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Oceanside Pier, thirty seconds

Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Friends like this...

Well, Turkey has finally decided to fight. Today Turkish jets launched their first airstrikes during the global conflict with the group formally known as ISIS, ISIL or the Islamic State. Their target?

Their own kurdish population.

Note that Turkey has been the preferred gateway to the conflict for many of the members of the Islamic State, who enjoy some support in the country.

On Monday, Turkey denied that it had reached an agreement with Uncle Sam to allow the use of the Incirlik Air Base in southern Turkey for attacks on the Islamic State, despite suggestions from the Obama administration that a deal had been reached.

While NATO is admittedly a joke, as we witness in both the Ukrainian conflict and now with Turkey, I would say it's long past time to throw the Turks' mercenary and duplicitous asses out of NATO.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

While we are looking at middle eastern hypocracy we may as well include Israel. Sweden has had enough of the lies and is recognizing Palestine. The British House of Commons in a symbolic no binding vote went for Palestinian recognition, Israel's ferr pass for duplicity regarding settlements and aggression toward civilians is wearing thin these days. They are now so totally "socialized" into the duplicitous ways of the Middle East that they are slowly turning into he monster they set out to fight. I think the situation is probably much worse than it seems.

Blue Heron said...

You are certainly entitled to your opinion. I would offer a sterling rebuttal but I have a cold. later.

Anonymous said...

Of course, and I am sure it would be a sterling rebuttal. That is the thing that makes the Israel/Palestinian situation intractable. Both sides have convincing and persuasive narratives that they believe in absolutely. It is sad to see Israel on the path it is on and it is clear to me that I don't actually understand everything that contributes to their situation. Still the intransigent position Israel is taking for short term gains in the "contest" is putting them into a unsustainable longer term
position and one form of evidence for this is the gradual and consistent erosion of world support. Losing support in Britain is a foreshadowing of losing support in the US. Israel will hopefully see this but I am doubtful.

Anonymous said...

I think I will help myself to some self-service crow. I was way too extreme in the way I stated my first post on this thread. The problem for me is that while things appear to be as I stated them one has to account for the fact that it is impossible for someone living here to actually understand what it is to live there. I usually try to account for that while blabbing about the Middle East. End of talking too much.