GWOT is an area where the President has the sort of Kingly powers Trump probably expected of the Oval Office. It'll be a form of venting and yes that probably will make the terrorism situation worse.
CrabbedOne
Walking sideways snippily
Imagine what he's going to be like when then have a really big cockup on their hands.
DotCommunist
So many particulars. So many questions.
can you imagine that clown in a 'when the levees break' situation. He'd handle it worse than dubya and he fucked the dog well and truly there
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
Kaka Tim
Half Arsed and Slapdash till I Die
Apparently the US has started supporting kurdish militias in Iraq/Syria since Trump won. A good thing in that they are mainly fighting ISIS and represent democratic/secularist forces - but fuck knows what the strategy is. Turkey and Russia wont be keen. nor will the Saudis. Or Iran. Or the Iraqi government.
CrabbedOne
Walking sideways snippily
DotCommunist
So many particulars. So many questions.
been going on for a while iirc. Around the seige of kobane and the sinjar moutain thing there was will they/won't they over aiding the PKK with materiel. Because they are on the naughty list for being reds. My memory is hazy on this though so I may be corrected. One thing that sticks with me is the yazidi people being taken to slavery because the 'people we can work with' peshmerga left them nothing to protect themselves when they ran out of the area
Kaka Tim
Half Arsed and Slapdash till I Die
I heard this directly from someone who's been fighting with the YPG (who have set up an autonomous socialist/federalist state in Rojava ) He says they have gone from fighting with shit knock off AK47s to suddenly getting proper kit just in the last few months.
DotCommunist
So many particulars. So many questions.
I stand corrected then! I remember at the time of the seige there was talk of x anti tank weapon delivered to y grouping and all that. Fog of war eh
CrabbedOne
Walking sideways snippily
The US has been supporting Kurdish militias in Iraq since the 90s. The Iranians supported some of them even before that.
Obama provided a shit load of Close Air Support to the mostly Kurdish PKK in Syria for the last couple of years since they happened to be getting hammered by IS and conveniently were not fighting Assad instead. IS storming across the Euphrates valley rather took the shine off the clever wheeze to encourage the fall of Assad. This US tilt has rather miffed a lot of the rebels we supportet who mostly regard the PKK as Assad allied pond slime. One problem here is the PKK have been fighting a war with the Turks on and off for decades which went hot again in 2015. Last year the Turks made a deal with the Russians and invaded Syria to head off PKK plans for a unified statelet. That threw a spanner in the plan to take Raqqa from IS as the PKK in Syria now had a Turkish Armoured Brigade sniffing at their rear. Trump inherits this mess but there's been no real innovation that wasn't planned by Obama as yet.
Trump's much touted secret plan to defeat IS turned out to be a very cunning one. In an Executive Order he just asked the Pentagon how they'd do that and to get back to him with the details in a month or two.
It never really looked like the US had a strategy in Syria. It's more a series of errors followed by damage control.
stockwelljonny
Wait here I have gone to get help
Good read, cheers. Fascinating detail about the Donald's Dad "Woody Guthrie, his most famous tenant, wrote about his landlord in the first literary work on a Trump, ‘Old Man Trump’:"
I suppose
Old Man Trump knows
Just how much
Racial hate
he stirred up
In the bloodpot of human hearts
When he drawed
That colour line
Here at his
Eighteen hundred family project
I know the guy who found that poem - he's an american studies prof at the Uni here, has written a few books on Guthrie (and does an incredible lecture with songs about Guthrie too - I see from his website he's doing it in Walton on Thames on the 18th Feb if you're down that way). He dug that up last year when he was in the states researching a new book...
CrabbedOne
Walking sideways snippily
The Americans have been supplying them for some time. Some of the supplies dropped to support Kobani ended up in IS hands. I recall a crate of mortar bombs.
The Turks have been complaining about it. It's rather sensitive as now there a war going on in SE Turkey in which a couple of thousand of people have been killed in less than two years and the PKK obviously operates on both sides of the border. The TSK and PKK have clashed around al Bab in Syria as well. The Americans have shied away from giving the PKK the TOWs the CIA routinely supplies to the rebels as a Turkish M-60 crew getting barbecued by one would be bad for relations with Ankara.
There was at least one early big US arms shipment I read about that was meant to get distributed across the SDF. The Apoist comrades have a pecking order. The Syrian PKK kept it all. Commanders of SDF Arab units were complaining they didn't even have proper footwear.
You'd reequip their best units first. That'll be the hardened Kurdish speaking veterans. I've been noticing increasing amounts of US kit on SDF fighters in Syria for about a year. More and more US SF involvement. Support has escalated with armoured cars being supplied last week but that was planned by Obama.
(this is he: Will Kaufman on Woody Guthrie)
belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
He is great, well worth seeing. Politically interesting and musically great, makes for a fine evening
Kaka Tim
Half Arsed and Slapdash till I Die
The guy i was talking to was YPG who are not allied with PKK. My understanding is that they have been pretty effective against ISIS - so maybe they are 'militia of the month' in the pentaogn. He seemed pretty sure that trump had made a difference for them on the ground. Fuck knows though TBH.
Rojava is pretty interesting though - quite a few internationals have gone over to fight for them. They have the women only militias as well. Interesting article here about lass from blackburn who has gone to join them.
Blackburn activist becomes first British woman to join fight against Isis in Syria
Anyway - probably best for another thread. I doubt Trump could find Syria on a map let alone come up with a coherent plan. Could be someone has suggested funding the YPG in a way that sounds Kick Ass and he's signed it off in between cheese burgers and twitter strops.
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two sheds
Least noticed poster 2007
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