Meanwhile in Syria

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Meanwhile in Syria/Iraq

The United States military on Sunday struck five targets in Iraq and Syria controlled by an Iranian-backed paramilitary group, the Pentagon said, a reprisal for a rocket attack on Friday that killed an American contractor.

The airstrikes, carried out by Air Force F-15E fighter planes, hit three locations in Iraq and two in Syria controlled by the group, Kataib Hezbollah. Jonathan Hoffman, the chief Pentagon spokesman, said the targets included weapons storage facilities and command posts that were used to attack American and partner forces.

A United States response to an attack that kills or wounds Americans is not unusual. But Sunday’s retaliation involved direct strikes on Iranian proxies, making it particularly dangerous ground.

[...]

ISIS has lost its territory, and tensions have risen between Tehran and Washington over the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign.

Rocket attacks over the last two months by Iranian proxies threatened the uneasy peace, and Friday’s deadly strike broke it. The key question now is whether the American counterattack tamps down the cycle of violence or escalates it.

  NYT

Iraq’s top Shi’ite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani condemned on Monday U.S. air strikes that hit several bases of an Iran-backed militia and killed at least 25 people, demanding respect for Iraq’s sovereignty.

  Reuters

Powerful political blocs within Iraq are describing Sunday’s U.S. strikes against an Iran-backed militia as a violation of Iraq’s sovereignty — once again raising concerns about the viability of long-term plans to keep American troops in the country.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Badr al-Ziyadi, a member of Iraq’s parliament who is also part of a collation close to powerful Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, has called for an end to the agreement that keeps American troops in the country.

Sadr, whose militias fought and killed U.S. troops for years following the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, said Monday that he will work with Iran-backed militias to end the U.S. presence in Iraq through legal means, but noted that he will “take other actions” if that strategy fails.

[...]

Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said Sunday during a press conference held at President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property in Florida that the strikes were carried out by F-15E Strike Eagles.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Esper phoned Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi about a half an hour before the strikes and said that U.S. forces were about to bomb the Iran-backed militia.

Abdul-Mahdi asked for the U.S. to call off the strikes, according to the Wall Street Journal story.

[...]

The U.S. has deployed an additional 14,000 U.S. troops to the Middle East over the last six months to confront Iran’s malign behavior across the region.

Esper has said he is considering deploying additional forces to counter Iran.

  Military Times

I thought Trump was going to get our military out of the Middle East.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Thank you, Mr. President! - Part 2

Could be

What we do know is that Trump made the withdrawal announcement shortly after the Erdoğan phone call.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Keeping the right people happy

Oh, really?

US pundits, politicians and military commanders may not be happy about Trump pulling troops out of Syria, but Putin and Erdoğan are.  Trump mission accomplished.

“If the USA made that decision then it’s the right one,” Putin said during a nationally televised press conference on Thursday, repeating complaints that US troop deployments in Syria were illegal because they were not agreed upon with the Assad government. He said he agreed with the US president, Donald Trump, that a “serious blow” had been struck against Isis, saying: “Donald is right, I agree with him.”

  Guardian

Donald is right. They're on a first name basis now.

Throughout the Syrian war, Turkey has prioritised managing Kurdish ambitions in Syria, and potential implications for its own Kurdish populations, above all else. Ankara sees the YPG in Syria as indistinguishable from Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) militants inside Turkey. Though Syria’s Kurds say they have no interest in full autonomy, and the PKK has said it no longer aspires to an independent state, Ankara views the militant groups as dangerous subversives who threaten its borders.

On Wednesday morning, days after speaking by phone with the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Trump tweeted: “We have defeated Isis in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency” – a claim at odds with his own administration’s assessments. In August this year, the Pentagon assessed there were still as many as 14,500 Isis fighters still in Syria.

[...]

The SDF responded to the announcement with a blunt statement. “The war against Islamic State has not ended and Islamic State has not been defeated,” it said. Any withdrawal would “create a political and military vacuum in the area, leaving its people between the claws of hostile parties”.

Other Kurdish leaders said the mooted abandonment would cause damage to Kurdish movements elsewhere in the region.

“We have every right to be afraid,” Arin Sheikmos, a Kurdish journalist and commentator, told the Associated Press. “If the Americans pull out and leave us to the Turks or the [Syrian] regime, our destiny will be like the Kurds of Iraqi Kurdistan in 1991. Neither the regime, nor Iran nor Turkey, will accept our presence here.”

Smoothly running White House

In April, President Trump repeated his campaign promise to end U.S. military involvement in Syria. “I want to get out,” he said. “I want to bring our troops back home.”

In September, senior administration aides said at the time, the president was persuaded to change course. Some 2,000 U.S. troops would stay in Syria indefinitely, not only until the Islamic State was defeated, but also until a political solution to the overall Syria conflict was in place and, in a key part of Trump’s newly announced Iran policy, all Iranian forces and their proxies aiding Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had left the country.

On Wednesday, Trump set heads spinning within his own government and around the world by apparently reversing himself again. His decision was made on Tuesday, according to people familiar with the issue, following a small meeting attended only by senior White House aides and the secretaries of defense and state, most of whom, if not all, sharply disagreed.

[...]

In just the past week, senior officials — including the administration’s special envoys to Syria and the counter-Islamic State coalition — had said that defeating the last organized Islamic State pockets, in southern Syria near the Iraqi border, could be months away and that thousands of militants remained underground throughout Syria, waiting to reemerge.

The officials reiterated that the Syrian Democratic Forces, the Kurdish-dominated group of U.S.-trained and -equipped ground fighters, remained valued American allies who would not be deserted.

  WaPo

Yeah, well, it's not like we haven't made and broken that promise to foreign fighters before. And the whole world knows it, so, hey, buyer beware when you make a deal with this "ally".

The only potential upset in recent days was a threat by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan — who spoke with Trump at the Group of 20 summit three weeks ago and again on the telephone Friday — to send troops across the border to attack the U.S.-allied Kurdish forces in northeast Syria.

Officials familiar with the Friday call said that Erdogan, among other things, had stressed to Trump that the Syrian Kurds were terrorists — allied with Kurdish separatists in his own country — and asked why the United States was supporting them rather than its NATO ally. He noted that the Islamic State had been vanquished and questioned the need for an ongoing U.S. troop presence, saying that Turkish troops already massed on the Syrian border could handle any problem there.

[...]

Jonathan Alterman, director of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, noted that the Syria decision also coincided with the administration’s notification to Congress late Tuesday that Turkey’s long-sought purchase of U.S.-produced Patriot missile defense batteries had been approved after a years-long battle over the terms of a deal between Ankara and Washington.

“It would be disturbing if a strategic gesture was made for commercial reasons,” Alterman said.

Dear God, Jonathan. You weren't born yesterday.

A senior administration official, made available to brief reporters on the Syria decision Tuesday, mentioned only Turkey among U.S. allies that Trump had informed of the decision in advance. “He informed President Erdogan as a neighbor of Syria,” the official said.

Sounds more like Erdoğan informed him.

Trump himself made no public appearances, canceling a scheduled meeting with Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.). Instead, he communicated via Twitter, where he posted a late-afternoon video of himself standing outside the Oval Office, saying that “it’s time for our U.S. troops to come home.” Fallen American warriors, he said, pointing at the sky, were “looking down” in approval.

[...]

A number of close U.S. allies, who are members of the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State, said they were not consulted and were given no prior warning. One European defense secretary put in a call Tuesday to Jim Mattis after hearing rumors of the decision and received a late-night call back from the defense secretary with confirmation. Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, did not participate in the meeting with Trump and was in the dark until after it took place, according to several people familiar with the situation.

Mercy Corps, the international aid organization that provides aid to about half the 2.7 million civilian population in U.S.-controlled eastern Syria, said it would probably have to reconsider its operations there.

“We’re not getting assistance in terms of logistics and safety,” country director Arnaud Quemin said in a telephone interview. “It’s just that the presence of the coalition in that part of the country . . . keeps the area calm,” adding that that presence allows organizations like his to “function without interference.”

C'est la vie.

I thought you were my friend, Becky

Oooooooh.

Speaking of the whims of the executive

That was apparently His Lardship's announcement that all troops would be forthwith withdrawn from Syria.

The U.S. military is preparing to withdraw its forces from Syria, people familiar with the matter said Wednesday, a move that marks an abrupt reversal of the American military strategy in the Middle East.

U.S. officials began informing partners in northeastern Syria of their plans to begin an immediate pullout of American forces from the region where they have been trying to wrap up the campaign against Islamic State, the people said.

“The Pentagon has an order to move troops out of Syria as quickly as possible,” a U.S. official said.

U.S. military officials have refused to say what a withdrawal timeline could look like.

  WSJ

Perhaps they don't know.

On the one hand, Mr. Trump has pushed to withdraw all U.S. forces from Syria, where more than 2,000 service members are working alongside Syrian militants to defeat Islamic State. On the other, he’s embraced a strategy that calls for American forces to remain in Syria as a deterrent to Iran’s expansive military ambitions.

[...]

Earlier this month, Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, suggested that the U.S. mission in Syria was far from complete, saying ISIS hadn’t been defeated and that only 20% of the needed local forces had been trained so far.

“With regard to stabilization, we have a long way to go,” Gen. Dunford said at a Washington Post live event.

[...]

The move follows a call last week between Mr. Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has threatened to launch an assault on America’s Kurdish partners in Syria.

His Lardship likes chaos.



Poor Lindsey.  After whoring for Turmp on Kavanaugh, he thought they were friends.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Forever wars

Of course, this wouldn't have been any different with anyone in the Oval Office.

lies at the heart of the United States’ newest commitment to a Middle East war.

The commitment is small, a few thousand troops who were first sent to Syria three years ago to help the Syrian Kurds fight the Islamic State. President Trump indicated in March that the troops would be brought home once the battle is won, and the latest military push to eject the group from its final pocket of territory recently got underway.

In September, however, the administration switched course, saying the troops will stay in Syria pending an overall settlement to the Syrian war and with a new mission: to act as a bulwark against Iran’s expanding influence.

That decision puts U.S. troops in overall control, perhaps indefinitely, of an area comprising nearly a third of Syria.

[...]

The Pentagon does not say how many troops are there. Officially, they number 503, but earlier this year an official let slip that the true number may be closer to 4,000.

  WaPo

In related news:

They just sat there and got bombed

Is this an indication?.....

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:  Apparently, there was another bit from General McKenzie:



There's no way for us to know the truth.  Everybody lies.

Bomb, bomb, bomb. Bomb, bomb Iran

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

War strategy

Gee, wouldn't want to do any favors for those guys.

I saw an earlier comment on Trump's supposed move to withdraw from Syria that also said it would benefit Putin.  WTF? Not that I think Trump actually gives a shit about anything but himself, but it's disturbing that we no longer talk about war as if it has any effect on tens of thousands of ordinary people.  It's just a matter of playing a board game like Risk.

I'll tell you who it will benefit most:  Syrian civilians.  And that's a good thing.  I hope Adam Johnson is wrong on A).

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Tillerson on Syria

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson unveiled an ambitious US strategy for ousting Syrian President Bashar al Assad on Wednesday that relies on an indefinite US military presence in the country, an insurrection within the Assad regime and a groundswell of support from the beleaguered Syrian people.

  Buzzfeed

Christ, did we go back in time about three years, or what?

Tillerson says that “our expectation is that the desire for a return to normal life … will help rally the Syrian people and individuals within the regime to compel Assad to step down.”

That's what we were saying years ago. It hasn't happened. What's changed to make anyone think it will?

The speech [...] marks a departure from language drafted between the US and Russian officials in Vietnam in November.

[...]

A central pillar to Tillerson’s plan, delivered in a speech at Stanford University, is a UN-supervised election that Tillerson predicted would result in new leadership.

Do we now just pipe up dreams and call them plans?

One individual familiar with the decision told BuzzFeed News the stronger language could create the conditions for dismantling Assad’s rule.

Do you think Russia or Iran might have something to say about all this? Or even Assad and the Syrians themselves?

The decision to approve a lasting US military presence in Syria was approved by Trump at a National Security Council meeting on Dec. 21.

The US military currently has about 2,000 troops in Syria working with a local force made up primarily of Syrian Kurds. It was unclear how large a contingent of US military might be required for a longterm commitment.

I don't understand how this can be done. It's like an occupation. The occupied country did not invite us to stick around.

Tillerson said the military presence would be in addition to an unspecified number of US diplomats working on so-called stabilization programs in a country where as many as 6 million people are displaced and where many of the cities have been devastated by more than six years of war.

Should we maybe mention the fact that we don't have any fucking diplomats left because of Tillerson (and Trump)?

On Wednesday, Pentagon officials and spokespeople for Operation Inherent Resolve, the anti-ISIS coalition, would not comment on why the US military was setting up such a force and whether it would require additional US troops. Turkish President Recep Tayyp Erdoğan has vowed to "strangle it before it's even born.”

So. No problems, then.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.