“I am increasingly optimistic that we can have some historic solutions in Syria that have eluded us for years if we play our cards right,” Graham said.
Graham said Trump was prepared to use U.S. air power over a demilitarized zone occupied by international forces, adding that the use of air power could help ensure Islamic State fighters who had been held in the area did not “break out.”...
Graham also said he believed the United States and Kurdish forces long allied with Washington could establish a venture to modernize Syrian oil fields, with the revenue flowing to the Kurds. “President Trump is thinking outside the box,” Graham said of Trump’s thinking on oil. “The president appreciates what the Kurds have done,” Graham added. “He wants to make sure ISIS does not come back. I expect we will continue to partner with the Kurds in Eastern Syria to make sure ISIS does not re-emerge.”
October 20, 2019
"Syria critic Lindsey Graham reverses stance, says Trump's policy could succeed."
Reuters reports.
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Graham let himself be stampeded and now he has to walk it back. He’ll learn. Maybe.
I think Graham looked at polling data that showed Trump's move in Syria was popular.
Even old Neo-cons like me think it was a good move.
Damn. That Trump is a genius!
"Trump's policy could succeed." If we get out of Syria, a place where we have little national interest, I think his policy succeeded.
ISIS is our enemy. Wherever they take and hold territory, it is worth considering whether we should go and smash them and take it away. I just don't care if Russia has a foothold in Syria.
Maybe Lindsey could have held off commenting in the first place till he knew more. But these politicians can’t resist an opportunity to get in front of a camera, which is guaranteed if you’re a Republican criticizing Trump.
He probably heard from a lot of constituents that acting, thinking and siding with lunatic democrats is not a good look.
Unexpectedly.
Again.
-XC
PS - When I was learning to manage one of the hardest things to learn was to "not just do something, but sit there!"
Damn, I am so TIRED of Lindsey Graham! Has this guy EVER met a microphone/camera he didn't like? All the other Senators go home on the weekend, but ol' Lindsey is always there in DC ready for a Sunday talk show or a press conference. Just SHUT..UP. We didn't elect Lindsey to be POTUS, he got 1% when he ran, and no one cares.
And thank God McCain is no longer with us. I hate to say this, but its true. I wished he'd retired but McCain refused to, and the only way we could stop his incessant ranting on TV was for him to leave us involuntarily. If he'd lived and been healthy he would be on TV this weekend, on probably three - or four - talk shows along with Lindsey giving us his never ending opinions about Trump, Putin, and the Kurds.
I'll take Trump's judgement anyway over Lindsey Graham --- a warmonger who, as Trump says, would love to be fighting wars and killing people in the Middle East for the next thousand years.
Trump didn't become a billionaire without being able to plan a couple of moves ahead.
It also helps to be able to size up the situation correctly, most of the time.
Sometimes it takes seventeen years for the truth to set in.
I was gung-ho until it became clear that nothing had changed and that the old "military-industrial" cronies were still in charge.
That enlightenment came when G.W. Bush gave Medal Of Freedom awards to George Tenet and Paul Bremer.
Welcome aboard, Lindsey.
well Qatar is dumping cash in south Carolina, like Charleston is a sister city to doha, and lets not forget lindsey was in Ankara in January, pushing the khashoggi card,
whose actually been fighting the kurds, that would be the free Syrian army, who were Lindsay's boys, we gave them 500 million, they mostly fled, some joined al queda or affiliated groups like ahram al sham,
Welcome back, Senator Graham. Reconcile. Make it work.
Shorter Graham,
"I took a look at public opinion polls, and they showed me that the public doesn't support getting between Turkey and the Kurds, or between anyone else, either."
When I was learning to manage one of the hardest things to learn was to "not just do something, but sit there!"
Famous comment in ICUs all over the world. The second is "If all else fails, pull out all the tubes and feed the patient."
Freder may be along to criticize.
Funny how that happens when you’re up for re-election in 2020, and your president has 95% support within the party. And I don’t know a single Republican voter who gives a flying fuck about our ally of convenience the Kurds. Tighten it up a little bit, Lindsey.
The lesson to be learned about Trump is to ignore his off the cuffs remarks and bluster and pay attention to what he actually does.
I think we should to do the Bush-Obama-Clinton-Kerry-MittensRomeny way. That works.
Does this mean anything? Could succeed, if he uses airpower. Isn’t the policy to use no power? So it could succeed, if it changes completely?
The Sunday news shows are hoping they can mold Graham into the next McCain. They may succeed.
Trump recognizes the merits of JDAM diplomacy.
now Qatar has been losing leverage in this administration, we've been pulling out of al udeid base, which is their ace in the hole, although now with the Iranian drones not so much,
Despite what many people think and say -- including Trump himself -- damn if Trump in the end doesn't prove himself the adult in the room again and again.
Slate Magazine has an interesting article on Mitt Romney's "secret" twitter account. It goes by the name of Pierre Delecto.
Pierre = stones or stone in French
Delecto = pleasure or delight.
Psalms 102:
But thou, O LORD, shalt endure for ever; and thy remembrance unto all generations.
Thou shalt arise, and have mercy upon Zion: for the time to favour her, yea, the set time, is come. For thy servants take pleasure in her stones, and favour the dust thereof.
Mormons = Zion.
Heh.
Take your compliments where you find them and always count your blessings.
It's very simple.
Before the Soviet collapse, I too was a warmonger. I felt it was necessary to resist across the globe all proxy wars fomented by the Commies.
After the Soviet collapse (1989), no longer a need to do this.
Lindsey G still has the Cold War mindset.
Now, maybe he can chill a bit.
As an aside, now that world circumstances have turned me into a dove on foreign policy, I do feel on domestically we are in a "Cold Civil War". The enemy are Leftists and Open Border Globalists. So the Old Cold Warriors should declare victory and redirect their energies to the Homefront.
Like so many idiots who leap before they look Graham missed the whole point of Trump's removal of troops: to save American lives.
How many times have both Republicans and dems jumped on Trump for one "screw up" or another only to find a couple of days later that it wasn't a screw up, but a move in the process that would bring a solution? Dumb!
But...dammit!...he was censured by the Republicans in Congress! Or something.
Sorry I'm behind. Is our strategy to withdraw from the battlefield and prep space for a Kurdish state under our protection using Mideast oil to fund the operation?
Lindsey G still has the Cold War mindset.
Along with a lot of the Pentagon. All their careers have been in the GWOT.
The Left: Trump has upset fatso Meghan McCain! This proves that many Republicans hate him!
Ken B: "Does this mean anything? Could succeed, if he uses airpower. Isn’t the policy to use no power? So it could succeed, if it changes completely?"
I will go out on a limb here and suggest I speak for many here when I say its getting awfully tedious having to explain very basic s*** to you.
Cracker Emcee Refulgent: "But...dammit!...he was censured by the Republicans in Congress! Or something."
Nice call back. It was quite telling when ARM tried to slip that lie into the convo.
Very Freder-esque.
The real reason politicians hate Trump:
he proves that just about any successful private sector person could do their jobs better.
they're just lucky most of us normal people can't stand being surrounded by politicians and so won't do it.
No no no... Orangeman is bad... no matter what good he does. MAGA is for hayseeds, Venezuela is the right model.
Lindsey Graham doesn't know what he's talking about. Syria is not a major oil producer. The big oil fields are in Iraq, in the Mosul area -- in the Assyrian Nineveh Plain region. Which belongs, or should belong, to the Assyrians. The Kurds have long been trying to forcibly eject the Assyrians from the region that bears their name because the Kurds want the oil. They keep redrawing the boundaries of what it pleases them to call "Kurdistan" to encompass the oil fields. After the fall of Mosul to Iraqi Army forces in the war with ISIS, the Kurds made what proved to be an ill-conceived and poorly executed effort to seize the Assyrian Nineveh Plain and establish, de facto, a Kurdish autonomous region that would include the oil fields and its production facilities. The Iraqi Army put the kibosh on that scheme, with Assyrian Army units "assisting" in the effort. At present the status of the region is more or less up for grabs. But the Assyrians are still there -- and they armed armed and organized and intent on resisting any effort to drive them out of their ancestral homeland.
>Sometimes it takes seventeen years <
or Q
You know, I think what people around the world count on is that Americans always want to go home. Some "allies" want to stay like China in North Korea and Russia in Poland and England in Egypt and France in Algeria and ISIS in Syria. But America may be reliably counted on to want to go home. So you do a geopolitical dance to get the Americans to stay here or there, doing something you want done; and maybe they'll go home a little sooner than you want, there's problems. But it's safe to ally with them; they'll want to go home; staying will always be a unpleasant, expensive duty. Thus, paradoxically, because America is trying to go home from the day it arrives anywhere, America is the most reliable ally and the ally of choice world-wide and the one everyone wants to drag into their wars. Because after the war they don't have the new problem of ridding themselves of an all-to-powerful ally. In the Iraq war they said, "the way home is through Bagdad"; and the army got there in three weeks and was deeply angered by not being sent home at once as promised. I think other countries know we want to leave and count on it. It's not a big, horrible surprise.
Just a contrarian thought.
"I think Graham looked at polling data that showed Trump's move in Syria was popular."
What polling data are you looking at?
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/466432-most-americans-believe-trumps-syria-move-has-damaged-us-reputation
"I think Graham looked at polling data that showed Trump's move in Syria was popular."
Not sure what data you are looking at.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/466432-most-americans-believe-trumps-syria-move-has-damaged-us-reputation
This whole US abandoning the Kurds reminds me of how we abandoned the USSR after they fought for us in WWII.
So, if the press is correct, do Americans want a Libyan solution (ambassador sodomized and aborted at no extra charge), a Kiev coup and progression, or carve Turkey, slice Syria, etc. and establish a Kurdovo? Should we follow what are ostensibly humanitarian precedents and force catastrophic anthropogenic immigration reform, for the sake of redistributive change (e.g. welfare profits), and democratic gerrymandering? Perhaps dunk some of the migrants and their children in the Mediterraneans for completeness.
Good comment, Roughcoat.
The polls that Graham may be looking at are the ones not swayed by selection of respondents. The real ones that don't get into the "news."
You would think they would learn.
There are 2 (at least) Trumps. There is the one that tweets and then there is the pragmatic CEO who runs the country.
They keep criticizing the tweeting Trump and then Trump pounds them with his well thought out strategy.
As an aside, now that world circumstances have turned me into a dove on foreign policy, I do feel on domestically we are in a "Cold Civil War". The enemy are Leftists and Open Border Globalists. So the Old Cold Warriors should declare victory and redirect their energies to the Homefront.
Can’t. We are fighting on 2 fronts, Commie Domestics and Chicom.
Let us see in response to this thinking outside the box of forethought the Russian soldiers are making fun of our troops rapid withdrawal on youtube and the Kurds are pelting us with rotten vegetables-- seems like another win to me.
I wonder if any of those Russian troops making fun of our troops on youtube were among the 100+ that got annihilates by US air power this weekend?
R/V is concerned that Kurds throw vegetables meaning of course they have food to waste. No starvation there. They are almost as grateful as the French were for saving them.
Ah but while the French resistance may have been with us, the Kurds were not.
R/V.
Was a year or two years ago? The Russians sent a group of 200 of their special operators and their surrogates to attack an outpost of a handful US special operators and US Marines. 200 hundred of em. Not A Single One Of The 200 Survived.
Our people don't really care what the Russians or Syrians think of them.
So the Old Cold Warriors should declare victory and redirect their energies to the Homefront.
Exactly.
some of the background I speak off
http://narcisoscorner.blogspot.com/2016/04/the-gordian-knot-of-syria-by-narciso.html?view=sidebar
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