Trump Fires Mattis - Jesus Takes The Wheel

[toucana]

General Jim Mattis - Secretary of Defense

President Trump has effectively fired his Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis by announcing that Mattis, a four star Marine General and former CIC of US Central Command will be leaving his administration at the end of February.

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/12/20/politics/donald-trump-james-mattis-out/index.html

It is clear from his resignation letter, that General Mattis has been displaced because he is in fundamental disagreement with President Trump’s surprise announcement on Twitter that he intends to order a full and rapid withdrawal of all US forces from Syria.

Because you have the right to have a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours on these and other subjects, I believe it is right for me to step down from my position," Mattis wrote in his letter.

The departure of Mattis marks what is probably the most serious breach between a US President and his senior military commanders since President Truman fired General Douglas MacArthur for insubordination in April 1951 at the height of the Korean war.

Whereas General MacArthur was dismissed because he wanted to enlarge the Korean war by attacking China with nuclear weapons, Mattis has been forced out because he disagreed with President Trump’s self-confident assertion that ISIS are already defeated - A view shared by absolutely none of the relevant military experts in this field, nor by Trump’s own National Security Advisor John Bolton.

Meanwhile, Washington officials are said to be bracing for another announcement of a similar ilk on Afghanistan.

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/12/20/politics/trump-afghanistan-announcement/index.html

[TheVat]

The Kurds are never going to trust the United States again. I am generally a dove, when it comes to military involvement of any kind, but this is a gross breach of a promise. Trump knows perfectly well IS is not defeated, and that we are throwing the Kurds under a bus, but he'll deal if it means getting Erdogan to dial back Turkey's accusations of Saudi Arabia, and also stay in Vladdy's good graces. Who knows, maybe he can still get a Trump Hotel in Moscow.

[hyksos]

I have a completely different viewpoint on this Kurd / Syria / Turkey situation.

I will start slow and unroll the facts incrementally.

Ever since our NATO membership in 1952, . . .

http://www.mfa.gov.tr/nato.en.mfa

the United States may store as many as 50 B61 gravity bombs at Incirlik. Those make up one-third of the approximately 150 nuclear weapons thought to be housed in five nations in Europe as part of NATO’s nuclear sharing arrangements.

https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2017-11 ... aise-alarm

the PKK has been designated as "terrorist" organization by Turkey, the United States, 28 European countries, and Japan.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdistan ... s%27_Party

The YPG was formed in 2004 as the armed wing of the Kurdish leftist Democratic Union Party. It expanded rapidly in the Syrian Civil War and came to predominate over other armed Kurdish groups. A sister group, the Women's Protection Units (YPJ), fights alongside them. The YPG is active in Northern and Eastern Syria.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27 ... tion_Units

[TheVat]

Could you write a bit, rather than just post wikipedia articles, on what you think the situation is? Please cite evidence and try to provide a balanced assessment of Turkey's treatment of the Kurds, both in Turkey and across the border. You may want to review what happened when Erdogan needed a 2/3 majority to change Turkey from a parliamentary democracy to the presidential system which concentrates power in the executive - when the Kurdish bloc in Turkey did not support this, his policies changed notably.

[TheVat]

During the peace process, Ankara had grown uneasy with the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), another PKK offshoot. The group became a leading U.S. partner in the fight against ISIS and had carved out an autonomous zone in northeast Syria known to the Kurds as Rojava. Those developments made the PKK less inclined to strike a peace deal with Turkey, which would have required the group to lay down their weapons. And despite fears of a PKK haven on Turkey’s doorstep, Erdoğan was careful not to completely isolate the Kurds ahead of an election that transpired a month before the Suruç bombing.

Turkey’s Kurds had long thrown their weight behind Erdoğan, who had delivered some concessions to the community, like allowing children to be given Kurdish names. But in the run-up to the election on June 7, 2015, Kurds were wary of Erdogan’s ambitious plan to change Turkey’s parliamentary system into a presidential one through a constitutional referendum. The latter was designed to give Erdoğan near-absolute power.

Motivated to stop him, most Kurds and many Turks voted for a socialist Kurdish party, helping it soar into Parliament for the first time in Turkey’s history with 13 percent of the national vote. That feat denied Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) a fourth consecutive majority government, blocking his plans to change the political system.

After the vote, coalition talks between the parties went nowhere, setting up another election that November. This time, Erdoğan was determined to appeal to nationalist voters. He specifically coveted an alliance with the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), who had always been against the peace process with the PKK.

Looking back, Erdogan gambled that a war with the Kurds would win MHP support. Emboldened by Rojava, the PKK welcomed a fight.

“Erdogan’s turn to MHP was a natural alliance of convenience to move forward with his presidential ambitions,” said Mustafa Gurbuz, an expert on Turkish and Kurdish politics and a non-resident fellow at the Arab Center Washington.

Erdogan’s gamble paid off: He reclaimed his parliamentary majority and fostered an alliance with MHP. That alliance helped him win a referendum in 2017 to become the first president with sweeping powers in the Turkish Republic.....

https://www.ozy.com/flashback/the-day-e ... ds/220696/

[Dave_C]

I'm enjoying the banter on this thread and don't mean to distract from it, but thought this bit about Mattis is pertinent to the OP. It does appear Mattis thinks less than highly of his commander in chief, but more than that, this is a nicely worded speech by a very intelligent man and former Marine. I really like his message.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_sG7N7pJ6g