Him going overseas and fighting for Rojava did benefit American foreign policy. The state department is always looking for volunteers willing to go fight its enemies for them - it's easy to recruit some chuds to go fight in Latin America, Middle East, wherever, and then the government gets to act like they had no hand in it.
But chuds aren't going to go fight for the YPG. Our anti-Assad allies talk too much about socialism and democracy and equality - stuff no right winger is going to risk their life over. So you need to pull your recruits from elsewhere.
Enter PissPigGranddad, cool edgy leftist twitter guy who doesn't have a lot going on in his life. He flies out to Syria to fight for an ostensibly good cause, and more importantly, convinces leftists that it is a very cool thing to do. It's like the international brigades in Spain! You can fight alongside cool communists!
And suddenly a bunch of people who are normally strongly against American military action are now supporting a force that is helping America to overthrow its enemies.
He would not have been able to go fight for socialists overseas and come back safely, if our government was not supporting that movement.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but hasn’t the YPG backed down on their anti-Assad stance as of late and now say they’re willing to work with him in exchange for regional autonomy? I think Brace himself has said this and said he thinks it’s a good thing.
I have no idea, but that would be cool and good.
They seem like they're trying to build a pretty decent society over there, and it's a shame their survival came with them fighting a proxy war for us.
I think it should be noted, the Kurds were divided into a lot of factions and almost all those factions were playing different sides of the conflict. For example the YPG took almost as much aid from Russia as they did the US, Russia had their own airbase in Rojava. The PKK has hostile relations with Turkey which means the US won’t work with them, but they and the YPG cooperate, and Assad hates Turkey so he probably kinda likes the PKK. Syria is a cluster fuck and I don’t really think even the smartest western leftist can get a good read on it.
Exactly, There is no "thing good" or "thing bad" for most of this stuff. If you are helping the US by helping the YPG then you are by that measure helping Russia, and if this is transitive then you are thus helping Assad. We should be hesitant on applying a transitive property to combat zones
The US pulled out of Syria (or at least pulled out its largest and most visible forces) in 2019, you might remember the news coverage of this event being "we're abandoning the Kurds to be killed by ISIS!" This basically forced the Kurdish militias to adapt or die, and most including the YPG ended up signing an agreement with Assad to maintain some autonomy but give up on total independence.
Yeah which I honestly thought was probably the best outcome for everyone. So idk, I guess if he was an op he didn’t do a very good job furthering Americas interests in the region.
That withdraw never really happened, Defence One or one of those weird military blogs has a good interview with Trump's former Syrian envoy about what happened. The Kurds are the singular instance of US support for violence that I'm pretty much alright with. I have a personal connection to it but I don't think that affects my judgment.
EDIT:
Four years after signing the now-infamous “Never Trump” letter condemning then-presidential candidate Donald Trump as a danger to America, retiring diplomat Jim Jeffrey is recommending that the incoming Biden administration stick with Trump’s foreign policy in the Middle East.
But even as he praises the president’s support of what he describes as a successful “realpolitik” approach to the region, he acknowledges that his team routinely misled senior leaders about troop levels in Syria.
“We were always playing shell games to not make clear to our leadership how many troops we had there,” Jeffrey said in an interview. The actual number of troops in northeast Syria is “a lot more than” the roughly two hundred troops Trump initially agreed to leave there in 2019.
TIL, it's also not worrying at all that a military official could just straight up say "we lied to the president in order to pursue a war he didn't sign off on" and nobody really cared.
the state department and intelligence services in general aren’t always the smartest at determining their best interests. don’t assume that because they do something or allow it that it’s actually of benefit to them. they’re extremely human and make mistakes. in this case, he’s almost certainly not an OP - it’s just as you said, the state department thought it was good for people to go fight Assad regardless of which side they picked. then they reversed on the policy after it backfired on them, most notably with ISIS.
The CIA has funded just about every movement out there. Hell they backed communists on quite a few occasions. Or how about Saddam's whole history with the US and Iraqi Kurds?
I wouldn't really begrudge anyone from doing something like that though, in a way that will get them on a watchlist but not killed by the CIA. If you wanna serve a leftist militia and have some chance of going home again (keep in mind he did it with very little contemplation and lied to his girlfriend and family about what he was doing) then yeah you are gonna have to help a group that the US tolerates the existence of.
It benefited US policy, but also ya know.....benefited the Kurds against ISIS, which I feel is worthwhile compared to what most of us do. Like said enemy here is literally The Islamic State in Raqqah. It serves US needs, but more immediately helped the Kurds. Sometimes awful people benefit from good things, beating the Nazis helped establish the US even further as a superpower for example. There are worse things for a deeply fucked up recovering addicts to do
I don't think he's an op but...
Him going overseas and fighting for Rojava did benefit American foreign policy. The state department is always looking for volunteers willing to go fight its enemies for them - it's easy to recruit some chuds to go fight in Latin America, Middle East, wherever, and then the government gets to act like they had no hand in it.
But chuds aren't going to go fight for the YPG. Our anti-Assad allies talk too much about socialism and democracy and equality - stuff no right winger is going to risk their life over. So you need to pull your recruits from elsewhere.
Enter PissPigGranddad, cool edgy leftist twitter guy who doesn't have a lot going on in his life. He flies out to Syria to fight for an ostensibly good cause, and more importantly, convinces leftists that it is a very cool thing to do. It's like the international brigades in Spain! You can fight alongside cool communists!
And suddenly a bunch of people who are normally strongly against American military action are now supporting a force that is helping America to overthrow its enemies.
He would not have been able to go fight for socialists overseas and come back safely, if our government was not supporting that movement.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but hasn’t the YPG backed down on their anti-Assad stance as of late and now say they’re willing to work with him in exchange for regional autonomy? I think Brace himself has said this and said he thinks it’s a good thing.
I have no idea, but that would be cool and good. They seem like they're trying to build a pretty decent society over there, and it's a shame their survival came with them fighting a proxy war for us.
I think it should be noted, the Kurds were divided into a lot of factions and almost all those factions were playing different sides of the conflict. For example the YPG took almost as much aid from Russia as they did the US, Russia had their own airbase in Rojava. The PKK has hostile relations with Turkey which means the US won’t work with them, but they and the YPG cooperate, and Assad hates Turkey so he probably kinda likes the PKK. Syria is a cluster fuck and I don’t really think even the smartest western leftist can get a good read on it.
Exactly, There is no "thing good" or "thing bad" for most of this stuff. If you are helping the US by helping the YPG then you are by that measure helping Russia, and if this is transitive then you are thus helping Assad. We should be hesitant on applying a transitive property to combat zones
The US pulled out of Syria (or at least pulled out its largest and most visible forces) in 2019, you might remember the news coverage of this event being "we're abandoning the Kurds to be killed by ISIS!" This basically forced the Kurdish militias to adapt or die, and most including the YPG ended up signing an agreement with Assad to maintain some autonomy but give up on total independence.
Yeah which I honestly thought was probably the best outcome for everyone. So idk, I guess if he was an op he didn’t do a very good job furthering Americas interests in the region.
deleted by creator
That withdraw never really happened, Defence One or one of those weird military blogs has a good interview with Trump's former Syrian envoy about what happened. The Kurds are the singular instance of US support for violence that I'm pretty much alright with. I have a personal connection to it but I don't think that affects my judgment.
EDIT:
www defenseone com/threats/2020/11/outgoing-syria-envoy-admits-hiding-us-troop-numbers-praises-trumps-mideast-record/170012/
TIL, it's also not worrying at all that a military official could just straight up say "we lied to the president in order to pursue a war he didn't sign off on" and nobody really cared.
Liberals bragged about this when this interview came out, actually.
Yeah, it's basically their only chance of survival now that Turkey is coming down hard on them.
I've heard that a lot of the successes attributed to the YPG & co were straight up US military operations with local militias as cover
Would not be surprised, but they do love their proxies
the state department and intelligence services in general aren’t always the smartest at determining their best interests. don’t assume that because they do something or allow it that it’s actually of benefit to them. they’re extremely human and make mistakes. in this case, he’s almost certainly not an OP - it’s just as you said, the state department thought it was good for people to go fight Assad regardless of which side they picked. then they reversed on the policy after it backfired on them, most notably with ISIS.
The CIA has funded just about every movement out there. Hell they backed communists on quite a few occasions. Or how about Saddam's whole history with the US and Iraqi Kurds?
I wouldn't really begrudge anyone from doing something like that though, in a way that will get them on a watchlist but not killed by the CIA. If you wanna serve a leftist militia and have some chance of going home again (keep in mind he did it with very little contemplation and lied to his girlfriend and family about what he was doing) then yeah you are gonna have to help a group that the US tolerates the existence of.
It benefited US policy, but also ya know.....benefited the Kurds against ISIS, which I feel is worthwhile compared to what most of us do. Like said enemy here is literally The Islamic State in Raqqah. It serves US needs, but more immediately helped the Kurds. Sometimes awful people benefit from good things, beating the Nazis helped establish the US even further as a superpower for example. There are worse things for a deeply fucked up recovering addicts to do