Why I’m not too alarmed at the Syria pullout
I suspect that this may be correct;
Despite threats that they planned to release ISIS prisoners and abandon their front-line positions against the remaining pockets of ISIS fighters, Kurdish fighters of the YPG and the Syrian Democratic Forces have not fled.
Even Erdogan’s threats to march East of the Euphrates to massacre the Kurds in their defacto capital in Qarmishli were bluster, Debka argued, referring to a phone conversation between Presidents Trump and Erdogan on Dec. 14, when the Turk promised his army would not cross the Euphrates.
Trump’s White House team also told Middle East allies that the troop pullout would be phased out between four to six months. “During that time, Syria is bound to see many developments that may require Washington to revise its plans,” Debka reported.
“The US and Iraq are in advanced negotiations for the deployment to the Iraqi-Syria border of the Iraqi Special Operations Forces (ISOF) – the “Golden Division” – which drove ISIS out of Mosul. It will stand in the path of Iranian and Iraqi Shiite militias crossings into Syria,” Debka added.
Could Trump and/or his advisors have a plan after all? If so, it wouldn’t be the first time.
On the other hand, if Trump had a plan to protect the Kurds, why did Mattis resign and write this?:
My views on treating allies with respect and also being clear-eyed about both malign actors and strategic competitors are strongly held and informed by over four decades of immersion in these issues. We must do everything possible to advance an international order that is most conducive to our security, prosperity and values, and we are strengthened in this effort by the solidarity of our alliances.
Because you have the right to have a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours on these and other subjects, I believe it is right for me to step down from my position.
If Trump plans to protect the Kurds, then what are the Trump views with which Mattis is unaligned? Well, maybe it’s something connected with this:
“I would not go into Syria, but if I did it would be by surprise and not blurted all over the media like fools,” Trump had tweeted five years ago.
Trump’s actions in Syria encompass his preference for flexibility, quick strikes or withdrawals with no long term commitment. And that’s exactly what frustrates a national security establishment whose watershed moment was still the post-war reconstruction of Germany and Japan. They foolishly misread Trump by confusing commitment with consistency, and unpredictability with inconsistency…
Trump understands that there’s no point in maintaining a doomed foreign colony of tens of thousands in Afghanistan, or setting one up in Syria. These colonies give meaning and purpose to their populations, experts, analysts, journalists, aid workers, who shape our foreign policy, but they don’t help America.
It still doesn’t really explain Mattis, who was not on board for nation-building. Is it a question of timing—does he think Trump announced the withdrawal too soon?
Remember a guy named Eisenhower talking about a “Military- Industrial Complex ?”
There there is This.
Sen. Howard Baker, R-Tenn., the ranking Republican on the Senate Watergate committee and later President Ronald Reagan’s chief of staff, never spoke explicitly of a Deep State. But he alluded to it once, in suitably cryptic terms. Reeling from his discovery that the Pentagon had spied on Nixon, and struggling to grasp the large role of the Central Intelligence Agency in Watergate, Baker said: “There are elephants crashing around in the forest.”
* * *
The Joint Chiefs of Staff had been increasingly frustrated by strains with civilian superiors over the conduct of the Vietnam War, and these deepened as American military involvement increased. Because of these frustrations, the top military brass developed an apparatus to help them stay informed during President Lyndon Johnson’s secretive decision-making process.
The instrument the military men used was the JCS-NSC liaison office, housed in the Executive Office Building and run by a pair of admirals. The late Melvin Laird, the longtime Wisconsin representative selected by Nixon to run the Pentagon, told me in a 1997 interview that before becoming defense secretary in January 1969, he had observed the chiefs building what was, in literal terms, a covert intelligence capability against the White House.
Then, the CIA got involved.
The Central Intelligence Agency also trained its resources on the Nixon White House. By the time the Plumbers became operational in June 1971, and burglarizing the Los Angeles office of the psychiatrist to Daniel Ellsberg, the former Defense Department analyst who leaked the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times, the agency had installed a longtime officer with a history in covert operations, E. Howard Hunt, on the team. Langley’s own NSC liaison, an officer named Rob Roy Ratliff, swore in a 1974 affidavit that Hunt, ostensibly retired from the CIA and working as a consultant in the White House, was regularly using secure couriers to send sealed pouches back to CIA Director Richard Helms, continuing right up until shortly before the Watergate arrests. Sources told investigative reporter Jim Hougan, author of Secret Agenda (1984), that the pouches contained sexual “gossip” about White House officials.
When the Watergate arrests occurred in the predawn hours of June 17, 1972, touching off the great scandal that would topple Nixon, among the Cubans in the break-in team fielded by the Committee for the Re-Election of the President was Eugenio Martinez. He was the only one of the Watergate burglars on the CIA payroll. For months, Martinez had been sending his case officer reports on the team’s activities; uniquely among the burglars, he carried on his person at the time of the arrests a key to the desk in the Democratic National Committee headquarters that was the true target of the ill-fated break-in.
Nixon was under surveillance like Trump but Trump has better street smarts. As Pat Buchanan says in his book, “Nixon’s White House Wars,” Nixon had a habit of intemperate orders he would cancel the next morning. One of the White House staff guys said, “Watergate was the result off some sonofabitch who heard the order and went right out and did it.” Buchanan got lots of orders that were cancelled the next morning.
Mattis is a product of the military academies, his many years of service, and I would guess a bit resentful of oversight from a rogue operator like djt. In other words, a Pentagon insider. I am not disparaging his record of service or questioning his sincerity. He has never worked with someone with Trump’s street fighting, counter punching instincts. Trump in DC is an anomaly and does not play the game of “how DC works”. That is what got him elected. That is why he is deeply resented by all of the usual players in DC.
BTW, I am not alarmed by this decision in the least bit.
So, Trump has no intention of pulling a Libya, forcing a Ukraine, or carving out a Kosovo. Progress. Positive progress. The Mediterranean can finish processing the refugee crisis forced by the last social justice adventure.
There are some good articles about future threats being military peers and technology, like the Russian hypersonic weapon.
Russian President Vladimir Putin first announced the hypersonic weapon, code-named Avangard, in a speech in March. Last week, U.S. intelligence sources told CNBC that the weapon had been successfully tested a number of times and could be operational by 2020.
The Russians have released few concrete details about the weapon, but from the information available, it appears the weapon is a so-called hypersonic glide vehicle, said Thomas Juliano, an assistant professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Notre Dame who specializes in hypersonic flight.
Is it real ? I doubt Mattis has any idea.
And a Chinese hypersonic weapon.
Does it work ?
“Hypersonic cruise missiles are powered all the way to their targets using an advanced propulsion system called a SCRAMJET. These are very, very fast. You may have six minutes from the time its launched until the time it strikes,” Moore said.
Hypersonic cruise missiles can fly at altitudes up to 100,000 feet whereas hypersonic glide vehicles can fly above 100,000 feet.
Nacouzi said that hypersonic glide vehicles are placed on top of rockets, launched, and then glide on top of the atmosphere.
“It’s like a plane with no engine on it. It uses aerodynamic forces to maintain stability to fly along and to maneuver,” he added.
They supposedly have an anti-ship missile like this.
Maybe aircraft carriers are obsolete, especially big nuclear powered ones.
I won’t complain about US troops getting out of other folks’ wars.
I feel bad for the Kurds, especially the Yazidi ones. But I have less stomach for perpetual wars directed by nebulous national interests and no will to actually kill enough people to win. And maybe, just maybe there’s enough economic & political leverage in play to keep someone else guarding those Kurdish backsides.
For those who think all this is part of some brilliant Trump master plan, Caroline Glick has a piece on Trump’s dealings with Turkey’s Erdogan that’s worth a read:
“Hard to countenance”, indeed.
It is the apparent desertion of the Kurds, who have been our reliable Muslim ally, that is causing so much angst. However, during Trump’s visit to Iraq he pointed out that we are not leaving the theatre and, if circumstances change, troops could be redeployed quickly. If the Kurds can continue the fight on their own, that’s a good thing. It seems quite likely that the loss of our advisors will not be fatal to their effort to keep their area ISIS free. If not, we can always go back in. Additionally, the Iraqis are sending a special forces group to the border to prevent Iranian transit of weapons and men through the area. We’ll have to see how that pans out.
In the meantime Spengler has some ideas about the departure of General Mattis as SECDEF: “Outgoing SecDef James Mattis is a deservedly honored soldier and an American patriot, but he was not necessarily the best man for the job. Mattis is a light infantry commander, and there are very few opportunities today for light infantry to solve America’s strategic problems. The overriding strategic risk to the United States is the loss of our technological edge, and the Defense Department needs a leader with the vision and expertise to restore it. Michael Griffin would be an excellent choice. A first-rate physicist, Dr. Griffin headed NASA under the Bush 41 administration.”
Spengler believes we should be working to improve our military technological superiority, which has degraded in the last 25 years. He makes a good case for a SECDEF who has the credentials to lead us in that direction. So, maybe Mattis’ departure is a good thing. Read it all here:
https://pjmedia.com/spengler/michael-griffin-for-secretary-of-defense/
“Declare victory and come home” — this sounds OK.
We failed to do that coming home bit in Afghanistan, and we’re still there, and when we leave, our boot-licking / yes-men allies will likely either fight ineffectively against the ruthless murdering Taliban, or they’ll run, or they’ll start licking Taliban boots (before getting executed).
Poor countries need functioning markets, with private property, and enforcement of contracts — far more, and probably before, “too much” democracy. The US press & hypocrites aren’t willing to support the kind of ruthless dictator fighter that can win against terrorists in a series of attrition battles, but that means “our bastards” are too weak to survive without us.
I think, and hope, the Kurds will be able to do this; I also hope most of them have given up their prior stupid socialist fantasies.
Mattis is probably right that the boot-licking allies “need” us — but we need locals strong enough to win fights without us.
Let them go home. Let’s see how it plays out. It’s likely we’ll be able to go back, if really needed (tho more women might become sex slaves, and worse, first).
Another example of Trump keeping a campaign promise. Best record for keeping or trying to keep significant promises. I think. Better than Obama, Bush 43, Clinton, Bush 41. Not so sure about Reagan’s actual promises; Carter was terrible.
The most obvious and perhaps only real use for a hypersonic nuclear cruise missile is to start WWIII… if the Chinese or Russians have it and used it to sink a US Aircraft Carrier(s), (its most likely target) it would be an act of war easily on the scale of Pearl Harbor. An Aircraft Carrier has a complement of over 5,000 men. Pearl Harbor had a death toll of 2,403 personnel… Such an attack would demand a ‘proportionate’ response… which would in turn demand a proportionate reaction by the aggressor, etc.
Currently, WWIII would be settled with nuclear ICBMs. So use of a nuclear hypersonic cruise missile triggers the exchange of nuclear ICBMs. An exchange neither side wins. Theoretically, its a fearsome weapon but one whose only current use is to trigger a war that cannot be won.
If the Chinese succeed in militarizing high earth orbit, a very brief WWIII would then be settled with kinetic bombardment.
Of passing interest is that kinetic bombardment eliminates radioactive fallout, making the ‘cleansed’ area immediately available for colonization… anybody want to bet that, the ChiComs are fully aware of that ‘advantage’?
And that I strongly suspect, more than any other factor is driving their interest in militarizing space. In consolidating their power, they killed at least 30 million of their own people. I’m dubious that the prospect of killing over 300 million Americans gives them pause. Being able to pull it off with an ‘acceptable level of sacrifice’ is their only concern.
For that reason I fully support the principle of regaining and then retaining our technological lead. The ChiComs stealing our tech is a direct national security threat to America.
The US does not confirm nor deny that US Navy carriers carry nuclear ordnance IIRC. Do the Chinees communists and Russians really want to find out?
If initial planning were in place to support the Kurds in performing a massive ambush of Turkish forces, would Mattis feel he had to resign because he had repeatedly promised the Turks that Kurdish blood would be spilled?
Trump is crazy like a fox. Don’t think for a minute that he doesn’t understand the entire Swamp is against him and that the CIA is full of leakers which may include Mattis. The Khashoggi affair became public from our own leakers in the CIA; don’t think that Trump doesn’t understand this. He always has a plan that usually contains economic leverage which is always the key.
I’m dubious that the prospect of killing over 300 million Americans gives them pause. Being able to pull it off with an ‘acceptable level of sacrifice’ is their only concern.
Who would they sell their stuff to then ? I am not nearly as concerned about Chinese hostility. It’s true the leadership is still communist but, unlike Stalin, they don’t think a communist state is self sufficient.
Of course, there is the possibility of miscalculation. In 1914, France and Germany were each other’s largest trading partner.
Read a comment the other day that stated Mattis was pissed at the President because PJT picked the next head of the joint Chiefs of Staff, a selection that Mattis felt was his to make. He blew up in a meeting with the President and they had words. When Mattis was finished venting, he was summarily fired. All of the stuff after that is just fluff. I read the letter and it didn’t say much and nothing specific just DC swamp fluff. I served with Mattis and he’s a good man but it’s pretty obvious he’s not on the same geopolitical page with the President.
Ann: as predictable as they come. Ann hates Trump so much that at every chance, in every way , she will read his actions in the worst possible light. She will even cherry pick the articles that told her just how to think that.
Our country is bankrupt and our elites don’t mind sending boys from flyover country to die as pawns on their chessboard.
When Müllerland occupied France in WW2 they made the French pay for the occupation ( as well as turning their Jews over to the Müllers).
It’s obscene that US taxpayers pay for the privilege to defend Western Europe , Japan and Korea .
It is unsustainable
Ah, OM, they do carry Nukes. I will not say more.
Neo et al.,
If this is true…:
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20181122-saudi-arabia-uae-send-troops-to-support-kurds-in-syria/
…then I am less than not worried about the U.S. Syria withdrawal.
Lyn:
“I’m shocked!” That a carrier battle group would carry nuclear ordnance. 😉
The “neither confirm nor deny” statements were often cited when Greenpeace type activists protested the US Navy coming to port in Japan, but that was years ago IIRC.
Om…
IIRC, that statement was used even earlier with regard to New Zealand.
For the longest time, Tokyo was afraid to even raise the issue.
Something about who butter’s ones bread.
It strikes me that President Trump consistently: a) makes plans based on the way things are, not the way he or others may wish they were, and b) encourages and sets up others for success. *** I have confidence in him; as well as, the people he has confidence in.
Yazidi one??!
John, Yazidi not in syria they are in Iraq and they are not kurds.