Turkey Tanks Attacking Kurds, not Islamic State so Much

 

Turkey announced that their armor supported troops rolling southward into Syria with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan claiming they are there to confront Islamic State and Syrian Kurdish rebels. This appears to be somewhat absurd to use the problems caused by the Islamic State in order to destroy as much of the Kurdish forces before retreating back north of the border claiming whatever excuse necessary to excuse their not confronting Islamic State. This is a mission to weaken the Kurdish Militias, Peshmerga, in order to make the Kurdish vulnerable to the al-Nusra Front, Islamic State and whatever other Arab forces are able to take advantage of the Turkish weakening and degrading of the Kurdish ability to defend themselves. This attack by Turkish forces is all about Erdogan’s detestable hostility towards the Kurds and has no footing in reality and is fully due to the visceral desire to destroy the Kurds from spite. The Kurdish forces in Syria have always been fixated facing southward in order to face threats from al-Nusra, al-Qaeda aligned terrorists, Alawite forces of the Syrian Military, and, of course, against Islamic State (formerly ISIS or ISIL). At no time have the Kurdish Militias in Syria taken any hostile steps against Turkey and have little if any connection with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party or PKK (Kurdish: Partiya Karkerên Kurdistanê ‎) which the Turkish government has labeled as a terrorist group.

 

This has more to do with the success of the Kurds in the first of the last two elections where they forced Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) to not have an outright majority and thus require making a coalition with another similar Islamic Party. Erdogan took the alternative solution of preventing any coalition from forming thus forcing another election. Between the elections mysteriously numerous Kurdish leading officials and some Kurdish and other minor party candidates met untimely and mysterious ends. The ensuing second election proceeded in giving the AKP a clean majority. After there being no government or other investigations into the mysterious deaths and other strange events, there soon was an entirely different set of investigations to carry out. There was a coup in Turkey presumable brought about by a mysterious Imam who once was allied with Erdogan but they fell out as Erdogan gained in strength and no longer needed his former “friend” and political ally. Now this former ally, Imam Muhammd Fethullah Gulen, could pose a threat to Erdogan despite residing outside Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, in the twilight of life and became the next great threat. President Erdogan is cementing his power so as to become President for Life, thus the Gulen coup which came apart almost before it got started. There were numerous reports of “Gulen coup allied pilots attaining missile lock of the aircraft carrying Erdogan and having this lock for over five minutes and never firing a single missile or other armament at the aircraft. What coup worth its salt does not shoot down the reigning President’s aircraft when given the opportunity? We’ll tell you; the kind of coup which is engineered and executed by the reigning President who is feeling particularly vulnerable after not winning an overwhelming victory in an election and having to resort to back room politics to win the forced second election balloting. He used goon squads to assure his win in the second election while also intimidating the Kurdish population severely diminishing their numbers voting in the second elections. Then he had a coup and within twenty-four hours of putting down the coup there were more than six-thousands of judges, prosecutors, lawyers and other legal professionals arrested and another six-thousand military personnel arrested and a predicted additional many thousands still on lists to be arrested and an equal number to be placed under investigation. Now there is an armor supported assault into Syria to vanquish the ability of the Kurds in Syria to defend their people leaving them vulnerable to the Islamic State. Meanwhile there will not likely be much, if any, assault by these Turkish forces against the Islamic State as was promised as the main reason for the crossing into Syria. This is highly unlikely as the Turkish forces could very well have their hands full just engaging the Kurdish Militias.

 

Turkish Tank Rolling Into North-Eastern Syria

 

Much of the reason for this attack and numerous other nasty little surprises coming between now and the middle of January of next year is because President Obama’s terms in office are coming to a close and the United States may become a greater presence in the world after the election no matter who wins. Erdogan knows he will be losing his BFF (best friend forever) in the White House and gaining either an unpredictable crazy person who might send troops against you if you upset them on a bad hair day or Donald Trump as the next President. Either way, crazy hair Donald or crazier hair Hillary, you will be looking at somebody far more willing to use the United States military power than you have with President Obama. We have all heard endless tales of how unpredictable and erratic Donald Trump can be but the truth is Hillary Clinton is far more vindictive, ask any of the women who played with Bill and then told, and who has a long list of corpses showing up in her past, think Ft. Marcy Park and the Vince Foster enigma in a puzzle wrapped in lies which the police still have no clue or Ron Brown and air crash anomalies. Donald Trump does not have a trail of dead realestate developers left behind him in a train of tears as does Hillary with political problem people or just problem people. Then there are the select names Hillary has called those who fell short of delivering on campaigns such as reported in the Guardian that she called Paul Fray, her husband’s campaign manager at the time, a… well, we’ll let you look this one up if you are unfamiliar with it. Just for added information, the man was not and is not, to the best of our knowledge, Jewish. So much for even tempered and if given a choice on who has the “football” following them everywhere with the codes to launch sufficient nuclear weapons to end the planet as we know it, I would much have a jolly crazy person who jokes about the size of their “hands” than a vindictive person who cannot even control their tongue, let alone who knows what else.

 

Along the line of the mice playing while the cat is away, or simply asleep at the switch, China is building a naval base in Djibouti fairly close to the major United States post in Africa and is considering more such military ports placed at focal points around the globe. China has even stated in their budgeting that they hope to become a naval force who rules the waves, or at least the commercial shipping lanes. Their claim is this base has been established to fight the piracy in this area and should they succeed in this endeavor as announced, they will receive many thanks from nations around the world who have used the Suez Canal and faced the pirate menace in these waters. We also have the Chinese Island building into the South China Sea and Russia expanding their naval docking abilities in the Mediterranean Sea and using a military airfield in Iran to cover the Middle East under the pretense of fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. The world could look even stranger and the United States will now face facts on the ground around the globe with adversarial forces and nations who will have taken full advantage of a President asleep at the controls while spending time attempting to cripple adversaries at home, even some in his own party. The problem is the United States will not suffer alone from the adversarial role played by President Obama against the United States historic alliances and capabilities leaving a world vulnerable without any real guidance. At the end of World War II the United States all but neutered the militaries of the allied powers as if their militaries were the reason for the war and promised they would protect Europe from all threats. Well, that appears to have come to an end and it will be interesting no matter who wins the coming elections as both have stated they are want to use American military force unless there is a driving threat which must be met. The definition of such a threat is different between Hillary and Donald but that can wait until closer to the election when people might actually care. Suffice it to say that one of them is not traditional American force projection in their thinking.

 

Beyond the Cusp