Trump signals economic warfare with Turkey if the Turks attack the Syrian Kurds

BBC:
US President Donald Trump has threatened to "devastate Turkey economically" if it attacks Kurdish forces in Syria following a planned pullout of US troops.

In two tweets on Sunday, Mr Trump said that he did not want the Kurds to provoke Turkey either.

US forces have fought alongside a Kurdish militia in northern Syria against the Islamic State (IS) group.

Turkey, however, regards the People's Protection Units (YPG) as terrorists.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has spoken angrily about American support for the group and vowed to crush it. Turkey's foreign minister has said the country "will not be deterred by any threat".
...

The US imposed sanctions and trade tariffs on Turkey in August, amid a row over a detained US pastor - contributing to a sharp drop in the value of the Turkish lira. Pastor Andrew Brunson was released in October.

Mr Trump also mentioned the creation of a "20-mile (32km) safe zone", which the BBC's Barbara Plett Usher says hints at the kind of solution Mr Pompeo is trying to negotiate.
...
 The US also needs to give the Syrian Kurds the weapons they need to resist any Turkish threat, including anti-tank weapons and anti-aircraft weapons.  Erdogan is acting irrationally.  He is calling the people that helped more than he did fight ISIS a serious terrorist threat, terrorists.  Erdogan actually gave aid and comfort to ISIS before the US and the Syrian Kurds defeated the Islamic religious bigots.  Now Erdogan wants to kill the people who defeated ISIS. 

Besides economic sanctions against Turkey, the US should also reevaluate Turkey's membership in NATO.  When it comes to the war against radical Islam, Turkey has been at best a mediocre ally.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Washington Post: Some Democrats eye adding more justices to the Supreme Court to change its ideological bent The once-remote idea has gained the attention of liberals angered by the GOP push to remake the federal courts. Probably the easy way to defeat this court-packing scheme is for Trump to propose doing the same thing now.  It would lead to Democrat denunciations and claims that it would be wrong, thereby blowing up any attempt by them in the unfortunate event of Democrats winning a presidential election.
Read more

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Conn Carroll: A new survey of 368 midsize to large companies found that 29% of them are considering terminating their active employee health care plans when Obamacare is full implemented in 2014. Only 71% of employers surveyed said they did not expect to drop their health coverage, while 20% said they did not know and 9% said they were planning to exit. The latest survey, conducted by Towers Watson, echoes an ealier survey by McKinsey & Co. finding that 30% of private-sector employers were planning to drop their employee health insurance coverage by 2014. When the Congressional Budget Office crunched Obamacare's spending numbers, they estimated that only 7% of employees currently covered by employer-sponsored plans would lose their plans. ... This means the cost of the health care fiasco will be hundreds of billions more than estimated by the CBO and Congressional Democrat. It is also clear that Obama's pledge that you could keep your health care plan if you wanted t
Read more

Bin Laden's concern about Zarqawi's remains

James Robbins: ... Bin Laden suggests that President Bush should allow Zarqawi’s body to be returned to his family in Jordan, but this is a matter that is up to the Jordanian government, which so far has not shown much interest in facilitating a homecoming. Bin Laden mocks King Abdullah II, calling him a Coalition minion, and asking “w hat scares you about Abu Musab after he’s dead? You know that his funeral, if allowed to happen, would be a huge funeral showing the extent of sympathy with the mujahedin.” A large crowd would definitely turn out, though most people would be on hand to demonstrate their anger and disgust. Last November’s hotel bombings in Amman , masterminded by Zarqawi, are still fresh in people’s memory, and mentioning them to Jordanians has the same visceral impact as memory of the 9/11 attacks does here. Jordan has adopted a zero-tolerance policy towards those who choose to mourn the country’s least favorite son, and four opposition members of parliament who paid con
Read more