Cant stop fucking with Syria

[Okeefenokee]

Can it, panic monkeys.

AMMAN, Jordan, May 11, 2017 —
Exercise Eager Lion, a “keystone event” between the strategic partnership between the U.S. military and Jordan Forces, commenced for a seventh year on May 7.

Maj. Gen. William B. Hickman, deputy commanding general of operations for 3rd Army/U.S. Central Command, spoke with reporters at the Jordan Special Operations Command alongside his Jordanian counterpart, Brig. Gen. Khaled Shar’rah, director of the Jordan Armed Forces Joint-Training Directorate.

Eager Lion is the largest U.S. Central Command exercise and is designed to strengthen military-to-military relationships between the U.S. and Jordan. International partners participate in biennial iterations of the exercise. Approximately 7,200 military personnel, including land, maritime, and Air Force troops from more than 20 nations, are participating, making 2017 the largest involvement to date. Beyond Jordan and the U.S., partner nations include Italy, Pakistan, Belgium, France, Lebanon, Australia, Britain, Egypt, Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kenya, Greece, Poland, Japan, Taiwan, and the Netherlands. Military members will be responding to scenarios involving border security, command and control, cyber defense, and battlespace management.

For the first time, this year’s exercise will also include a global strike mission, conducted by two U.S. Air Force B-1B “Lancers.” The aircrafts will embark on a non-stop, 35-hour, 14,000-mile flight over Jordan and will have to refuel four times while in flight.

Preparation for this year’s large-scale, complex iteration, which lasts May 7-18, began immediately following 2016’s Eager Lion conclusion, according to Shar’rah.

http://www.centcom.mil/MEDIA/NEWS-ARTIC ... tegration/

[Smitty-48]

All the American base camps in Syria are along the northern border, not so near the SAA positions, but right across the border from Turkey, so seems like they're there to protect the Kurds from the Turks more than anything.

The bases are in PKK/PYD territory, joint US-Kurdish ops, mirroring the American position in Iraqi Kurdistan, on the Syrian side.

When you look at the map, it looks like one big US backed Kurdish enclave on both sides of the border, outside the control of either the Iraqis or the Turks.

The centerpieces on the Syrian side are two air bases, Harab Isk in the west, and Rmeilan in the east.

The US has declared all areas around their bases as "no go areas", any potentially hostile forces which enter the areas are subject to strike without further warning.

The ground footprint is small, it's not a lot of boots, but CENTCOM has all sorts of air up overhead protecting them.

Advise and assist, command and control, backed up by airpower, that sort of thing. Most of the boots are coming from the Kurds and the FSA types.

[Smitty-48]

If I had to guess, looking at the set up, if the Americans were to escalate, go in with more forces, it would probably be to beef up this enclave, just to deny it to both the Syrians and the Turks.

Basically just making sure there is a US backed base of operations right in the middle of things, which doesn't have to answer to Baghdad, nor Ankara, and which would not fall to Assad and the Russians.

They don't trust the Iraqis to be reliable allies, they don't trust the Turks to be reliable allies, and they want to keep Assad-Iran-Russia in check, is what it looks like.

[ssu]

They don't trust the Iraqis to be reliable allies, they don't trust the Turks to be reliable allies, and they want to keep Assad-Iran-Russia in check, is what it looks like.

Which tells how fucked up this is.

And what is the objective?

If just theoretically we would assume that the US would oust Assad, what then? You think it would really get better? Because likely Syria would be at "peace" just like ...Libya is now.

All the so-called allies (which in fact aren't at all allied in anything) have their different agendas and the US is lacking it also. Just to "take out the bad guys" is a whimsical and stupid strategy. How clueless and incapable of handling the situation can be seen from Iraq itself: after all, this was the country that the US invaded and created from top to bottem a whole new regime and how close is it to the US? Just ask the Iranian backed Hezbollah fighters driving the Abrams tanks that fight Iraqs wars.

[Smitty-48]

And what is the objective?

Zombie Carter Doctrine from 1980; still preparing for the Soviet Union to come rolling down through the Caucasus to seize the oil fields in the opening move of World War Three.

Cold War legacy project which has simply never been cancelled, because everybody forgot why they were there in the first place, a long time ago.

A mythology has propagated itself in America that this is somehow about "controlling the oil", which of course makes no sense, but like I say, Jimmy Carter was a long time ago, so they don't remember the tasking order which this whole Persian Gulf odyssey was for, so much water under the bridge, and America has a short memory.

[Smitty-48]

See, with Hegemons, their strategic positions can last well beyond the point where they are no longer relevant, for decades after in fact, simply through institutional inertia, so to figure out why they are doing something, since they won't remember themselves, you have to go all the way back and figure out how and why they went there in the first place, whether that was Indochina, or the Persian Gulf, or what have you.

The mission can creep for so long, nobody remembers what the mission is anymore, it's a zombie mission, which nobody ever questions, or they make up some bullshit reason, because they can't remember the reason, but there has to be a reason, so they fill in the blank with something.

[Hastur]

I think the US objective originally was to enable the Qatar Turkey gas pipeline to Europe. The Iranians want their own pipeline instead and the Russians want no extra gas pipelines to compete with their own.
The Turks just want to mess with the Kurds and the Kurds want someone to love them.

[ssu]

First reality check:

There absolutely is US Middle East policy.

- there is no coherent consensus of what the objectives are for the US in the region.

- there is no coherent consensus of what specific objectives there are other than "Destroy ISIS" or something similar simplistic punchlines.

- there are varying agendas pushed by various people that make altogether an incoherent totality.

- the most coherent and unified policy would be the overwhelming military, financial and diplomatic support of Israel. To question this makes you a non-person in Washington, hence this is the only bedrock the US has in the region. Of course this makes the whole Middle Eastern policy extremely complex, but who cares, Judeo-Christian heritage trumps everything.

- there is the day-to-day reactions and responses to emerging events that basically make up the actions of the US in the region.

- there is no leadership about just what the US ought to do by a totally uninterested President that basically watches Fox News for everything.

If you look for policies of the US, that basically you can say that the country has a policy towards, things come up like the cold war: containing Soviet Union. Both parties did it, there was an universal acceptance of the policy and it continued from administration to administration.

[Smitty-48]

I think the US objective originally was to enable the Qatar Turkey gas pipeline to Europe. The Iranians want their own pipeline instead and the Russians want no extra gas pipelines to compete with their own.
The Turks just want to mess with the Kurds and the Kurds want someone to love them.

Doesn't make sense, the American oil imperatives shifted to domestic shale some time back, the Americans want to pimp their own oil, they're not looking to help the Arabs pimp oil anymore, the Arabs and the Americans are actually engaged in a shadow oil price war, where the Arabs tried to down price the Americans out of the game, but the Americans shucked that off and now the Arabs are wondering what to do next.

[Speaker to Animals]

Has WW3 started yet? Hopefully it comes before the global economic collapse they predicted last week.