brinktk
Active member
Just curious what you agree to? The Russians are unlikely to engage large scale land forces against ISIS. Do you prefer an Iranian dominated ME. Even if the west were to allow it? Kind of exchanging one terrorist organization for another. The Syrian rebels are not a powerful military option but at least they like the Kurds are freedom fighters.
Unfortunately Turkey (and Iran I might add) will never support an independent Kurdistan since the Kurdistan also extends into Iran and Turkey.
However I have the humility to admit that I’m no authority on the ME, who is.
I think the Russians having to deal with the quagmire that is the ME would do a lot of our deterrent mission for us. They spend a lot of money and time investing in an unwinnable situation which means they aren't growing, spending, or researching in many other areas...plus it gives us political and diplomatic leverage against them when they inevitably make a big mess of things...or by a stroke of luck they start to fix it and then they make more markets open up for us to sell our crap to...isn't that what this is about anyways?
I don't believe the Iranians to be the boogeymen that they are made out to be. Their population is vastly under the age of 25 and with the information age...their authoritarian government is going to have enough problems on their hands if they don't start to secularize. Of course, if we keep meddling in their affairs and give them a reason to hate us...then their government can simply blame all their problems on us...I would much prefer to deal with Persians in the ME than the Arabs who have actively supported movements against us AS OUR ALLIES!
I know this is anecdotal, but the Iranians I have met all over the world... were largely professionals and didn't have a chip on their shoulders... However, many of the Arabs I have met do have a chip and aren't professionals at the rate that I see Persians...That is in both the work force and academia.
As much as I would like to support an independent Kurdistan, I know the reality is that it simply cannot happen. Not now at least. I love the Kurds and if given the opportunity, I would go fight alongside them...However, from a geopolitical standpoint...it would just make the ME more of a flash point for the time being than it already is for them to be granted independence. That is a conversation for later...and I think the Kurds understand that.
To Monty, it certainly isn't as easy as letting them give up and going home...however, I think it is a reasonable suspicion that an 18 year old fighter trying to put food on the table for his family and who surrenders is probably a good candidate to be left alone once they put down their rifles...The one's preaching at the Mosques, organizing their own groups, and planning operations are the ones we need to keep in detention centers and sent to international courts systems to be made accountable for what they have done.
I know in the places the radicals show up...there isn't a lot of other options for people who have a family to make a living outside of complicity with the radical group...unless they want to put their loved ones in a tremendous amount of danger. Even then, there are no guarantees and you may still end up losing a loved one on a trumped up charge...It is tyranny and it works especially well when a family member can be held as leverage.
When I was in Iraq and AQI was in charge of large portions of Al Anbar and Ramadi they used to stop bus traffic on the way to and from Syria. They would shake everyone down and anyone who had a Shi'a sounding name would be made to get out of the bus. They would send the bus on its' way and take the ones who they forced off the bus down to the Euphrates river or into a back alley and they would kill them all. One particularly gruesome scene is when an entire family was killed and it was apparent they drowned the children in front of their parents, then strangled the wife after raping her in front of her husband...then the husband was tortured and beheaded...They would leave these remains laying around for people or us to find knowing it would strike terror in the hearts of the locals and it would show us that there was nothing we could do to stop them...and in many respects they were right at the time...
There were so many we found this way...helpless
So if a guy who fought for a time as an insurgent to support his family because the alternative was being stopped on a bus and being singled out at random, and he decides to surrender...and after vetting him I see he is just a normal guy...well, I have no problem with that guy going home or fleeing elsewhere to try and continue his life...
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