Turkey approved military action against Kurdish separatists

[Dinner]

Patroklos thinks this has anything to do with a House Bill which will never be passed into law?!

Dude, you are dumber then I thought. This has everything to do with the on going 30 year long civil war in Turkey and the US & Iraqi refusal to take responsibility for policy Iraqi Kurdistan. Turkey is responding to the PKK attacking it's soldiers from safe havens in Iraq. If you can't figure that out on your own then you should just stop posting.

[Patroklos]

Patroklos thinks this has anything to do with a House Bill which will never be passed into law?!

Yeah, because I can't see why labeling the Turkish people as genocidal manicas at this juncture would have any effect on our ability to talk them down from this

When the line "will gravely heard our relationship with Turkey" was said, I am sure they were refering to the stategic hand carved stone chess set trade and not the ongoing strife on the border of Iraq and Turkey.

It seemed for a second you might have learned something for your little walkabout, but you are the same old hack you were when you left

This has everything to do with the on going 30 year long civil war in Turkey and the US & Iraqi refusal to take responsibility for policy Iraqi Kurdistan. Turkey is responding to the PKK attacking it's soldiers from safe havens in Iraq.

Your answer, while technically correct, is entirely useless, hence it is easily identifiable as the product of an unabashed hack

Awesome Oerdin, you can grasp the obvious, now as was asked earlier, what do you want the US to do about it?

[snoopy369]

Can't we just, well, let them go in and kill the terrorists? We don't like terrorists, do we? Patrokolos, are you or have you ever been a member of Al Qaeda

[Patroklos]

I...ummm...of course not!

[Ramo]

The House resolution was ill-advised and certainly doesn't help the diplomatic climate, but it had almost nothing to do with this authorization. States simply don't behave that irrationally.

[Patroklos]

The House resolution was ill-advised and certainly doesn't help the diplomatic climate, but it had almost nothing to do with this authorization. States simply don't behave that irrationally.

I didn't say the House did it on purpose, but it is obvious what the White House was a little more farsighted about this and correctly worried about this particular and already developing problem when they protested it.

[Ramo]

Edit: Oh misread what you wrote. It's not just just that it wasn't done on purpose, it's that the resolution was not particularly significant. A poor choice (and far from the worst aspect of foreign policy derived from identity politics that we've seen - *cough*Israel*cough*), but had almost nothing to do with the authorization to use military force. States do not go to war due to a non-binding condemnation of a century old regime from a completely different country.

[Imran Siddiqui]

[q=Patroklos]Yeah, because I can't see why labeling the Turkish people as genocidal manicas at this juncture would have any effect on our ability to talk them down from this[/q]

A. Condemning the Ottoman Empire does not equal "labeling the Turkish people". This is the nuance that conservatives seem to not understand.

B. If you think the resolution had that much to do at all with this measure, you are seriously deluded. The Turks have been making noise about going into Kurdistan for years now. It's been building to a crescendo over the last few months and a Armenian genocide resolution has little to nothing to do with the Turkish government taking another step forward in this problem with the Kurdish terrorists in Iraq.

[Zkribbler]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
[q=Patroklos]Yeah, because I can't see why labeling the Turkish people as genocidal manicas at this juncture would have any effect on our ability to talk them down from this[/q]

A. Condemning the Ottoman Empire does not equal "labeling the Turkish people". This is the nuance that conservatives seem to not understand.

This nuance also appears to not be understood by the Turks.

B. If you think the resolution had that much to do at all with this measure, you are seriously deluded. The Turks have been making noise about going into Kurdistan for years now. It's been building to a crescendo over the last few months and a Armenian genocide resolution has little to nothing to do with the Turkish government taking another step forward in this problem with the Kurdish terrorists in Iraq.

...or, it may have been the straw that broke the camel's back.

As an afficianato of irony, I would have liked to have seen Turkey pass a resolution condemning the U.S.'s genocide of its Native American population. (It's a rare country in the world that doesn't have some skeleton in its closet -- and usually the skeleton is that of an ethnic minority.)

[Arrian]

The resolution didn't trigger this. That's just laughable.

It may be useful for some Turkish politicos to point at it as cover, but that's bull****. This has been brewing for a while, and is grounded in real issues, not US Congressional hot air. NOTE: I'm not saying the Armenian genocide was not a real issue. I'm saying the US Congress, 80 years on, making a grand, theatrical, semantic statement about it isn't.

-Arrian

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Patroklos

Awesome Oerdin, you can grasp the obvious, now as was asked earlier, what do you want the US to do about it?

The answer is very simple, numbnuts. Actually police northern Iraq and either arrest or drive out terrorists camped out there. Surely even your little mind can understand that?

If we'd actually bothered to do something about the PKK over the last 3 years that the Turks have been complaining about this then things wouldn't be where they are now. Bush didn't care about Kurdistan or Turk's objections though just like he doesn't care about anything until it becomes a crisis.

[Arrian]

Not that I'm a fan of the PPK, but... where do the troops for that operation come from, Oerdin?

-Arrian

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Ramo
The House resolution was ill-advised and certainly doesn't help the diplomatic climate, but it had almost nothing to do with this authorization. States simply don't behave that irrationally.

Which is why Patroklos's claims are so laughable. The poor guy's brain has rotted away from watching to much rightwing media.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Arrian
Not that I'm a fan of the PPK, but... where do the troops for that operation come from, Oerdin?

-Arrian

Relocate some of the units sitting out in the desert guarding the border with Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Kuwait and relocate them to Iraqi Kurdistan. Alternatively we could stop dribbling out training of Iraqi units and actually invest some real money to ramp up the Iraqi Army so that they can patrol their own borders. Finally allowing the Iraqis to have back their artillery, aircraft, and tanks would also help.

We've intentionally handicapped the Iraqi military so we can keep them under control then we whine they're not doing enough. Time to stop the half measures and make them a proper military again.

[snoopy369]

If we have extra troops, why aren't they in Iraq helping out with the assault? For some reason I have a feeling it's not something as simple as "lol we like not using all of our troops effectively" ...