So Erdogan gains through Trump what he could not get when his ISIS cronies tried to take Kobani and other border towns in the northeast.

That proposed safe zone is over 5000 square miles of Syria, not counting what Turkey has already stolen in western Syria: Afrin and the Azaz/el-Bab/Jarablus triangle. I think the Assad and Putin may have something to say about it. And the SDF also, not only the YPG element but also Assyrian Christians and Arab tribes that live within that area.

Yup

The Rojava Kurds best fully embrace Assad's plan for a united Syria and everything that plan entails before their delusions are steamrollered by Erdogan's delusions. The decision is fully in the hands of the Kurds, not Assad, not Erdogan, not Putin and not Trump.

TTG

I agree. The Kurds need to reach terms with Assad very soon and then loudly communicate this. Otherwise, if Turkey gets a green light on the 'safe zone' I fear they may be overtaken by events. The Putin/Erdogan meeting on 23rd will be crucial and the future of Idlib may finally be decided there too.

The operative word is “proposed”, as in proposed safe zone. I fail to understand how the U.S and Turkey can give effect to such a proposal without committing genocide.

Surely Erdogan would rather have a guarantee from Syria and Russia for a quiet border with Kurds integrated into Syria, rather than some long and painful occupation of these areas, no? Most cities in this border zone would fiercely resist a Turkish occupation.

I think Erdogan would rather have a greater Ottoman Empire with a long and painful occupation than quiet borders. His thirst for grandeur most probably outshines his desire for peace.

Yes

I didn't mean to imply Erdogan has a thirst for peace per se. I think he wants to secure his southern border at any cost. The invasion of Arin was one way to do it - physically push the Kurds away from Hatay province. My thinking was hopefully he would realize a guarantee from Syria and Russia is the easiest way to secure that border. We shall see!

You have to appreciate that in Erdogan's world view history ended (or at least was paused) in 1920 with the Misak-ı Millî (National Pact) made during the last Ottoman parliament. That laid claim to certain Ottoman lands which are in present day northern Iraq and Syria - perhaps to what the Colonel is referring as "..even greater actual ambitions in Syria than this". See the FP article below for a good map and wider explanation of Erdogan's revisionist thinking. He does not recognize the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne in which Ataturk's Grand National Assembly renounced the claim to the above mentioned lands and which consequently, as Erdogan sees it, "constrains" Turkey within its current Anatolian borders. If Trump, in his ignorance, is going to gift a good chunk of this territory to Turkey I am absolutely sure the tanks will roll in right away.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wi...

https://foreignpolicy.com/2...

Might I ask, would those tanks rolls through Qamishli?

Qamishli has always seemed an odd outpost. Not a Deir Ezzor by any means and seemingly there as a result of an uneasy local accommodation. It is nevertheless there, and Syrian. Would the Turks try to take it?

Take another look at the map in the Colonel's post - Qamishli is specifcally excluded from the safe zone. The idea seems to be to allow "Regime Forces" to administer this area. Very generous of them.

Thanks. The map does definitely show Qamishli excluded, though bullet point 4 states the safe zone will "pass through" it. Similarly -

"The line starts in western Syria, near the Sajur River in eastern Manbij. Manbij town center will remain out of the safe zone.

"On the other hand, the Bashar al-Assad regime has a presence in the Qamishli district of Hasakah province, which is physically included in the safe zone."

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/am...

Last I heard Qamishli was divided between Kurds and Syrian loyalists, also Assyrian Christians, so I wondered if the Turkish intention was to take at least the Kurdish area.

("Each group holds an area but allows civilians to pass unmolested from one side to the other...")

https://www.washingtontimes...

But if this scheme was cooked up between the principals -

"In a Twitter post on Monday, Trump proposed the establishment of a 20-mile (32-kilometer) wide safe zone in Syria's eastern Euphrates region. Later in the day, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan held a phone talk with his U.S. counterpart and evaluated the details of the safe zone."

- I suppose it may be that no one is as yet clear as to the precise details?

In which case I'm afraid my query might have wasted your time. In fact I hope that looking at this "safe zone" scheme wastes every one's time since it would surely be a disaster if it got off the ground.

.

I mentioned the strength of the ISIS guerrilla network in SDF areas the other day, the attack on US forces in Manbij today is reminiscent of 2000s Iraq and is a hint of things to come for whatever unlucky force ends up staying there.

"the attack on US forces in Manbij today is reminiscent of 2000s Iraq"
How many many members do you think think ISIS has left? We never had an army corps in Syria nor a status of forces agreement with the government so how does that compare to Iraq in any year?

Similar pattern of daily ISIS attacks against SDF in past few months remind me of activity against ISF and in particular the "Awakening" /sons of Iraq after defeats in 2000s, and now this escalation further mirrors parallels to Iraq. The interesting observation is that this pattern of activity is virtually absent, from any side al qaeda or HTS or ISIS, in Syrian government areas. Interesting example a few weeks ago of the high ranking al qaeda guy trying to set up franchise in daraa and getting killed

I don't consider the manbij attack to be an "escalation." It is what you should expect from the descendants of the medieval hashashiyiin They will do this so long as there are any left on earth and there will always be at least a few.

Funnily enough if there's one common link between IS attackers in the West it's that a large percentage had been heavy cannabis users at some point,irrespective of the presence of criminal background,which unlike in europe is not a popular hallmark of jihadism in north america.

agree about israel and how they have co-opted the congress. no matter because israeli power has topped out and from here on out they have to play well with others because their ability attack their neighbors without recourse is now quite limited beyond the odd impotent air sortie done from a safe distance. all you need to know about their actual capability was the cowardly attack recently using 2 commercial airliners as cover to launch their missiles.

since 06 they have been outright scared to atttack lebanon on the ground for rightly fearing being chewed up by hezbollah. now with russian air defence integrated into syrain air defence israel needs russia mod permission to piss anywhere outside their own borders. do not let israeli bluster fool you into thinking they are strong and in charge, they are no longer and nothing washington can do will change that.

if washington does not start hiring actually competent and able people in the state department to run their diplomatic corp we are going to find ourselves like the ottomans did after WW1..... on the way out of the middle east.

long term if israel remains commited to their apartheid state they have no future as a viable nation in the middle east and will not likely see out the 21rst century as currently configured. and lest you think i am an anti-semite, my family has hebrew roots in palestine going back into the very very early 20th century long before israel existed, a time when jew and muslim lived as neighbors and got along just fine. a time before the cancer of zionism had widely spread.

Sir

It seems blunder is what we do when it comes to foreign policy, at least for the past 30 years. There's a long list from Iraq to Libya. Then we have even the big poohbahs of foreign policy say stuff like this:

https://twitter.com/Richard...

What we need is an open-ended, affordable strategy for not losing.

read history richard there aren't any that have worked.

We had that before 9/11. It was called benign neglect. i was one of those in charge of keeping the lid on in that condition. It was a better world.

it was a different world pat, not sure if it was a better one.

in any event it was an analogue world rather than a digital one where control of the narrative aka: official story, was easier to disseminate and maintain. opinion control is the historic basis of state legitimacy, something no longer easily molded or even possible if actual state behaviour is too far from what the state claims it to be.

on top of this destabilizng technological change the chickens coming home to roost after 40 years of american elite offshoring and breaking up of vital domestic industries for short term profit at the expense of long term national security and stability. the ever smiling ever ignorant mitt romney (bain capital) is emblematic of this corrosive ideology.

thus we have arrived at a point in time where even if we can come up with a stabilizing strategy for afghanistan do we have the time and resources to implement it before gravity overwhelms our ability to finance our treasury debt at rates that do not ensure a death spiral?

That sounds like social sciences bunkum. Are you a theorizer or a practitioner? I am quite sure it was a better world, a time in which the US understood the limits of its power and ability to manipulate the identities of people across the world who wanted be themselves rather than be toys for us in a dream of a homogeneous mankind. You think communications technology dooms all the world to sameness, globalization and "modernity?" If you do, you have not been paying attention to reality.
You think all these groups are fighting each other and us because they want to be homogenized? Well, it is true that IS wants to homogenize mankind.

i was a mining engineer, pretty mundane stuff and not prone to theorizing and such.

communications technology takes analog information of which all life is and restructures it after sampling and converting into numbers. listen to an old fashion 33lp of any opera you enjoy and then listen to the same opera on a cd. for my money the lp has something almost indefinable but you can hear the difference. its fuller, better imo.

i think digital technology is short changing our experience of ourselves and the world around us whole giving us a slightly incomplete picture of reality.

in terms of politics and america my observation is simple. we had after ww2 the greatest f...k you advantage the world has seen since the height of the roman empire and we managed to piss it away in my lifetime. i was born just after the end of ww2.

i lament it as much as you do and i wish it wasn't so!

Always glad to have another real world guy on board. I have a Fisher 400 stereo receiver that I bought in the 60s. It was fisher's last non-digital receiver. As you say, it has something in the sound that digital machines do not.

me too pat.
my stuff is also vintage equipment, an AR turntable es1 i still have and a classic kenwood tuner and trio amplifier all from my college days. all still work well but the speakers have gone through several iterations since the 1960's.

love the ar turntable run by a rubber band. simplicity itself

my teenage grandsons find the turntable especially prehistoric but cool.........

"opinion control is the historic basis of state legitimacy, something no longer easily molded or even possible "

You haven't been seeing what is happening on the campuses of America's universities.

or google.

https://www.zerohedge.com/n...

sadly fred i have and i view this absurd devolution as just the preamble for what ought to be ultimately a violent battle for the soul and future of this nation.

i do take some comfort in the fact that the pushers of this nonsense are not generally rooted in the historic consequences to those fomenting revolution. few ever succeed and most purveyors end hard.

as an example of my hope i have a 13 yo grandson, a big trump supporter from before the election. 13 mind you and already quite aware of whats happening and why. also a serious outdoors kid and serious about the boy scouts. now mind you he is from a wealthy suburb of boston. a kid who is growing up quite comfortable but give him a chance to get out into the woods to camp and hunt and he will and has brought home squirrels and other edible small mammals for dinner. clean em dress em and cook em much to my daughters horror. this is a kid you expect to live on video games and left wing SJ politics.

ergo i think there is hope for this country in the young if charlie is indicative.

Charlie, I believe is an anomaly among his generation of urban & suburban kids. Rural is different as many have exposure to life on the land. IMO, what we have is an urban/suburban vs rural divide rather than a left/right divide as the media and many like to portray. Amlo, Sanders and AOC represent the left populism while Trump, Bolsonaro and Salvini represent the right populism.

The neocon & neoliberal policies of the past 40+ years have given us extreme market concentration, unprecedented wealth inequality and endless wars that provide no national benefit. There is now a reaction building represented by Brexit, Trump, Salvini/5Star, and Gilets jaunes. But...the Party of Davos will not give up their privilege & power that easily.

Best wishes to Charlie. He, like all of us, is living in interesting times. If he's that close to Boston make sure he gets some time on the water.

Iraq 1 did not do the trick. 9/11 was required to enter the world in which we now live. How many troops were in the ME prior to 9/11?

They were all Saudi's those 9/11 guys. And it took forever to find OBL hiding in plain sight in Pakistan. And then he sure as hell wasn't captured. He was murdered. With HC watching the monitors. We came, we saw, he died.

I have all the sympathy in the world for those who wonder what the hell 9/11 was. It sure as hell is true that almost instantly afterwards the neocon elite was talking about Iraq.

As I wrote before the world of US foreign policy in the ME prior to 9/11 was a world of benign neglect, a better and less destructive world.