cgrnosfe Posted December 1, 2015 Share Posted December 1, 2015 Erdogan vows to resign if turkish oil trade with isis is proven. Obama supports erdogan. Putin pushes even harder, deporting turkish workers inside Russia after 2015. ( 1 January 2016 ) it seems Russia has been planning this all along. They will try to force a Turkish policy change in favor of Russia and shanghai 5, and against Nato. I doubt turkey will be able to resist much longer without Nato support.Also turkish border is more or less safe and isis free at least after 2013.An Israeli company has cleaned turkish Syrian border from mines back in 2010. This is why the some 400 km of border was out of control. Back then, assad and erdogan were best friends. They even signed a visa free travel contract. What future vision for both parties ! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cgrnosfe Posted December 1, 2015 Share Posted December 1, 2015 ISIS, Saudi Arabia and Turkey are standing more or less on the same side.Well, not in fact. You can see wahhabis and Turkish Islam like Catholic and protestant Christians. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shryke Posted December 1, 2015 Share Posted December 1, 2015 ISIS, Saudi Arabia and Turkey are standing more or less on the same side.What?No. God no. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Biglose Posted December 1, 2015 Share Posted December 1, 2015 Well, not in fact. You can see wahhabis and Turkish Islam like Catholic and protestant Christians.That would be Sunni and Shia. Turkish islam used to be more moderate, but that is changing. So...And yes, turkey is with saudi arabia the other big supporter of ISIS so.... (Yeah, quatar and other parts of the arabian peninsula support too) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cgrnosfe Posted December 1, 2015 Share Posted December 1, 2015 That would be Sunni and Shia. Turkish islam used to be more moderate, but that is changing. So...And yes, turkey is with saudi arabia the other big supporter of ISIS so.... (Yeah, quatar and other parts of the arabian peninsula support too)Sunni and Shia would be orthodox and Catholic. Turkey used not to care about isis and that is a fact. They tried with the US to push the moderates bulls..t and it was a funny attempt from the start. Now turkey is blocking thousands of westerners from joining isis and that is another fact IMHO. Western media is somehow trying to push turkey away most probably due to erdogan acting like a little Putin without the nukes. But anyhow I sincerely do not believe they have common cause with ksa or wahhabis.The distinction between wahhabis and turkey dates back to ww1 where wahhabis turned on their ottoman masters, backstabbing ottoman rule and dividing the last remaining Muslim chunk of the empire. This resulted in one of the biggest disappointments in the long Turkish history and thus turks removing arabic from their language, Turkish modernization and secular democracy. ( somewhat, with single party of Atatürk ) The turks, who had been the sword of Islam since the times of the crusades, have joined Nato and seeked to join a Christian club, the Eu. This trauma is maybe the locomotive of turkish foreign policy for a hundred years. So just writing easily due to recent events that Turkey sides with wahhabis is something, looking deeper with a historical context is another thing I guess.Like I said before, Erdogan might be an islamist at heart, but if you ask me who erdogan would choose to side with: Israel or ksa. I could not answer you immediately. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ser Scot A Ellison Posted December 1, 2015 Share Posted December 1, 2015 Biglose,Sunni and Shi'i are nothing like the split between Catholic and Protestant or Orthodox and Catholic. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Biglose Posted December 1, 2015 Share Posted December 1, 2015 Biglose,Sunni and Shi'i are nothing like the split between Catholic and Protestant or Orthodox and Catholic. Why not?Catholic and protestat are the two major sects of christianity. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ser Scot A Ellison Posted December 1, 2015 Share Posted December 1, 2015 Biglose,Because the nature of the schism is unique to Islam. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shryke Posted December 1, 2015 Share Posted December 1, 2015 It's probably closer to earlier splits in Christianity except with Islam one of the sides didn't become dominant and essentially wipe out the others. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ser Scot A Ellison Posted December 1, 2015 Share Posted December 1, 2015 Shryke,Not really. It started out political, who should succede the Prophet Muhammed and became theological once the Shi'i believed Ali, Muhammad's son-in-law, became the "Imam" of Islam and the true theological successor to Muhammad. The split is actually pretty interesting politically and theologically. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ramsay Gimp Posted December 2, 2015 Share Posted December 2, 2015 I don't see why. Political settlement would by definition involve an agreement on the part of the regional actors to shift their shitfight out of the battlefield. None of these countries likes torching all this cash on Syrians, they do it because they're trying to keep their rivals from getting an edge. That competition isn't going to stop, but that doesn't mean it has to take the current form. Because to the Arab states that are opposing Assad, continuing the bloodshed in Syria is preferable to letting Iran and its allies grow stronger. Why should they take the massive risk of fighting ISIS head-on, if ISIS is killing Shiites and Kurds for them? If that's acheivable there's nothing else keeping ISIS halfway viable. But it's not. Even if the Iranians, Turks, Saudis, Syrian regime, and Syrian rebels magically worked out some deal to stop fighting each other, ISIS wouldn't just go away. Retaking their territory will be a bloodbath, especially if the notoriously incompetent and corrupt Arab forces are doing the fighting on the ground. Our special forces and half-assed air strikes can only do so much when ground forces suck, as should be clear by now. The only way to destroy the Caliphate in any reasonable time frame is with overwhelming Western force that ruthlessly destroys its sources of power. At this point that means targeting civilian infrastructure as well as ISIS fighters. You mocked that idea when I brought it up before. But your alternative proposal is that every faction decides to help their mortal enemies while risking their own necks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ser Scot A Ellison Posted December 2, 2015 Share Posted December 2, 2015 Ramsay,And create the next generation of fighters to take up the cause after that force is used and evoking sympathy for the Dae'sh in other Muslim nations. "Only" is rarely true. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Biglose Posted December 2, 2015 Share Posted December 2, 2015 Ramsay,And create the next generation of fighters to take up the cause after that force is used and evoking sympathy for the Dae'sh in other Muslim nations. "Only" is rarely true.True. The other option would be, let the russians do it. It would just not make a differance on the ground. Kill the sanctions against Russia and help them finish the job. Or you could nuke them. Or you could release a genetic engineered virus to solve the problem of the muslim world of too many young men....Just to name a few of the very bad once.Yeah, there are always other options. The problem is, that they do not tend to get better. To have another option does not mean you have a single good one.So yeah, it is kind of obvious why most in the west are more or less ok with sitting it out...There is no actual comfortable way to go about it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Horza Posted December 2, 2015 Author Share Posted December 2, 2015 Because to the Arab states that are opposing Assad, continuing the bloodshed in Syria is preferable to letting Iran and its allies grow stronger. Why should they take the massive risk of fighting ISIS head-on, if ISIS is killing Shiites and Kurds for them?None of the states fighting Assad are going to start fighting ISIS head-on (just like they're not fighting Assad head-on), but they don't have to for ISIS to be defeated. A realistic political settlement isn't going to create a pan-sectarian anti-ISIS front, it's only(!) going to cordon off the Syrian government and the armed opposition. That by itself though should be enough to get both groups and their backers to turn towards ISIS, as the more territory each can reclaim from them the better positioned they'll be in future disputes over the shape of Syria. But it's not. Even if the Iranians, Turks, Saudis, Syrian regime, and Syrian rebels magically worked out some deal to stop fighting each other, ISIS wouldn't just go away. Retaking their territory will be a bloodbath, especially if the notoriously incompetent and corrupt Arab forces are doing the fighting on the ground. Our special forces and half-assed air strikes can only do so much when ground forces suck, as should be clear by now. The only way to destroy the Caliphate in any reasonable time frame is with overwhelming Western force that ruthlessly destroys its sources of power. At this point that means targeting civilian infrastructure as well as ISIS fighters. You mocked that idea when I brought it up before. But your alternative proposal is that every faction decides to help their mortal enemies while risking their own necks. In the top paragraph, you call the present course a bloodbath. In the one immediately below it you reiterate your calls for area bombardment of Raqqa and Mosul. Each time you've brought this "destroy cites, occupy rubble, leave" strategy up you've held back from explaining how it would lead to a different (much less better) outcome to the last time the US crushed Islamic State way back in 2009. You seem very focused on ending what passes for ISIS's state apparatus in the shortest possible timeframe, when it seems to me that finding a way of preventing its reoccurence is the most important thing, and that's going to have to involve regional actors. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ser Scot A Ellison Posted December 2, 2015 Share Posted December 2, 2015 True. The other option would be, let the russians do it. It would just not make a differance on the ground. Kill the sanctions against Russia and help them finish the job. Or you could nuke them. Or you could release a genetic engineered virus to solve the problem of the muslim world of too many young men....Just to name a few of the very bad once.Yeah, there are always other options. The problem is, that they do not tend to get better. To have another option does not mean you have a single good one.So yeah, it is kind of obvious why most in the west are more or less ok with sitting it out...There is no actual comfortable way to go about it.Biglose,So, you advocate genocide or GTFO? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Biglose Posted December 2, 2015 Share Posted December 2, 2015 Biglose,So, you advocate genocide or GTFO?Not exactly. My point was, that while it is true that there are always many option the second you filter them for functionality, possibility and morality, not many remain. And most of them are not that exciting.Right now we are more or less restricted to containment and hoping the fire will die down. This is not a real solution, I know. But I think all the others are worse. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cgrnosfe Posted December 2, 2015 Share Posted December 2, 2015 There is really no way to deal with terrorism other than killing terrorists. But yeah there needs to be an official authority to fill the power vacuum after terrorists are gone. This is the first time that a terrorist organisation controls thousands of miles, millions of people and billions of money. They really are closer to a state than any terrorist organisation before them, in terms of land, power and wealth. They seem to have absolute authority on their ground which is a completely new thing. Really, Kurds, turks, assad, Iraqi government or Iran cannot control isis territory. Maybe the end solution will be building a Sunni Arab state at the lands of Isis, thus creating a new country. It is hard to make a guess... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dofs Posted December 2, 2015 Share Posted December 2, 2015 But it's not. Even if the Iranians, Turks, Saudis, Syrian regime, and Syrian rebels magically worked out some deal to stop fighting each other, ISIS wouldn't just go away. Retaking their territory will be a bloodbath, especially if the notoriously incompetent and corrupt Arab forces are doing the fighting on the ground. Our special forces and half-assed air strikes can only do so much when ground forces suck, as should be clear by now. But ISIS is losing. The Iraqi army rebuilt itself, and together with Iraqi tribal militias are giving ISIS defeat after defeat. The Iraqi Kurds and Syrian Kurds are easily repelling them and recapturing territories in Iraq and Syria respectively. Even SAA, while fighting other rebels, since the involvement of Russia is taking from ISIS a town after a town. There is simply no need for the Western ground forces and it would be a mistake to use them since Iraqi and Syrian Governments will have to fill the voids after ISIS gets defeated and to do that they have to defeat them themselves. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snake Posted December 4, 2015 Share Posted December 4, 2015 Interesting interview in Der Spiegel with an ex US military intelligence chief. He makes a lot of sense in what he says, IMO. Link!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crixus Posted December 4, 2015 Share Posted December 4, 2015 An interview of Nicolas Henin, who was held by ISIS for nearly a year: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/nicolas-henin-the-man-who-was-held-captive-by-isis-for-10-months-says-how-they-can-be-defeated-a6757336.htmlTL;DR: airstrikes equal playing into ISIS' hands. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.