Trump Announces “Permanent” Ceasefire Agreement Between Turks and Kurds Along Syrian Border; Kurdish Leader Says Ceasefire Wouldn’t Have Been Possible Without Trump

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He also lifted the sanctions imposed on Turkey, but could revive them if Turkey violates the terms of the agreement.

The US is lifting sanctions on Turkey after its recent offensive against Kurdish fighters in north-eastern Syria, President Donald Trump says.His decision came after Russia agreed with Turkey to use troops to extend a ceasefire along the Syrian border.

Turkey’s offensive began after Mr Trump’s unexpected decision to withdraw US troops from northern Syria earlier this month.

“Let someone else fight over this long bloodstained sand,” the president said.

“The sanctions will be lifted unless something happens that we’re not happy with,” he announced in a statement at the White House on Wednesday.

He said Turkey had assured him that it would halt fighting in the region and would make the recently agreed ceasefire permanent.

The US Treasury later confirmed that sanctions, imposed on 14 October, had been lifted on the Turkish ministries of defence and energy, as well as three of the country’s senior officials.

He said on Wednesday he would keep a “small number” of troops in parts of the country to protect oil installations.

He also urged Turkey to commit to securing IS militants, and make sure the jihadist group did not regain any Syrian territory.

According to President Trump, it was US diplomacy alone that halted the Turkish military operations in Syria and instituted a lasting deal to save Kurdish lives.

Is everything fixed, then?

Let me answer that with a question: Is anything ever fixed?

When I was younger and less experienced — and had seen less war — I was a big believer in the Rumsfeld Doctrine, “if the problem seems unsolvable, enlarge it,” that is, don’t chew about the edges if chewing about the edges doesn’t solve things, but go for the whole sandwich if need be.



I also believed the empty Neocon slogans about appeasement and Hitler and Clinton “just kicking the can down the road” in Iraq.

The empty sloganeering went like this: If we don’t permanently solve our diplomatic/military crises once and for ever, then we’re just “kicking the can down the road” and deferring problems until later.

But watching the Iraq and Afghanistan (and Libya and Syria) fiascoes, I’ve now come to understand a few things:

First, it is extraordinarily difficult to “solve” massive societal problems in foreign fucking countries. The cancer in Middle East states goes right down to the bone.

We haven’t managed to rid America of the Communist Delusion after one hundred years. And we think we’re going to cure Islam of Islamism?

It may be simply impossible to “fix” such things, and even if it is theoretically possible, it might take far more wasted men, severed limbs, and pallet-fulls of money than we are willing to spend.

Second, Americans are a bit mercurial in matters of war: They are occasionally keen on it, but quickly tire of it.

We have now had a pretty firm trial run of how many years of war America is willing to tolerate, even if offered terrific provocation (such as 9/11). The answer turns out to be “three to four years, maybe.

Hell, even the liberal wing of the War Party — the Neocon NeverTrumpers — began calling anyone who proposed additional screening for Muslim travelers an anti-American racist within three years of 9/11.

Which brings me to the third point: Wars must be sharply limited in goals, with clearly defined victory conditions and a firm exit strategy, and must not be permitted to endlessly mutate new goals and thus new end-points.

And we must not “nation build.”

We all used to agree to this before the Iraq business.

America will have to fight wars in the future but they must be limited in ambition and duration. No more of Bush-like vague “we stay until we stabilize the situation and promote democracy” non-exit strategies.

What the fuck does “stabilize the situation” mean? What is the metric? What is the victory condition there?

Is anything ever really stable?

Is the United States currently fully stable?

Future wars must have clear and limited-jurisdicaiton goals more like: “We take out these sites, bomb these government buildings, reduce their air force and tank forces to near zero and then stop.”

That sure went out the window fast, eh?

Also quickly unlearned during the Neocon-crazy Bush years: The old lesson, which as been beaten into American skulls time and time again, but gets forgotten every ten years, that a war must not have an ever-changing goal and always-shifting rational — that is, a war must have a firmly stated and limited ambition and we must not constantly adjust this ambition to go out to slay new and exciting dragons.

We must not make open-ended commitments with TBD war aims.

And specifically, that forbids any more nation-building, a practice which is inherently an open-ended commitment with TBD war aims.

Throughout Clinton’s terms, conservatives — including almost all NeverTrumpers — cursed Clinton’s “nation-building” efforts in tiny little efforts like Haiti.

Well, we had about 100 casualties in Haiti. What were we doing in Iraq but nation-building for fifteen years? That was nation-building on steroids.

And it had the American bodycount to match.

I thought NeverTrumpers were all about “consistency of principle.”

What happened to the principle that the American forces did not engage in nation-building or serving as domestic police in foreign countries’ civil/social wars?

Finally, I now understand that very few problems in history have been solved by war. You can name a few — World War Two definitely changed Germany and Europe forever, and Japan as well.

But in the case of Germany and Japan, we were so committed to total and unconditional victory that we were willing to drop nuclear bombs on population centers until the enemy surrendered without condition.

The nuclear bombs were intended for Germany, but Germany collapsed before they were perfected.

So on to the Pacific target.

Without that level of ruthless determination — literally ruthless; willing to sacrifice everything to the cause — to so terrify a society as to compel it to change itself to please us — and does anyone think America still has that level of ruthlessness? Hell, it was a scandal to even suggest nuclear bombs against Al Qaeda — we will never again have a war that “solves everything forever.”

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Let Russia, Syria and the Turks fight ISIS in Syria. We should never have been there and now we are free of that Obama mistake.

On to Afghanistan!
Lets see the liberals whine about the poor heroine addicts, the CIA needing a new income stream….

Is everything stable?
Is that a joke?
Of course everything is not stable.
Never will be.
A few months or a year or so from now this area could be at full-scale war.
Remember Yasser Arafat?
He’d be begged to accept peace, bribed billions of dollars to be peaceful but his people would never settle down.
He’d always claim he couldn’t control them.
Well, we can’t control all the people in America either.
If Antifa wants to beat, throttle even maim and kill other Americans they just do it.
The courts are no deterrent.

President Trump should get some credit for getting Syria, the Kurds and Turkey to this point.
The rest is up to them.

@Nan G:

President Trump should get some credit for getting Syria, the Kurds and Turkey to this point.

Democrats cannot admit Trump is the leader we haven’t had for a decade. They can’t admit that had Obama not been incompetent, he could have accomplished some of the things Trump has accomplished. They cannot face the truth… it hurts. Real bad.