Posts Tagged ‘Kurds’

Amazing Living Van Conversion

Saturday, July 17th, 2021

As a serious book collector and owner of two large dogs, I’m not a “van life” candidate. But this is a seriously cool and well-thought out conversion of a Dodge RAM ProMaster 3500 extended cab cargo van into a mobile full-time living space.

It’s pretty amazing that all that took only 4 months and $6,000.

A few things I would change:

  • If I were going to use it in Texas, I would need some sort of AC, even though I know those can be energy hogs, but there appear to be some options out there.
  • The propane set up for two stove burners and water heater for showers is cool, but I might want to opt for a microwave, tankless water heater and hot plate (though I know the first two of those can be energy hungry) just to simplify my energy logistics chain for true off-grid living.
  • I would need dedicated, concealed storage space built in for a few guns.
  • I’d need at least one bookcase (with retraining straps to keep the books from flying off in turns, naturally), because Me.
  • Possibly uses:

  • For real SHTF scenario, this sort of setup provides a pretty strong basis for a bug-out van that will let you live off the grid for quite a while. Drawbacks: It’s not a hybrid, so you can’t move the van off solar power once the gas runs out. You would probably want to add a switchable extra tank at a bare minimum for that use case, if not going with some sort of hybrid or solar conversion case. And it’s not armored against small arms fire, so some work in hardening parts of the van for that situation might be in order. Lots of weight/energy/cost tradeoffs to consider.
  • If you have a job where you have to be physically present at a high-cost location to work (like Silicon Valley), this looks like a really solid alternative to paying $3,000 a month in rent. And if you were an oilfield worker, this would let you really save money. (Again, you’d really need that AC if you were living in Odessa.)
  • I’m also impressed that the guy spent months in Syria with the YPG fighting the Islamic State

    Two Heroes

    Saturday, September 12th, 2020

    Today’s theme: Two men succeeding in what they were trained to do in vastly different arenas through dint of training, perseverance and will.

    First, President Donald Trump presented the Medal of Honor to Sergeant Major Thomas Payne, who helped rescue over 70 Kurdish prisoners held prisoner by the Islamic State in the Iraqi town of Hawija while under fire.

    From his official Medal of Honor page:

    Payne’s team secured the area and prepared to free the trapped men. As they cut the lock on the prison door inside the building, Payne could see the expressions on the faces of the hostages turn from fear and desperation to excitement and joy once they realized they were being rescued.

    As the hostages were being released, Payne received a call on his radio that the team in the second building needed help. The sound of the firefight just 30 yards away was intense, and Payne knew he needed to move quickly. “Let’s get into the fight,” he said to a teammate.

    Payne and his teammates moved to the roof of the burning building where the second team had called for help. They continued to receive constant fire from the enemy, who had set up a position to their west, and from the enemy in the building directly below them.

    The team attempted to enter from the roof using small arms and grenades, but were unsuccessful. As Payne heard screams of “Allahu akbar” below, followed by the explosions of suicide vests, he was able to move his team to the ground and look for another position to enter the building.

    As his team attempted to breach the building’s fortified walls and windows, several of the Kurdish forces were wounded by enemy fire. Through the smoke and chaos, Payne looked into the building’s entryway and noticed the main prison door used the same type of lock he had seen in the first building. He knew he would be exposed to enemy fire if he attempted to cut the lock himself, but he also knew the hostages trapped inside the burning building would die if something wasn’t done.

    Payne grabbed a set of bolt cutters and ran into the building to cut the first lock on the door. Smoke poured out of the entryway as Payne received enemy fire. After cutting the first lock, Payne moved back to a safer position to avoid incoming fire and recover from smoke inhalation, but there was still a second lock that needed to be cut. After the Kurdish forces tried unsuccessfully to cut the second lock, Payne again exposed himself to enemy fire and suffocating smoke to cut the lock and reach the hostages.

    Once the second lock was cut, the combined force rushed into the burning building to reach the hostages and eliminate remaining threats. A call came over the radio that the building was beginning to collapse and the mandatory evacuation order was given. The hallways were thick with smoke and they were receiving enemy fire, but there were still hostages inside. Payne knew the team had to move quickly.

    Many of the hostages were disoriented and unsure of what was happening. Payne directed the large group to safety, at one point grabbing a man and pulling him down the hallway, allowing the hostages to move out of the building. Still receiving fire, Payne went back in a second time, finding and dragging a large man out of the building to safety. Finally, after Payne entered and exited the building a third time to make sure everyone was out, he gave the “last man” call so the task force could prepare for extraction.

    The combined force created a human wall so the hostages could be safely moved from the building as they continued to receive enemy fire. But when Payne and others returned fire, the hostages would stop running out of fear and confusion. Payne’s team held their fire and put themselves at risk to shield the hostages and safely get them out of the compound.

    As the helicopters arrived, Payne was faced with another problem. With so many hostages rescued, they could not be sure they had enough seats on the helicopters. After some quick math, they were able to get everyone on board, but it was so cramped that Payne’s team would have to stand for the entire flight back.

    The hostages, Payne’s task force and the partnered forces flew back to Erbil. They had just taken part in one of the largest hostage rescues in history, and for his actions that day, then-Sgt. 1st Class Thomas Payne would be recommended for the Medal of Honor.

    Another hero in a very different arena was Rick Rescorla, head of security for Morgan Stanley in the South Tower of the World Trade Center.

    Rick Rescorla—born a Brit (in Cornwall) who became an American (and fought in Vietnam)—was worried about the safety of New York City’s World Trade Center. Ever since the 1993 terrorist attack, when a bomb blew-up in the building’s basement, Rescorla worried that it would happen again.

    During the 1993 attack, Rescorla was upset that the building evacuation had gone so poorly. He vowed that such a muddled exodus would never happen again. Among the first to understand that a new kind of terrorism was targeting innocent office workers, he became the director of security for Dean Witter/Morgan Stanley in 1997.

    Believing the Trade Center (where Morgan Stanley was headquartered) was a particularly vulnerable terrorist target, Rescorla recommended that his company find different space. Because of lease obligations, however, that alternative was not possible. Instead, Rick developed an emergency evacuation plan which he required the Morgan Stanley employees to practice over and over.

    Rescorla could just not get out of his head that the Trade Center would be attacked again. When it happened, on September 11, he and his colleagues were ready.

    When the Port Authority issued an announcement, via its PA system, that everyone in the South Tower of the World Trade Center should remain calm and stay at their desks, Rescorla couldn’t believe his ears. He immediately began an evacuation process.

    With bullhorn in hand, he ordered the Morgan Stanley employees to evacuate the building. Before the second plane struck the South Tower, his colleagues were on their way down the stairs. Thousands of people—nearly 2700 to be precise— owe their lives to Rick Rescorla, and many are vocal about that fact…Because of Rick Rescorla’s foresight and belief that he knew what was right, nearly every Morgan Stanley employee made it safely out of the South Tower before it collapsed.

    Rescorla died in the south tower collapse, and his body was never found.

    (Hat tip: Paul Martin.)

    Dispatches From A Non-Genocide

    Saturday, November 23rd, 2019

    Remember back when President Trump announced the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Northern Syria, and Democrats not only told us this was The Worst Thing In The World (at least until the next Worst Thing In The World) and would inevitably lead to Turkish genocide against the Syrian Kurds?

    Given that the mainstream media has largely stopped covering the conflict, that does not appear to be the case. In announcing the withdrawal, President Donald Trump announced that Turkey’s intention was to set up a 20 mile buffer zone in Syria against Kurdish PKK terrorists that operated among the larger YPG/SDF forces there. Looking at a map of Syria today, more than a month into the incursion, that appears to be largely what they’ve done.

    Most of the fighting now seems to be Turkish-backed troops slugging it out with Assad-backed troops around Ayn Isa (including Syrian army regulars, who have reoccupied the 93 Brigade base just south of there). There’s sporadic fight elsewhere, but the line of control seems to have stabilized largely along the M4 highway.

    This doesn’t mean that things there are all hunky dory, or that it won’t change, or that the incursion was justified, or that Recep Tayyip Erdogan isn’t a power-hungry jihadist scumbag. It just means that when Turkey announced that their objectives in the incursion were just that 20 mile buffer strip, they may not have been lying. All this adds up to considerably less than the genocide Democrats and their MSM allies foretold.

    And that’s why we’ve ceased to hear much about the Turkish incursion in Syria: the issue can no longer be used to bash President Trump, so it’s no longer “useful” to report on it…

    Al Baghdadi / Islamic State / Syria / Turkey / Kurds Happy Fun Update Ball

    Thursday, October 31st, 2019

    Enjoy this roundup of links on the Islamic State in specific, and Syria, Turkey and the Kurds more generally, after Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s timely demise:

  • Why al-Baghdadi was special:

    Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the hirsute rapist whom hundreds of thousands of Islamic State supporters considered their absolute leader, died yesterday during a U.S. military raid in northwestern Syria’s Idlib province, President Donald Trump announced on Sunday morning. Baghdadi became the head of ISIS in 2010 but was not seen in public until 2014, when the group designated him caliph and he addressed the world in a florid speech from the pulpit of the al-Nuri mosque in Mosul, Iraq. Since then he has shown himself only once, on a dull video filmed in a windowless room and released in April.

    As with Osama bin Laden, the most intriguing fact about Baghdadi’s assassination was its location, deep in what was considered enemy territory. The dominant force in Idlib is not ISIS—which is no longer dominant anywhere—but Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an affiliate of al-Qaeda. Recall that ISIS broke from al-Qaeda in 2013, and since al-Qaeda’s leaders rebuffed Baghdadi’s invitation to bow before him, the groups have traded nonstop insults and their members have tried to kill one another. Some of these insults do not strike me as the type that either side could easily take back: accusations of apostasy, disloyalty, cowardice, and idiocy. For Baghdadi to seek refuge among people who want to kill him probably means that the places where he had more support, such as within his home country of Iraq or near its border with Syria, could no longer provide him with any measure of safety. Finding him in HTS territory is like finding Derek Jeter hiding out in South Boston, or Martin Bormann living quietly by a synagogue on the Upper East Side.

    Snip.

    Baghdadi was special. By calling for the allegiance of all Muslims—and actually being taken seriously by a large number of them—he accomplished something no previous terrorist leader had done. He channeled, for the masses, a collective sense of connection to a glorious fantasy of an Islamic past. Bin Laden had asked Muslims to rise up in defense of Islam. But his concerns were distinctly 20th-century: overthrowing Arab despotisms, snuffing out the Jewish state, knocking over skyscrapers.

    Baghdadi possessed a dramatic vision, one that any Muslim could partake in, that placed himself and anyone brave enough to join him in a line of warriors that extended back to the Prophet Muhammad himself. He noted, ostentatiously, that he hailed from the tribe of Quraish, the Prophet’s own. Historically, Muslims have counted membership in that tribe as one of about half a dozen criteria required of a valid caliph. That criterion had lapsed in importance for literally centuries, with numerous caliphs having no plausible claim to Quraishi ancestry. But Baghdadi claimed that he was a caliph, sensu stricto, in the classical tradition going back to the Abbasids. Furthermore, he would bring back a version of classical Islamic law, including legalized sex slavery and other abominations, in which he partook personally.

    And now, like the Abbasids, he is dead—smashed to bits, according to Trump, by a self-detonated suicide vest. (His death was less tidy than that of his immediate Abbasid predecessor, al-Musta’sim Billah, 1213–58. The Mongols who deposed him believed that splattering his blood on the streets of Baghdad would bring bad luck, so they wrapped him in a carpet and stampeded their horses over it until his corpse was nicely tenderized.) Killing al-Musta’sim ended a dynasty. The Islamic State will likely name a successor to continue Baghdadi’s line. But the second caliph of the modern Islamic State will begin his reign in an even more impotent and pathetic state than Baghdadi left it.

    When I began speaking with ISIS supporters five years ago, they parroted all the points of propaganda that the group has since made famous. But they included one point that the Islamic State has since de-emphasized. To be a valid caliph, they said, one must have control over territory and implement Islamic law within it. A pledge of allegiance to a caliph (called bay’ah, both classically and by ISIS), they stressed, is a contract, an agreement between parties in which each offers something to the other. The caliph offers an Islamic state; his subject offers obedience. The contract evaporates when the caliph stops providing a state.

    Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has not provided a state for quite a while. Within the Islamic State, members have grumbled that he has been an absentee caliph, gone for months at a time, and not even clear in his instructions about whom to follow in his absence. The group long since stopped promising a paradise, and downgraded its territorial offering to a hellscape soon to be overrun by its enemies. It became ideologically split, with hard-liners accusing others of being softies, and both the softies and the hard-liners trying to kill one another. Baghdadi, it seems, was gone for much of this debate, and provided only vague guidance and little in the way of security or leadership. Some former supporters have felt abandoned, and have voiced their disgust.

    His death will therefore definitively end an era that had already, in a sense, ended, if not with a whimper then with an inglorious bleating of complaints from his own flock. For years now, the hardest thing for outsiders to understand about the Islamic State has been its ability to inspire—to get some Muslims to leave comfortable circumstances to fight and die. For the past year, even as the world has diverted its attention from ISIS, the group’s ability to inspire has been severely diminished, and almost no one is leaving home to die for ISIS, or choosing to die in suicide attacks for ISIS at home. The inspiration is gone, and the party is over, for now. And although Baghdadi has obtained the martyrdom he sought, he got it in the end not as a caliph but as just another bloody hairball in a pile of rubble.

  • We also got the Islamic State’s #2 guy, Abu Hassan al-Muhajir.
  • Naturally, the media is freaking out over Trump’s successful Baghdadi mission.

    Legacy media outlets responded to President Trump’s announcement of the U.S. military’s successful mission against ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi with their trademark hostility and anger. That’s because the inarguably good news threatens corporate media goals for shaping foreign policy, impeaching the president, and defeating Trump in 2020.

    Snip.

    Corporate media have moved from at least projecting concern for reporting the actual news into unembarrassed political actors. That enables them to flamboyantly spin — as opposed to their previous method of subtly spinning — even major news with indisputable facts.

    The 2016 campaign was a humiliating defeat for Hillary Clinton, but also for political media. Media outlets never understood the electorate they were paid big dollars to write and broadcast news about. They confidently asserted Trump had no chance to win, and convinced themselves that casting off journalistic standards was defensible because of the certain ruin Trump would bring.

    Instead, President Trump’s administration has been marked by success in the domestic and foreign spheres. The economy is humming, including job and wage growth the media had previously said was unlikely to impossible to achieve. This is due to tax cuts, tax reform, and unprecedented deregulation. No new wars have been launched, much less the apocalyptic nuclear wars the media predicted. A long overdue recalibration with China is taking place.

    What is good news for the country is bad news for the media and their political allies.

    One of the tools they can utilize in their war on the president is to deny him honest media coverage of his successes, making it more difficult to clip news of them discussing those successes in an honest fashion. It’s not a conspiracy so much as a shared mindset that kicked into action this weekend.

    Snip.

    Trump Foreign Policy Successes Undermine Media Impeachment Drive

    The biggest champions of impeachment are the media, seeking to save face after their 2016 and Russia collusion hoax failures. They have all but forced the Democrats to launch the proceedings even though their path is fraught with difficulties.

    Yesterday’s Sunday Morning shows — no matter the outlet or the particular host — were all scheduled to throw more fuel on the impeachment fire. Instead, they were forced to cover a major success in the battle to defeat the Islamic State.

    Impeaching the president who oversaw the operation looks even worse than just impeaching the president who has survived a non-stop, years-long campaign from the media, Democrats, and other Resistance members. For impeachment to have any chance of survival, the media need to both downplay and move quickly from the story back to their uncritical repetition of Democratic Party talking points.

  • Was Turkey protecting al-Baghdadi? It seems a distinct possibility.
  • Elsewhere, Syrian and Turkish forces are reportedly slugging it out with one another near Ras al-Ayn on the Turkish-Syrian border. Evidently that’s actual Syrian regulars engaged against actual Turkish regulars, not just their respective proxy forces (which are also involved), though I’m not sure that’s been verified. I fail to see how having a small contingent of U.S. troops there in harm’s way would improve the situation. (See here for my previous update.)
  • Bipartisan House majority votes overwhelmingly to sanction Turkey over its latest Syrian incursion, 403-16. Voting against: Minnesota Democrat Ilhan Omar. She was also among the few voting against recognition of Turkey’s Armenian genocide. Seems like she’s a big fan of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan…
  • Turkey vs. The Kurds

    Saturday, October 12th, 2019

    Following the withdraw of a small number of U.S. troops in the area (I’ve seen estimates range from 25 to 100), Turkey has launched it’s threatened offensive against Kurdish held Syrian territory along the border (which seems to bear the Orwellian name “Peace Spring Operation“). Lots of airstrikes and shelling, but so far actual ground forces seem to be primarily Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (AKA The Army Formerly Know As The Turkish-Backed Free Syrian Army, which is different than the previous Free Syrian Army, which revolted against Assad) supported by small units of Turkish armor, plus artillery and air power. They’ve thus far made five modest incursions from Tell Abyad (AKA Tall Abiad and half a dozen other variations) to Ras al-Ayn. Thus far they haven’t exceeded the 20 mile buffer zone, and the deepest incursion seems to be about 12 miles in toward the Syrian M4 road.

    There are a couple of pieces that cover some of some of the same ground I did on the situation. First, Andrew McCarthy covers the complexity of the fight:

    The president at least has a cogent position that is consistent with the Constitution and public opinion. He wants U.S. forces out of a conflict in which America’s interests have never been clear, and for which Congress has never approved military intervention. I find that sensible — no surprise, given that I have opposed intervention in Syria from the start…The stridency of the counterarguments is matched only by their selectiveness in reciting relevant facts.

    I thus respectfully dissent from our National Review editorial.

    President Trump, it says, is “making a serious mistake” by moving our forces away from what is described as “Kurdish territory”; the resulting invasion by superior Turkish forces will “kill American allies” while “carving out a zone of dominance” that will serve further to “inflame and complicate” the region.

    Where to begin? Perhaps with the basic fact that there is no Kurdish territory. There is Syrian territory on Turkey’s border that the Kurds are occupying — a situation that itself serves to “inflame and complicate” the region for reasons I shall come to. Ethnic Kurds do not have a state. They live in contiguous parts of Syria, Turkey, Iraq, and Iran. Most are integrated into these countries, but many are separatists.

    The Kurds have been our allies against ISIS, but it is not for us that they have fought. They fight ISIS for themselves, with our help. They are seeking an autonomous zone and, ultimately, statehood. The editorial fails to note that the Kurds we have backed, led by the YPG (People’s Protection Units), are the Syrian branch of the PKK (the Kurdistan Worker’s Party) in Turkey. The PKK is a militant separatist organization with Marxist-Leninist roots. Although such informed observers as Michael Rubin contend that the PKK has “evolved,” it remains a formally designated foreign terrorist organization under U.S. law. While our government materially supports the PKK’s confederates, ordinary Americans have been prosecuted for materially supporting the PKK.

    The PKK has a long history of conducting terrorist attacks, but their quarrel is not with us. So why has our government designated them as terrorists? Because they have been fighting an insurgent war against Turkey for over 30 years. Turkey remains our NATO ally, even though the Erdogan government is one of the more duplicitous and anti-Western actors in a region that teems with them — as I’ve detailed over the years (see, e.g., here, here, here, here, and in my 2012 book, Spring Fever). The Erdogan problem complicates but does not change the fact that Turkey is of great strategic significance to our security.

    While it is a longer discussion, I would be open to considering the removal of both the PKK from the terrorist list and Turkey from NATO. For now, though, the blunt facts are that the PKK is a terrorist organization and Turkey is our ally. These are not mere technicalities. Contrary to the editorial’s suggestion, our government’s machinations in Syria have not put just one of our allies in a bind. There are two allies in this equation, and our support for one has already vexed the other. The ramifications are serious, not least Turkey’s continued lurch away from NATO and toward Moscow.

    Without any public debate, the Obama administration in 2014 insinuated our nation into the Kurdish–Turk conflict by arming the YPG. To be sure, our intentions were good. ISIS had besieged the city of Kobani in northern Syria; but Turkey understandably regards the YPG as a terrorist organization, complicit in the PKK insurgency.

    That brings us to another non-technicality that the editors mention only in passing: Our intervention in Syria has never been authorized by Congress. Those of us who opposed intervention maintained that congressional authorization was necessary because there was no imminent threat to our nation. Contrary to the editorial’s suggestion, having U.S. forces “deter further genocidal bloodshed in northern Syria” is not a mission for which Americans support committing our men and women in uniform. Such bloodlettings are the Muslim Middle East’s default condition, so the missions would never end.

    A congressional debate should have been mandatory before we jumped into a multi-layered war, featuring anti-American actors and shifting loyalties on both sides. In fact, so complex is the situation that President Obama’s initial goal was to oust Syria’s Assad regime; only later came the pivot to fighting terrorists, which helped Assad. That is Syria: Opposing one set of America’s enemies only empowers another. More clear than what intervention would accomplish was the likelihood of becoming enmeshed, inadvertently or otherwise, in vicious conflicts of which we wanted no part — such as the notorious and longstanding conflict between Turks and Kurds.

    Barbaric jihadist groups such as ISIS (an offshoot of al-Qaeda) come into existence because of Islamic fundamentalism. But saying so remains de trop in Washington. Instead, we tell ourselves that terrorism emerges due to “vacuums” created in the absence of U.S. forces. On this logic, there should always and forever be U.S. forces and involvement in places where hostility to America vastly outweighs American interests.

    I disagree with McCarthy’s contention that Obama didn’t help create ISIS: Some of our funding of anti-Assad elements helped create it, along with the vacuum of not getting a status of forces agreement with Iraq (you know, the country we actually did invade and conquer).

    The easily foreseeable conflict between Turkey and the Kurds is at hand. We are supposed to see the problem as Trump’s abandoning of U.S. commitments. But why did we make commitments to the Kurds that undermined preexisting commitments to Turkey? The debate is strictly framed as “How can we leave the Kurds to the tender mercies of the Turks?” No one is supposed to ask “What did we expect would happen when we backed a militant organization that is tightly linked to U.S.-designated terrorists and that is the bitter enemy of a NATO ally we knew would not abide its presence on the ally’s border?” No one is supposed to ask “What is the end game here? Are we endorsing the partition of Syria? Did we see a Kurdish autonomous zone as the next Kosovo?”…

    The easily foreseeable conflict between Turkey and the Kurds is at hand. We are supposed to see the problem as Trump’s abandoning of U.S. commitments. But why did we make commitments to the Kurds that undermined preexisting commitments to Turkey? The debate is strictly framed as “How can we leave the Kurds to the tender mercies of the Turks?” No one is supposed to ask “What did we expect would happen when we backed a militant organization that is tightly linked to U.S.-designated terrorists and that is the bitter enemy of a NATO ally we knew would not abide its presence on the ally’s border?” No one is supposed to ask “What is the end game here? Are we endorsing the partition of Syria? Did we see a Kurdish autonomous zone as the next Kosovo?” (We might remember that recognition of Kosovo’s split from Serbia, over Russian objections, was exploited by the Kremlin as a rationale for promoting separatism and annexations in Georgia and Ukraine.)

    It is true, as the editors observe, that “there are no easy answers in Syria.” That is no excuse for offering an answer that makes no sense: “The United States should have an exit strategy, but one that neither squanders our tactical gains against ISIS nor exposes our allies to unacceptable retribution.” Put aside that our arming of the Kurds has already exposed our allies in Turkey to unacceptable risk. What the editorial poses is not an “exit strategy” but its opposite. In effect, it would keep U.S. forces in Syria interminably, permanently interposed between the Kurds and the Turks. The untidy questions of how that would be justifiable legally or politically go unaddressed.

    President Trump, by contrast, has an exit strategy, which is to exit. He promises to cripple Turkey economically if the Kurds are harmed. If early reports of Turkey’s military assault are accurate, the president will soon be put to the test. I hope he is up to it. For a change, he should have strong support from Congress, which is threatening heavy sanctions if Turkey routs the Kurds.

    Americans, however, are not of a mind to do more than that. We are grateful for what the Kurds did in our mutual interest against ISIS. We should try to help them, but no one wants to risk war with Turkey over them. The American people’s representatives never endorsed combat operations in Syria, and the president is right that the public wants out.

    Kurt Schlichter offers similar thoughts:

    Donald Trump came into office promising to not start any new wars and to get us out of the old ones our feckless elite had dragged us into, and now that he’s doing it in Syria the usual suspects are outraged. How dare he actually deliver on his promise not to have anymore of our precious warriors shipped home in boxes after getting killed on battlefields we can’t even pronounce, while refereeing conflicts that began long before America was a thing, in campaigns without any kind of coherent objective?

    Conservatives like me still think of ourselves as hawks, but after hard experience we have learned to be hawkish only where America’s interests are directly at stake. We’re not doves. We’re just not going to spill our troops’ blood when we do not absolutely have to. The elite may not like our attitude, but then it’s generally not the elite that ends up having to bury its sons, daughters, husbands and wives. We do.

    I generally like the Kurds. I generally dislike the Turks. But they’ve been killing each other for a long time and no one has yet offered a sufficient reason why America should stick its troops in the crossfire between them. We hear words like “betrayal” tossed around, often by people whose track record re: honor is (charitably) lacking, but that assumes America had a say in this latest round ramping up. If the Turks are intent on invading, a firm “No” from the Oval office is not going to stop a battalion of Leopard tanks. If you want to stop them, you have to be prepared to stop them. That means war, and the president – along with millions of us – say “No thanks.”

    Some solid conservatives who I respect disagree with the president’s take. They point out that the Kurds have fought with us and that they’ve had a raw deal. They also point to the Turks’ sordid history of genocide, like with the Armenians. These are good points – I spent 16 months away from my family deployed helping Muslims avoid a genocide in Kosovo – but they are not good enough to justify us doing the only thing that can stop the Turks if they are committed to their threatened aggression, i.e., being willing to have American troops fight them.

    Let’s have some real talk, because the Orange Man Bad side of the debate – the side that suddenly is all hopped up on war juice – offers nothing but hack clichés to support its amorphous position. The Kurds helped destroy ISIS, true. It’s also true that the Kurds would have fought ISIS anyway, since the psycho caliphate was right next door. Let’s be honest – the Kurds didn’t show up for us at Normandy or Inchon or Khe Sanh or Kandahar. The Syrian Kurds allied with us in their homeland because we shared a common interest in wiping out the head-lopping freak show that was ISIS. Moreover, all Kurds are not equal. The PKK – the Kurdistan Workers’ Party – are a bunch of commie terrorists who have been fighting the Turks for a long time. Those reds are no friends of ours, and it’s their antics that seem to be inspiring the Turkish campaign. I have little use for the Turks, but they aren’t just picking this fight for Schiffs and giggles. The fact that it’s all so confusing is a really, really good reason for us to stay the hell out of it.

    Most of the counterarguments to this position seems to be “Turkey would never dare invade if American troops were there, no matter how few!” Maybe. But American troops abroad are there to serve defined purposes, not to act as a living tripwire to force America into war should a random dictator decide we’re bluffing.

    The Kurdish Conundrum

    Tuesday, October 8th, 2019

    Before getting into the latest developments in Syria, let’s not forget that the entire reason we’re there is the Obama Administration’s foolish decision to try to overthrow Assad’s government on the cheap, actions that precipitated us showering pallets of money onto various jihadi groups and (along with the failure to achieve a status-of-forces agreement with a still wobbly Iraq) engendering the rise of the Islamic State, all with very little to show for our efforts except some eight years of Syrian bloodshed.

    Unless you’ve been keeping up with every twist and turn of that very long war, it’s hard to understand how Syria has come to the current pass, since there were over a dozen different factions at various points in the civil war, including Hezbollah, Iran, Israel, and Russia. Basically, Syria ended up crushing just about all rebel forces in the south (thanks to a goodly amount of Russian help), while stalemating with jihadist groups and the Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army in the north. Meanwhile, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces crushed the Islamic State with American/allied logistical backing and airpower, leaving them in control of Syria east of the Euphrates, all the way up to the Turkish border.

    Given that Kurds are our allies, as well as the closest things to goods guys in the Middle East outside Israel (and maybe the Druze), many were disturbed to hear that the Trump Administration is withdrawing American troops from northern Syria in advance of a Turkish invasion.

    Is this concerning? Yes it is. Recep Tayyip Ergodan’s jihadist regime deserves no support from America, and the safety of our Kurdish allies is a legitimate issue. But the news also brought about a number of wild overreactions from all points of the political spectrum.

    The first overreaction is “Oh my God, Turkish ground troops will be entering Syrian territory! This is unprecedented!” No, Turkish ground troops have been fighting in Syria since 2016.

    The second overreaction is “Oh my God, the Islamic State will spring back to life!” In truth, the Islamic State was already going to live on in some form as a transnational jihadist terrorist group, but is effectively finished as a territory-holding Caliphate, no more viable a state than Biafra or the Don Republic. And even if the SDF is forced to abandon some or all the Syrian territory they currently hold, I don’t see Turkey or Syria letting the Islamic State stage a serious comeback.

    The third overreaction is thinking that this is a big shift of American forces. In fact, there were less than 25 U.S. troops relocated.

    Fourth, while we are pulling back troops, and it sucks for the Kurds, I doubt this is the “betrayal” some are making it out to be. I sincerely doubt we ever said to the Kurds “Hey, take out the Islamic State, and we promise that we’ll use America’s military power to protect you until the end of time!” I also highly doubt we promised the Kurds we would support an independent Kurdish state no matter what the four states with significant Krudish ethnic minorities (Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Iran) might say in the matter. I suspect the Kurds came to us and said “Give us arms, training and support and we’ll destroy the Islamic State for you.” We did and they did. It’s been six months since the last of the Baghuz pocket was mopped up. Since there’s no plans or appetite for a permanent U.S. protection force in Syria, we were always going to pull our troops out sooner or later. Sooner or later turns out to be now.

    Fifth, we are not consigning the Kurds to annihilation. If we are to believe Turkey (a dubious but not entirely impossible proposition) the goal of their incursion is to establish a 20 mile buffer zone, mainly aimed at preventing the PKK from launching attacks into Turkish territory. The PKK itself is indeed bad news, a communist-rooted terrorist organization that never really reformed. (The flip side is that the Turkish government loves to call any Kurdish Party in Turkey an arm of the PKK, which is mostly a lie.) When it comes to Turkish statements on the Kurds, there are half-truths, quarter-truths, eighth-truths, all the way down to quasi-semi-demi truths, where the remaining grain of truth is so tiny it’s a homeopathic tincture. I suspect there are PKK units among the SDF, but far fewer than Turkey claims.

    If there’s a reason to believe Turkey’s aims actually are limited at this time, it’s because their existing incursion into northern Syria is already very unpopular with the Turkish people. An actual war against the entirety of the SDF is probably not in the cards for all sort of political, military and logistical reasons.

    Also, in the event of such an all-out war, there’s very little reason to believe that Turkey could take out the entire SDF (and the Iraqi Kurdish Pershmerga, who would probably come to the SDF’s aid) before bogging down into quagmire of counterinsurgency warfare the way American forces in Iraq did following the 2003 invasion. The Kurds are no pushovers, and Turkey is already losing Leopard 2 tanks at an alarming pace in their existing Syrian deployment. (Turkey has a newer, locally produced (with South Korean help) main battle tank called the Altay, that hasn’t seen combat yet. Looks good on paper, but I bet it can’t stand toe-to-toe with an M1A2.) Finally, keep in mind that there’s still significant British and French military presence back-filling for withdrawn U.S. troops.

    So why did President Trump accede to Turkish wishes? Is there any of that 4D chess going on here? Maybe. Trump seems to approach things through a persuasion/negotiation lens, using both carrots and sticks, and Turkey has already seen the stick in the F-35 order cancellation. Also, Trump may be leveraging Turkey to take a more active role against Iran, such as enforcing economic sanctions (and Iran is currently far more regionally disruptive). The majority Sunni Turkey has longstanding linguistic and ethnic differences with its Persian Shia neighbor, and (in the form of the Ottoman Empire) fought a series of wars with Persia between the Sixteenth and Nineteenth centuries, the last ending in 1823 (which is practically yesterday as far as Middle Eastern blood feuds are concerned). Finally, there’s the possibility that Trump is simply going to Yojimbo every Muslim nation in the Middle East against every other Muslim nation, keeping all of them too busy to make trouble for us…

    Kurt Schlichter has a succinct summary:

    War Against the Islamic State Update: Hajin Pocket Squeezed

    Sunday, January 6th, 2019

    Despite President Donald Trump’s announcement of a pullout of American troops from Syria, the war against the Islamic State contains apace.

    Information is scanty, but Syrian Democratic Forces appear to be systematically crushing what remains of the former Hajin pocket. Their offensive has rolled south into Shafa, AKA Al Shaafa, AKA Asi-Sha-Fah, and two British soldiers were wounded in an Islamic State missile attack there.

    Here’s what the remnants of the Hajin pocket look like today:

    This is what it looked like back on December 20:

    There’s at least some evidence that other Arab countries are stepping in to pick up some of the slack:

    In the last few days, Egyptian and UAE military officers visited the contested north Syrian town of Manbij. They toured the town and its outskirts, checked out the locations of US and Kurdish YPG militia positions, and took notes on how to deploy their own troops as replacements. On the diplomatic side, the White House is in continuous conversation with the UAE Crown Prince Sheikh Muhammed Bin Ziyad (MbZ) and Egyptian President Abdel-Fatteh El-Sisi. The deal Trump is offering, is that they take over US positions in Manbij, where the Kurds have sought protection against a Turkish invasion, and American air cover will be assured against Russian, Syrian or Turkish attack.

    As DEBKAfile has noted, the Egyptian president, during his four years in power, was the only Arab leader to consistently side with Bashar Assad against the insurgency against his regime. Assad may therefore accept the posting of Egyptian forces in Manbij so long as Syrian officers are attached to their units. The Syrian president would likely also favor a UAE military presence. Not only was the emirate the first Arab nation to reopen its embassy in Damascus after long years of Arab boycott, but unlike most of its Arab League colleagues, the UAE can well afford to contribute funding for the colossal reconstruction task needed for getting the war-devastated country on its feet.

    Approval of the Egyptian-UAE forces to Manbij would kick off the stationing of mixed Arab forces in other parts of Syria, including the border with Iraq. If the Trump administration’s plans mature, then countries like Saudi Arabia, Morocco and Algeria would send troops to push the Iranian military presence out of key areas where they have taken hold.

    That sounds swell. So swell that I’m suspicious that Syrian, Turkish and Russian leaders will actually let it happen. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

    National Security Advisor John Bolton stated that U.S. trops would not complete their withdrawal from Syria until the Islamic State is defeated and the safety of the Kurds is guaranteed.

    I would take this pronouncement with several grains of salt.

    Even after Hajin falls, there are still large tracts of uninhabited land in Syria and Iraq the Islamic State hasn’t been cleared from. Just today, U.S. special forces conducted an operation near Kirkuk, Iraq that killed three Islamic State fighters who had reportedly been attacking the country’s electrical transmission infrastructure.

    Also, the Islamic State in West Africa reportedly captured the town of Baga in northeastern Nigeria in late December.

    The Islamic State: Not Quite Dead

    Thursday, December 20th, 2018

    President Donald Trump is evidently pulling combat troops out of Syria, having declared:

    This is not correct. While Hajin itself has just been taken, a core of Islamic State fighters still remains in the remainder of the Hajin pocket:

    If President Trump actually means it, this withdrawal is probably some 4-8 weeks premature if the goal is to crush the last remnants of the Islamic State and stabilize SDF territory. Maybe we can let Syria crush the remaining Islamic State remnants, and maybe we can’t. Will we be leaving the Kurds enough weapons and supplies to stand up for themselves against an emboldened Syria, Russia and Turkey? It’s unclear that we will.

    Note that the phrase “returning United States troops home as we transition to the next phase of this campaign” leaves a lot of wiggle room. There may well remain a small troop contingent to support SDF forces and direct coalition air power based in Iraq, where some 5,000 U.S. troops are still supporting Operation Inherent Resolve. Also, the British governemnt noted: “Much remains to be done and we must not lose sight of the threat they (ISIS) pose…. (but) as the United States has made clear, these developments in Syria do not signal the end of the Global Coalition or its campaign.” The French still have a hand in as well.

    This comes two days after the Trump-skeptical David French called Trump’s previous policy in Syria both wise and unconstitutional. “The Trump administration is doing the right thing the wrong way, and that matters. The failure to follow the constitutional process means that American forces are in harm’s way without the necessary congressional debate and the necessary congressional approval.”

    Cue Bunk Moreland:

    Assuming it is a complete and almost immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Syria, I view President Trump’s move with some skepticism, and suspect that it is slightly premature. Clearly we need to exit Syria at some point, probably sooner rather than later, but I’d prefer Trump to wait just long enough (again, another four weeks) to make sure the Islamic State holds no significant territory upon which to claim the legitimacy of its caliphate. I fear we’re inviting more instability by leaving slightly too early.

    I’d love to be proven wrong.

    SDF Finally Clearing Euphrates Pocket

    Sunday, May 13th, 2018

    After Deir Ez-Zor fell in early November of 2017, it looked like the war against the Islamic State in its own, self-professed caliphate was all but over.

    But then a funny thing happened. That theater of the war seemed to go into a sort of hibernation as other theaters in Syria (the Turkish incursion, the continued war in western Syria, and recently Israel bombing Iranian positions) heated up. That left several disjointed enclvaes of Islamic State control. Here’s what things looked like in at the end of 2017:

    Notice that little Islamic State pocket along the Euphrates southeast of Deir ez-Zor running from Hajin to Abu Kamal on the Iraqi border. One of the great mysteries of the war is why that enclave wasn’t crushed following the fall of Deir Ez-Zor. Instead, it remained there, largely unchanged, for half a year.

    That finally appears to be changing.

    In operation called #JazeeraStorm (I’m also seeing #CizireStorm), the Syrian Democratic Forces have finally launched an offensive aimed at crushing that pocket.

    Here’s a tweet with a very useful map:

    Today the village of Baqhous, directly on the Iraqi border, was captured, meaning the SDF have successfully pushed to the Euphrates there and are cooperating with Iraqi army troops to secure the border.

    Here’s a map of what the pocket looks like now:

    It’s possible that Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi may be hiding in the Euphrates pocket. Given how elusive al-Baghdadi has been in previous phases of the war, I’ll believe it when we announce his capture.

    Islamic State Launches Several Attacks Around Kirkuk

    Monday, February 26th, 2018

    Like Wesley in The Princess Bride, the Islamic State is just mostly dead, not dead dead. This was driven home by several recent attacks near Kirkuk, which was officially liberated from the Islamic State by Kurdish forces since 2014, and has been held by the regular Iraqi Army and Shia militias since 2017.

  • A suicide attacker blew up himself near the local headquarters of al-Hashd al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilization Forces), a pro-government, mostly-Shia militia coalition, in central Kirkuk.
  • The Islamic State also attacked a convoy of pro-government militia, reportedly killing 27 of them.
  • Islamic State fighters also attacked a nearby oil field:

    Islamic State (IS) extremists on Saturday launched an attack on an oil field in Kirkuk Province, killing at least two police officers.

    A security source from Kirkuk said a group of IS militants attacked the Khabaza oil field in the disputed province, killing at least two police officers and wounding another one.

    The security source added that police reinforcements were sent to the site of the attack but did not reveal whether any of the oil wells were also targeted by the militant group.

    According to Iraq-based al-Ghad Press, the extremists attacked a post guarded by police at the Khabaza oil field’s number 43 well

  • The Islamic State is too fanatical to merely melt away quietly, and counterinsurgency operations are by their very nature grinding, long-running affairs, and I have no confidence that the Iraqi government and their pet Shia militias are up to the job absent additional U.S. assistance and guidance.