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Turkey has begun attacking Syria
- fallingfrog 7y agoEvery time there is a libertarian socialist experiment, they are almost immediately surrounded by millions of armed fascists. Happened in Catalonia, happens every time. I just hope that there are not mass rapes, ethnic cleansing, and so forth as has happened in the past. War is always terrible but this one we are directly responsible for which is very painful.
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- holstvoogd 7y ago> immediately surrounded by millions of armed fascists. I wonder if we can even avoid it. Every time the Fascists are beaten they just go into 'Ich habe es nicht gewuscht' hiding and we fail to eradicate the sentiments. Then they slowly crawl back to power with populist propaganda while the socialists are to nice to call them what they are: nazis
- Theizestooke 7y agoWhy did this comment get downvoted? It's not falsifying the situation, or what's going to happen.
- AnimalMuppet 7y agoProbably because most of us think that Turkey is going after the Kurds in Syria not because the Kurds tried to implement socialism, but because the existence of their separate space in Syria encourages the Kurds in Turkey to also want a separate, independent space (or state).
- fallingfrog 7y agoRight but everything I said and everything you said about Erdogan’s motivations can be true at the same time. Look: in rojava you have Kurds, yazidis, Arabs, all living together without conflict. In turkey you have the suppression of the Kurdish language and ongoing ethnic strife. The two motivations go together.
- fallingfrog 7y agoI’m pretty sure it’s because I used the word “socialism” which provoked a negative emotional response among a certain set of people.
- holstvoogd 7y agoNo worries, Trump will 'ToTaLlY dEsTrOy' their economy! That will show them! /s With the US loosing it's power and allies all the authoritarians are looking to strengthen their grip. This, The Uygurs, Hong Kong... Is this how we slowly meander into a WWIII?
- mdorazio 7y agoI'm reading this to imply that without the US acting as the world police and bombing populations into submission, authoritarian regimes are gaining ground. That's kind of a crappy situation on both sides. Where is the rest of the Western world that supposedly supports democracy and freedom now?
- asdfman123 7y ago> Where is the rest of the Western world that supposedly supports democracy and freedom now? Now suddenly without the support of the largest superpower with the largest military in the world.
- Steltek 7y agoThe US doesn't need to drop bombs to exercise power. As the strongest nation economically, all we had to do was maintain a united front with our allies using soft power except we have a fucking toddler in the White House who can't play well with others.
- magduf 7y ago>Where is the rest of the Western world that supposedly supports democracy and freedom now? The Europeans are basically too tired of war after WWII and decades of being right next to the Soviets during the Cold War, and after continental Europe was bombed out in WWII and then occupied by the Americans, they relied on the US for defense mostly. Over in Japan, they were bombed and then occupied by the Americans too, and avoided building up too much military force or projecting power. So that mainly leaves America and to an extent the other 5-eyes nations (UK, Australia, Canada) to counter the powers that have always tended towards authoritarianism.
- thrower123 7y agoI really, really, don't care anymore what happens in that part of the world. It's callous, I suppose, but if they all want to start killing each other pointlessly, fine, go ahead. Persian Gulf oil doesn't matter as much as it used to.
- exar0815 7y agoCliche american. "I dont care about this part of the world. What do I care of the drug war in Mexico, the New York Stock Exchange doesnt matter as much it used to!"
- dang 7y agoPlease don't take HN threads further into nationalistic flamewar. Obviously we're here for something better than this. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- holstvoogd 7y agoIts' not about that they 'start killing each other', its that the US has purposely left a people defenseless against a know aggressor. The USA has once again enabled genocide. Of their allies this time.
- freddybobs 7y agoJust wow. To paraphrase "I don't care about other peoples suffering." "I do care about oil. This doesn't really effect oil tho." Conclusion: "So I don't need to care about any of this, and I don't" Observation: You might be a person who literally only cares about things that directly effect them. You might want to have that looked into.
- fortran77 7y ago"affect" Verbs and nouns matter.
- thrower123 7y agoIf I had a dollar for every time somebody called me a psychopath for not being a bleeding heart, I'd have... oh, a few dollars. Sometimes it's just time to cut bait.
- beat 7y agoReally looking forward to this set of phone conversations getting declassified.
- exar0815 7y agoWeird how everyone focuses on Trumps -admittedly- idiotic retreat and his tweets, while one thing is very rarely mentioned: How the bloody hell can it be that one NATO-Member needs troops on the ground to prevent another NATO-Member from comitting a genocide?
- alpervv 7y agowhat genocide are you talking about? Assuming you're American, imagine if Native Americans were to form a separatist organisation with 10,000s of civilian casualties (both kurdish and turkish) over decades. And then imagine if the people has interpreted your actions against this particular group as "genocide". How would you feel?
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- beat 7y agoThat rabbit hole leads to asking why NATO members are considered more moral and enlightened than other nations. Turkey was invited to be a NATO member (and accepted) due to Cold War fear of the USSR, and historic conflicts with Russia. So NATO overlooked Turkey's shortcomings in the interest of realpolitik, and Turkey played nicer in the interest of NATO's reputation.
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- empath75 7y agoTurkey has played (or been played by) shifting allegiances with "the West" and Russia since the late Ottoman Empire. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Question https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Question
- exar0815 7y agoAs far as I recall, NATO was always seen as a organization of western democracies. IIRC there are and were only at least nominally democratic countries members - Spain was only admitted after Franco. And genocide was always the line every country drew - e.g. Bosnia, Rwanda...
- Donald 7y agoWelcome to the future: Erdoğan publicly announced this attack via Twitter. https://twitter.com/RTErdogan/status/1181921311846735872 https://twitter.com/RTErdogan/status/1181921311846735872
- MichaelApproved 7y agoArticle without a paywall. https://cnn.com/2019/10/09/politics/syria-turkey-invasion-intl-hnk/index.html https://cnn.com/2019/10/09/politics/syria-turkey-invasion-in...
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- throwaway5752 7y agoNot Syria, the Kurds in Syria. US allies, that were fighting ISIS alongside US armed forces (and before that, assisted them in the Iraq war). Turkey is doing this in coordination with Iran and Russia. The US president agreed to this for nothing in return to the US. edit: It is shameful to HN that this is flagged. This is an act of genocide.
- magduf 7y agoI hope the Kurds and other such groups remember this in the future. You can't count on the US as an ally.
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- throwaway_law 7y agoPeople hardly remember the Bay of Pig...CIA armed/trained/funded Cuban dissidents to overthrow the Castro regime and promised air support, the US let the go in and reneged in the support and the CIA backed Cuban's got slaughtered. The only difference is imagine if JFK had taken to twitter to mock the deaths.
- aries1980 7y agoYou don't have to go back that far. Check the 2008 Russo-Georgian War: https://www.history.com/news/russia-georgia-war-military-nato https://www.history.com/news/russia-georgia-war-military-nat...
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- danielmg 7y ago"...nothing in return to the US." Cui bono? It's almost like Russia has some sort of influence over the President of the USA.
- sgt 7y agoWhy is this relevant on HN? I'm not saying this is uninteresting, but I think it's a good idea to have clarity on what should be relevant on HN and what shouldn't.
- whoisjuan 7y agoIt will be flagged.
- fallingfrog 7y agoIt’s the end of the first successful socialist experiment since the 30’s. Systems of people are interesting to nerds too. I don’t see why this would be off topic.
- lm28469 7y agoTurkey ? Socialist experiment ? Did I miss something ?
- fallingfrog 7y agoNot turkey, rojava https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vice.com/amp/en_uk/article/43dmgm/the-most-feminist-revolution-the-world-has-ever-witnessed https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vice.com/amp/en_uk/article/...
- DFHippie 7y agoThe Kurds, I believe.
- fallingfrog 7y agoWho flagged it? Can anybody do that? Is there a review process?
- eitland 7y agoWe can try to vote it back. Sometimes dang makes exceptions, and this seems like a good candidate.
- greatpatton 7y agoAnother great success for Trump... But everybody since the independence war should know that being a US ally is not something you can really count on.
- ashelmire 7y agoThis title is misleading. They are not attacking Syria, they are attacking separatist groups backed by the US in coordination with Syria's military.
- kingofpandora 7y agoFirst I've heard that Turkey is attacking with (or in coordination with) the Syrian Army.
- costcopizza 7y agoWhat are some good sites to stay abreast of this issue (and foreign affairs in general)?
- Waterluvian 7y agoI think the American Republic is failing. We expect a certain steady-stateness about things given how short our lifespans are. But there's no guarantees that the American system is or continues to be a viable one. My understanding is that the tremendous power given to the Executive is balanced by the Legislative. But I cannot believe that the Republicans in the House and Senate are supporting the White House in good faith I'm pretty convinced they're playing a metagame, largely about keeping their jobs, keeping their power, worrying about re-election and the 2020 election. So, to me, that system is broken and there is nobody stopping the President from acting like a King. I used to say to my wife that if he ever did anything completely off limits, that would be it. But clearly I'm wrong. So my joke years ago about the U.S. annexing part of Canada the way Russia did with Ukraine is not insane anymore. Clearly nothing needs to make sense for Trump. And the Americans in congress are spineless cowards. I also don't think any of this is appropriate for Hacker News. But I don't social media and I'm angry and scared.
- thrower123 7y agoIt's not the American Republic, it's the Neocon Empire that is falling apart. Pointlessly spending blood and treasure on endless overseas brushfires and internecine squabbles is something I would be very glad to see expunged from US foreign policy.
- simonh 7y agoWe can't just blame Trump for this though. It goes all the way back to the House's vetoing Obama from reprisals against Assad for using chemical weapons in 2013, on the basis that Syria wasn't America's problem. Trump simply supported that position in his campaign, and lo and behold, what happens a matter of weeks after the US has both a president and a House leadership that have said bombing Assad for using chemical weapons is not in the US's interests? Assad uses chemical weapons, because why wouldn't he, and Trump ends up bombing him for it anyway. Meanwhile about a hundred civilians, including a hospital full of children, die. Now I'm a UK citizen, so I sympathise. The US is in an unenviable position. Nobody in the US deserves to carry the can for any of this. Nevertheless, this is the world we live in and it's the job leading politicians sign up for. Moral, responsible leadership matters. I'm a Reagan-Thatcher era lifelong conservative voter. I supported the second Gulf War, I still think it's up in the air whether that was the right thing to do. The status quo back then was also horrible and arguably breaking the deadlock with Saddam was worth attempting. But I've had it with modern US Republicanism. It's demonstrated very clearly it will knowingly sacrifice lives for electoral gain, and allow a situation to deteriorate in which the US and Western allies have already lost lives and are likely to lose them again. This isn't the conservatism I grew up with.
- anjel 7y agoPossibly a conflicting interest: Wikipedia.com/trump_towers_istanbul
- sidcool 7y agoIran, who is a Kurds ally, has started military drills along Turkish border. Hope this does not escalate.
- oriettaxx 7y agoErdogan is facing serious internal problems: how to solve it? Start a war, search for enemies: force newspapers talks about something else.