Round Up the Usual Suspects!

The Guardian is reporting that the Turks have decided that the Syrian Kurds are responsible for Wednesday’s car bomb attack in Ankara:

Turkey has blamed Wednesday’s car bomb attack on a military convoy in Ankara on Kurds based in Syria, as another explosion hit a convoy in the south-east.

Turkish PM Ahmet Davutoğlu alleged that Wednesday’s attack, which left 28 dead, was carried out by a Syrian Kurdish fighter with links to the People’s Protection Units (YPG), a Kurdish militia that has been supported by the US in the fight against Islamic State in northern Syria. The outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK) assisted with the attack, Davutoğlu said.

“We collected intelligence all night,” Davutoğlu told reporters in Ankara. “The perpetrators have been fully identified. The attack was carried out by YPG member Salih Necar, who came in from Syria.”

That the Kurds have been conducting a more or less successful campaign against DAESH, both in Iraq and Syria, and it is widely believed that the Turks are providing assistance to DAESH is probably just a coincidence.

7 comments… add one
  • ... Link

    The really nice thing about this story is that we’re allies of both groups. Ain’t that grand?

    I’ll state again that since we have no clue what the fuck we’re doing in the MENA region, we should probably get out of it. (And the incompetence has been getting steadily worse for 26 years, at least.) And “getting out of it” that includes no more propping up the Israelis, Egyptians, Saudis, etc.

  • michael reynolds Link

    Giant superpowers with transparent systems, an overwhelming concern for civilian lives and the lives of soldiers, are quite useless in this particular game of six-dimensional chess. We can’t be subtle, we can’t double-deal, we can’t really bring the pain, we are neutered.

    But we can only get out if we are reasonably sure the disease won’t follow us home. There’s the rub.

  • ... Link

    But we can only get out if we are reasonably sure the disease won’t follow us home. There’s the rub.

    Coming from an Open Borders advocate that’s fucking hysterical.

  • jan Link

    The ME is a quagmire of conflicting interests and overlapping power struggles. To sort them all out, in fair and square ways, is almost impossible. However, to ignore them is also an indication of ignorance in understanding how even small irritants can grow into an unmanageable crisis.

    I think ISIS, being originally minimized, is a good example of how small, distant rebellions can mushroom into problems that threaten our own backyards. Unfortunately, though, our foreign policy, much like our domestic policy, has become locked into partisan gamesmanship, rather than putting bipartisan heads together to forge a better preventive strategy, purpose and hopefully outcome.

    Furthermore, this administration has not encouraged an environment of compromise,consensus, or congeniality between opposing public sentiments, belief systems, and/or political parties. Rather it has engaged in divide and conquer politics — a winning tactic at the ballot box that is now being emulated and promulgated as clever campaigning during the contentious 2016 election cycle. Consequently, there seems to be no end in sight for the slow dis-uniting of peoples and disillusionment mounting in the country today.

    Megan McArdle touched on how such divisiveness results in public fear, uncertainty and disarray, when addressing the vitriol surrounding even the task of replacing a conservative justice. Somehow, the people’s wishes continue to be dismissed over the desires for party power to play out. In a recent poll over 70% of those polled felt the current court’s liberal/conservative/moderate mix was either not conservative enough or just right. Only 20% felt it should be more liberal. However, in the spirit of the Obama WH there will be a battle to turn the court more left, with no consideration of what the general populace likes or wants. IMO, she nails the country’s discontented mood in her concluding remarks:

    For if you leave people no way to work through the system, they are apt to start working against it instead.

    Hence you have the massive attraction to Sanders/Trump candidates who promise to fracture the system, and the citizens living within it, even further. And, what either a Sanders or Trump foreign policy would produce in a tumultuous ME is anyone’s guess.

  • michael reynolds Link

    An open borders advocate? Um, not even close. Rather the contrary, I’ve always maintained we had a perfect right to control our border, and that we should look at immigration with an eye to profit first and foremost. I also oppose taking in Syrian refugees at this time, think Merkel made a huge mistake and have repeatedly denounced that little clown up north for his immigration policies.

  • steve Link

    “Somehow, the people’s wishes continue to be dismissed over the desires for party power to play out.”

    Actually, we had an election and most people voted for Obama. They also voted to put the GOP in charge in Congress, though they needed way fewer people to do that. We pretty much got what we voted for. Further, I guess we should note that the GOP was unable to even work with itself as the radicals, especially the Tea Party, made them dysfunctional. How exactly is one going to be able to work with the GOP when it is so divided? (Granted, massive tax cuts for the wealthy would be welcomed by everyone in the GOP, and repeal of anything ever passed by Obama, but outside of that what would you get them to agree on? Ok, war and bombing are also popular, but what else? Anything that would require actual compromise to pass, most everything, isn’t going to happen. )

    Steve

  • michael reynolds Link

    Steve:

    Actually, they wouldn’t even agree on that. The Trump voters have a big overlap with Sanders voters when it comes to the 1%. And a lot of GOP voters are as sick of fighting losing wars in the ME as Democrats are.

    There is no Republican party, singular. The old groupings – Money, Bombs and Jesus – have frayed, and a fourth group has risen, the “Fuck ’em all,” Republican. There are various Republican factions, not a party. And the Democratic Party isn’t far behind in the race to self-destruct, although we are so far behaving more like adults.

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