RICK STERLING—Advocates of US intervention claim that the Kurds were fighting and dying “for us”. That is not true. They were defending their own community. To the extent that they accepted and welcomed US air support, equipment, weaponry, etc. it was for their own benefit. There were two parties trying to use each other.
SOUTHFRONT—Senate Minority Leader Sen. Charles Schumer said on October 13th that he’ll demand a vote this week to oppose President Trump’s troop withdrawal from Syria. “The president has been derelict in his duties,” Schumer said. “He’s making Americans much less safe, and undoing years of work to curb ISIS and he’s making America much more susceptible to terrorism by his actions. He may not have intended to do that, but that’s just what’s happening as a result of his actions.”
PEPE ESCOBAR—The options for the YPG Kurds are stark. They are slowly realizing they were used by the Pentagon as mercenaries. Either they become a part of the Syrian federation, giving up some autonomy and their hyper-nationalist dreams, or they will have to share the region they live in with at least two million Sunni Arab refugees relocated under Turkish Army protection.
PHILIP GIRALDI—Trump’s wild responses to criticism do indeed constitute the principal reason why a sound policy to, as he put it, to stop the “stupid, endless wars” should be raising so many flags. His telephone conversation with Erdogan almost immediately produced a warning to the Turks that the United States would “destroy” or even “obliterate the Turkish economy,” presumably if the creation of a buffer zone inside northern Syria would prove to be “off limits” in the opinion of the White House.
BEN NORTON—Since a US-backed 2014 coup overthrew Ukraine’s democratically elected government and installed a viciously anti-Russian and pro-NATO right-wing government, Kiev has been battling pro-Russian separatists in the east of the country. Neo-fascist Ukrainian groups like Right Sector and Svoboda played a major role in this Western-backed regime change operation. In the violence following the putsch, these forces cohered into neo-Nazi militias like the Azov Battalion and C14 (named after the white supremacist “14 words” slogan). In 2014, the Azov Battalion was directly incorporated into Ukraine’s National Guard, merging the explicitly fascist militia with the Ukrainian Ministry of Interior and military.