John Chuckman
EXPANSION OF COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN CBC NEWS
“Turkey's pledge to 'take custody' of ISIS prisoner camps called precarious by experts
“About 30 Canadian men, women and children are thought to be held in these camps”
This is just one more bit of peripheral noise about what's going on in northeast Syria. No one, on any side, gives a damn about the mercenaries of ISIS.
What really concerns Washington is the failure of its plan to support the hiving off of the area as a Kurdish rump state, which is what the American troops there have been doing, training and supplying Syrian Kurds to fight against Syria's government. The effort represented Israel’s consolation prize for the loss of the American-run proxy war intended to topple Syria.
Fighting ISIS has been the consistent cover story for this operation which involves American troops illegally in Syria doing things like building bases and supplying Syrian Kurds with weapons.
Not only was the effort a very nasty piece of business to be doing in someone else’s country, but a rather foolish one, considering the well-known attitude of Turkey's Erdogan about having any Kurdish-run entities on Turkey's border.
It represents just one more embarrassing mishap in the running of the American empire, whose affairs often are handled with the aplomb and dignity of the Keystone Cops.
AFTER WORD:
The real interests at work in northeastern Syria project are easily understood from various comments following Trump’s initial moving of some American troops, effectively allowing Turkey’s Erdogan to invade the region.
We had the Congress’s most vigilant defender of all the interests of Israel, Senator Lindsey Graham, blowing huge clouds of steam almost immediately, but of course speaking in disguised terms about concerns for “allied” Kurds.
Other members of Congress quickly chimed in, also with concerns for the Kurds and various suggested punitive measures to be brought against Turkey.
Trump did one of his typical clownish flip-flops by starting to talk about the need for maybe something stronger than sanctions against Turkey.
And this morning, Netanyahu, who of course should have nothing to say about what happens in northeastern Syria, made threats about Israel maybe assisting the “valiant Kurds.” Oh, sure, Israel as defender of valiant Kurds.
Then, we have stories like the one above, from CBC, suggesting concern for the Kurds’ ISIS prisoners coming under Turkey’s charge. About thirty are thought to be Canadians. The irony is almost overwhelming since Canada has only recently spoken against repatriating Canadian members of ISIS.
Something from Russia brings things together nicely.
There are two notorious Russian pranksters, Alexey Stolyarov and Vladimir Kuznetsov, very clever fellows who have a number of times pulled off the stunt of calling someone famous while pretending to be someone else famous and getting the person they call to answer sensitive and embarrassing questions, recording the answers.
I suspect they are with Russian security services, given all the special knowledge required to place such calls, and their efforts often provide real insight along with some laughs.
They called Lindsey Graham twice, pretending to be the Turkish Defense Minister, and they recorded him saying: “I told President Trump that Obama made a huge mistake in relying on the YPG Kurds. Everything I worried about has come true, and now we have to make sure Turkey is protected from this threat in Syria. I’m sympathetic to the YPG problem, and so is the president, quite frankly.”
Talk about hypocrisy, the man says the very opposite in confidence to his public words.
