China acceding to the WTO was also accompanied by massive reductions in absolute poverty. Improved trade liberalization between China and the US (et al) has improved the lives of millions, along with all the horrors.
It brought material improvements in varying degrees to be sure but it utterly failed in meaningfully improving human rights. Liberalization just made sure there were people to buy stuff.
Stuff meaning food and medicine.
Half a billion people are no longer living in extreme poverty. An amount basically equivalent to the entire population of the EU or North America. I consider that to be an abject good produced by global policy shifts. China continues to have gulags and ethnic cleansing campaigns. Which is a horror beyond evil. Both can be true.
This argument leads to nowhere good. With the same argument I could justify anything as long as a net positive number of people benefited. War, slavery, genocide, everything is on the table.
We assume basic human rights as inalienable precisely because of that. Once you toss that out, then the entire moral foundation of liberalism crumbles.
I'm not suggesting we abandon foreign policy efforts to promote liberal reforms in China.
Do we have any?
We used to.
It stopped once China became relatively business friendly. Which kind of gets back to the earlier point about liberalism showing its priorities.
It didn't though.
And to show the kind of philosophy people have been trying on China at work elsewhere, read up on and/or listening to interviews with the people who worked on Obama's opening up US-Cuban relations, they talk a lot about the same kind of thing that was going on with China. The negotiations are in large part a matter of saying "We'll let you have all this fancy stuff but in return you have to loosen restrictions while we do it". Your average authoritarian government wants all the fruits of western market capitalism without the liberalization part. China has been better then most at threading that needle.
WRT China we've been going through the motions since they opened up their markets. They're ethnically cleansing their western holdings and no one gives a shit.
It's not that no one gives a shit, it's a question of "Well, what are you gonna do about it?".
Which basically sets up a no-fail scenario for western liberalism. Either you did something and look it worked (no matter how marginally) or you did nothing but that's ok too because there wasn't anything to do.
When "never again" becomes "wait we'll lose out on profits and growth."
}
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
2. “What to Do About Iraq” by Robert Kagan and William Kristol, 2002
“The Iraqi threat is enormous,” Robert Kagan and Kristol wrote at the beginning of 2002. “It gets bigger with every day that passes. … If too many months go by without a decision to move against Saddam, the risks to the United States may increase exponentially.” Say what you will with your 20/20 hindsight, but you can’t deny they totally called this.
“We hear from many corners that it is still too early to ask this question. If you mention the word Iraq, respectable folks at the State Department and on the New York Times op-ed page get red-faced.” Ha ha, those wimps!
“We know … that Mohamed Atta, the ringleader of September 11, went out of his way to meet with an Iraqi intelligence official a few months before he flew a plane into the World Trade Center. … There is no debate about the facts.” Once again, they were 100 percent right.
As the writer John Lingan observed on Friday, “The war in Iraq outlasted the Weekly Standard.”
I presumed he meant the Chinese Authorities' love of Authoritarian rule.
Mmm.
I think you'll find that Xi is actually quite popular amongst the Chinese masses, though there won't be any (trustworthy) public polling to demonstrate this.
Also, the various democratic East Asian countries are... maybe not actually that "good" at democracy, as they often elect the same party over and over again and will also tend to elect former dictators and/or their children. I think Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan can all be said to have been ruled by a single party for (~X-10) out of the last (X > 50) years.
I think its been thoroughly proven that none of us are very good at democracy.
As snarkily true as this may be, this doesn't really eliminate the real difference that exists, regardless of what descriptors you'd care to use.
Sure but if you poll Americans we're pretty fond of authoritarian rule too. I think for a lot of democracies they kind of just lucked into it and then muddled along.
I think there is a human impulse to just want some big daddy figure to "fix" stuff and protect them. It is one reason the founding fathers of our country were not in favor of mob rule and made things like the electoral college in theory to prevent people like trump from becoming president.
2. “What to Do About Iraq” by Robert Kagan and William Kristol, 2002
“The Iraqi threat is enormous,” Robert Kagan and Kristol wrote at the beginning of 2002. “It gets bigger with every day that passes. … If too many months go by without a decision to move against Saddam, the risks to the United States may increase exponentially.” Say what you will with your 20/20 hindsight, but you can’t deny they totally called this.
“We hear from many corners that it is still too early to ask this question. If you mention the word Iraq, respectable folks at the State Department and on the New York Times op-ed page get red-faced.” Ha ha, those wimps!
“We know … that Mohamed Atta, the ringleader of September 11, went out of his way to meet with an Iraqi intelligence official a few months before he flew a plane into the World Trade Center. … There is no debate about the facts.” Once again, they were 100 percent right.
As the writer John Lingan observed on Friday, “The war in Iraq outlasted the Weekly Standard.”
Some of this stuff is mindblowing. (edit- this is from the Fred Barnes article)
And while the security environment here is dodgy, the only downside of terrorist attacks on the creation of a new Iraq has been to discourage foreign companies from rushing in with large-scale projects. In short, the American intervention is so powerful and all-encompassing that it overshadows everything else.
oh god:
I'd like to see one other thing in Iraq, an outbreak of gratitude for the greatest act of benevolence one country has ever done for another.
2. “What to Do About Iraq” by Robert Kagan and William Kristol, 2002
“The Iraqi threat is enormous,” Robert Kagan and Kristol wrote at the beginning of 2002. “It gets bigger with every day that passes. … If too many months go by without a decision to move against Saddam, the risks to the United States may increase exponentially.” Say what you will with your 20/20 hindsight, but you can’t deny they totally called this.
“We hear from many corners that it is still too early to ask this question. If you mention the word Iraq, respectable folks at the State Department and on the New York Times op-ed page get red-faced.” Ha ha, those wimps!
“We know … that Mohamed Atta, the ringleader of September 11, went out of his way to meet with an Iraqi intelligence official a few months before he flew a plane into the World Trade Center. … There is no debate about the facts.” Once again, they were 100 percent right.
As the writer John Lingan observed on Friday, “The war in Iraq outlasted the Weekly Standard.”
Some of this stuff is mindblowing. (edit- this is from the Fred Barnes article)
And while the security environment here is dodgy, the only downside of terrorist attacks on the creation of a new Iraq has been to discourage foreign companies from rushing in with large-scale projects. In short, the American intervention is so powerful and all-encompassing that it overshadows everything else.
oh god:
I'd like to see one other thing in Iraq, an outbreak of gratitude for the greatest act of benevolence one country has ever done for another.
There's also this bit on that Fred Barnes article, since all of the above quotes refer to the dusky natives:
Iraqis, wrote Barnes, “need an attitude adjustment. … Iraqis are difficult to deal with. They’re sullen and suspicious and conspiracy-minded. … Papers obsess on the subject of brutal treatment of innocent Iraqis by American soldiers.” But Barnes knew Iraqis were being treated well by U.S. troops, because the troops were super nice to him.
Christ. As The Intercept says:
...but almost no other magazine can be as certain that they truly affected the world by making it far, far worse.
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
China acceding to the WTO was also accompanied by massive reductions in absolute poverty. Improved trade liberalization between China and the US (et al) has improved the lives of millions, along with all the horrors.
It brought material improvements in varying degrees to be sure but it utterly failed in meaningfully improving human rights. Liberalization just made sure there were people to buy stuff.
Stuff meaning food and medicine.
Half a billion people are no longer living in extreme poverty. An amount basically equivalent to the entire population of the EU or North America. I consider that to be an abject good produced by global policy shifts. China continues to have gulags and ethnic cleansing campaigns. Which is a horror beyond evil. Both can be true.
This argument leads to nowhere good. With the same argument I could justify anything as long as a net positive number of people benefited. War, slavery, genocide, everything is on the table.
We assume basic human rights as inalienable precisely because of that. Once you toss that out, then the entire moral foundation of liberalism crumbles.
I'm not suggesting we abandon foreign policy efforts to promote liberal reforms in China.
Do we have any?
We used to.
It stopped once China became relatively business friendly. Which kind of gets back to the earlier point about liberalism showing its priorities.
It didn't though.
And to show the kind of philosophy people have been trying on China at work elsewhere, read up on and/or listening to interviews with the people who worked on Obama's opening up US-Cuban relations, they talk a lot about the same kind of thing that was going on with China. The negotiations are in large part a matter of saying "We'll let you have all this fancy stuff but in return you have to loosen restrictions while we do it". Your average authoritarian government wants all the fruits of western market capitalism without the liberalization part. China has been better then most at threading that needle.
WRT China we've been going through the motions since they opened up their markets. They're ethnically cleansing their western holdings and no one gives a shit.
It's not that no one gives a shit, it's a question of "Well, what are you gonna do about it?".
Which basically sets up a no-fail scenario for western liberalism. Either you did something and look it worked (no matter how marginally) or you did nothing but that's ok too because there wasn't anything to do.
No it doesn't. It sets up a situation where you have to answer "So, what are you gonna do about China?". The same way there's questions like "So, what are you gonna do about North Korea?". Or "So, what are you gonna do about Syria?".
It's not a no-fail scenario, it's a no-win scenario because it's not clear if you even have good options.
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JuliusCaptain of Serenityon my shipRegistered Userregular
China acceding to the WTO was also accompanied by massive reductions in absolute poverty. Improved trade liberalization between China and the US (et al) has improved the lives of millions, along with all the horrors.
It brought material improvements in varying degrees to be sure but it utterly failed in meaningfully improving human rights. Liberalization just made sure there were people to buy stuff.
Stuff meaning food and medicine.
Half a billion people are no longer living in extreme poverty. An amount basically equivalent to the entire population of the EU or North America. I consider that to be an abject good produced by global policy shifts. China continues to have gulags and ethnic cleansing campaigns. Which is a horror beyond evil. Both can be true.
This argument leads to nowhere good. With the same argument I could justify anything as long as a net positive number of people benefited. War, slavery, genocide, everything is on the table.
We assume basic human rights as inalienable precisely because of that. Once you toss that out, then the entire moral foundation of liberalism crumbles.
I'm not suggesting we abandon foreign policy efforts to promote liberal reforms in China.
Do we have any?
We used to.
It stopped once China became relatively business friendly. Which kind of gets back to the earlier point about liberalism showing its priorities.
It didn't though.
And to show the kind of philosophy people have been trying on China at work elsewhere, read up on and/or listening to interviews with the people who worked on Obama's opening up US-Cuban relations, they talk a lot about the same kind of thing that was going on with China. The negotiations are in large part a matter of saying "We'll let you have all this fancy stuff but in return you have to loosen restrictions while we do it". Your average authoritarian government wants all the fruits of western market capitalism without the liberalization part. China has been better then most at threading that needle.
WRT China we've been going through the motions since they opened up their markets. They're ethnically cleansing their western holdings and no one gives a shit.
It's not that no one gives a shit, it's a question of "Well, what are you gonna do about it?".
Which basically sets up a no-fail scenario for western liberalism. Either you did something and look it worked (no matter how marginally) or you did nothing but that's ok too because there wasn't anything to do.
No it doesn't. It sets up a situation where you have to answer "So, what are you gonna do about China?". The same way there's questions like "So, what are you gonna do about North Korea?". Or "So, what are you gonna do about Syria?".
It's not a no-fail scenario, it's a no-win scenario because it's not clear if you even have good options.
Yeah but the response is "there was nothing to do because nothing would work".
I mean, is there actually any serious questioning about NK or Syria that doesn't involve own previous actions?
Yeah but the response is "there was nothing to do because nothing would work".
I mean, is there actually any serious questioning about NK or Syria that doesn't involve own previous actions?
So far nothing has worked.
There needs to be questioning, and I think we are getting there, but we still need to find actual solutions if the status quo isn't good enough. Can't change anything unless you have a safer alternative.
The US now says Assad can stay in power in Syria but we won't fund their reconstruction unless "he makes serious changes". Which translates to "Assad can stay, and once he puts out a token statement we will then give him money also."
The US now says Assad can stay in power in Syria but we won't fund their reconstruction unless "he makes serious changes". Which translates to "Assad can stay, and once he puts out a token statement we will then give him money also."
The whole policy of literally everyone apart from I guess Iran, Russia, Turkey and Lebanon has been a complete fucking mess re. Syria
I don't see how their strategies weren't a fucking mess too.
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daveNYCWhy universe hate Waspinator?Registered Userregular
Iran's plan was a pretty straightforward backing of a bastard in order to expand their sphere of influence. Morally bankrupt, but certainly not a mess.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
The whole policy of literally everyone apart from I guess Iran, Russia, Turkey and Lebanon has been a complete fucking mess re. Syria
I don't see how their strategies weren't a fucking mess too.
Iran, Russia and Hezbollah/Lebanon's broader strategic goals were to ensure Assad survived and that the fractured Syrian state would therefore remain aligned with them in general. Something they have achieved, broadly.
The US now says Assad can stay in power in Syria but we won't fund their reconstruction unless "he makes serious changes". Which translates to "Assad can stay, and once he puts out a token statement we will then give him money also."
Helping Syria reconstruct would probably help ease a lot of suffering. And since we helped burn the country down it might be the right thing to do... I'd certainly be more happy with the US funding Syrian reconstruction than spending hundreds of millions on arms shipments as we did under Obama.
The US now says Assad can stay in power in Syria but we won't fund their reconstruction unless "he makes serious changes". Which translates to "Assad can stay, and once he puts out a token statement we will then give him money also."
Helping Syria reconstruct would probably help ease a lot of suffering. And since we helped burn the country down it might be the right thing to do... I'd certainly be more happy with the US funding Syrian reconstruction than spending hundreds of millions on arms shipments as we did under Obama.
Assad will no doubt be magnanimous with the money we give him.
The US now says Assad can stay in power in Syria but we won't fund their reconstruction unless "he makes serious changes". Which translates to "Assad can stay, and once he puts out a token statement we will then give him money also."
Helping Syria reconstruct would probably help ease a lot of suffering. And since we helped burn the country down it might be the right thing to do... I'd certainly be more happy with the US funding Syrian reconstruction than spending hundreds of millions on arms shipments as we did under Obama.
Like with Iraq and Afghanistan, this is easy enough to say, but it will turn out that who you help reconstruct and where exactly you reconstruct are important considerations that may lead to another civil war.
The whole policy of literally everyone apart from I guess Iran, Russia, Turkey and Lebanon has been a complete fucking mess re. Syria
I don't see how their strategies weren't a fucking mess too.
Iran, Russia and Hezbollah/Lebanon's broader strategic goals were to ensure Assad survived and that the fractured Syrian state would therefore remain aligned with them in general. Something they have achieved, broadly.
Broadly I think is where you are papering over all the ways this was a complete mess for them too. Every stuck their dick into Syria and came out with a mess. I think the best you can say is that anyone who wanted Assad to stay in power mostly got that.
The US now says Assad can stay in power in Syria but we won't fund their reconstruction unless "he makes serious changes". Which translates to "Assad can stay, and once he puts out a token statement we will then give him money also."
Helping Syria reconstruct would probably help ease a lot of suffering. And since we helped burn the country down it might be the right thing to do... I'd certainly be more happy with the US funding Syrian reconstruction than spending hundreds of millions on arms shipments as we did under Obama.
Like with Iraq and Afghanistan, this is easy enough to say, but it will turn out that who you help reconstruct and where exactly you reconstruct are important considerations that may lead to another civil war.
I think Assad might just head that off with concentration camps and religious cleansing.
Its a long article, the concentration camp stuff is towards the end:
There are eight camps in the desert near Qayyarah, housing roughly a hundred and fifty thousand people. During the war, most residents were people who had been displaced by the Islamic State. But now the proportion of ISIS-linked families is growing, as those who are unaffiliated return to their villages. The largest of the facilities is Airstrip Camp, which I visited twice in late August; between my visits, more than eleven hundred ISIS-linked Iraqi men, women, and children arrived in Qayyarah from a camp in eastern Syria. The journey had taken two days, and the Iraqi government had transported them from the border in open trucks, in hundred-and-fifteen-degree weather, without providing food or water. At least one person died.
At the entrance to Airstrip Camp, down a long, unpaved road, men holding machine guns stood in the shade of a cinder-block hut, near a tattered Iraqi flag. Inside were tents covered in dust—blue canvas turned a deep brown, held to the ground with rope and sandbags caked in mud. Clotheslines and gullies of green sewage separated the tents, and the camp’s razor-wire fence had caught thousands of plastic bags, which thrashed noisily in the breeze. Children hauled wheelbarrows and carts filled with water jugs and sacks of grain. On the horizon, a surveillance balloon floated above Qayyarah’s air base, from which the U.S. military had staged much of the Mosul campaign.
One of my visits coincided with that of the country head of a major international N.G.O. “This is set up like a concentration camp,” he said, gesturing at the fence. “All the barbed wire, the division of sectors. There are no social spaces. There are no spaces for the children to play. There are no places for people to gather. There’s one entrance in and out. And have you seen the guys at the entrance? Most of them are from militias.”
Throughout Nineveh Province, camp administrators and workers routinely deprive ISIS-linked families of food, clean water, and medical services. The N.G.O. country director told me that he had travelled more than two hundred miles from Baghdad, “to make sure that our Iraqi staff are not falling into these types of revenge attitudes.” He added, “They say, ‘These people killed my family, and now I have to help them?’ ” In some camps, humanitarian workers offer aid in exchange for sex. Many women are pregnant from having been raped by the security forces or from having sex to feed themselves and their children. Although the fighting has ended, “these camps are meant to stay,” the N.G.O. director said. “If you are ten years old now, and you have no food, no assistance, and your mother has to prostitute herself to survive, and the whole of Iraqi society blames you because you were close to ISIS—in two, three, four years, what are you going to do? It’s clear. The seeds for the next conflict are all here.”
Really good article though, worth taking the time to read the whole thing.
Jephery on
}
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
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daveNYCWhy universe hate Waspinator?Registered Userregular
The whole policy of literally everyone apart from I guess Iran, Russia, Turkey and Lebanon has been a complete fucking mess re. Syria
I don't see how their strategies weren't a fucking mess too.
Iran, Russia and Hezbollah/Lebanon's broader strategic goals were to ensure Assad survived and that the fractured Syrian state would therefore remain aligned with them in general. Something they have achieved, broadly.
Broadly I think is where you are papering over all the ways this was a complete mess for them too. Every stuck their dick into Syria and came out with a mess. I think the best you can say is that anyone who wanted Assad to stay in power mostly got that.
You're really underselling the importance of determining who runs the country. Especially since a less Iran-friendly Syria would really put a crimp on Iranian activity in Lebanon (and to a lesser extent Iraq). Plus you're ignoring the expansion of Hezbollah and the Revolutionary Guard into Syrian territory. Iran went into Syria with a clear goal that had solid strategic motivations behind it, and they succeeded. It was costly, but it certainly wasn't a mess.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
Yeah, I view Iran/Russia/Hezbollah as essentially fighting a defensive war in Syria. Their goal was to maintain the status quo and avoid either a total state collapse in Syria or the state's capture by geopolitically opposing forces (US or Saudi allies). Their strategy and aims were pretty consistent throughout, and aside from the loss of some Syrian territory to US and Turkish occupation, they largely succeeded.
Edit - Syrians in some regions of the country might not see Russia and Iran as "defensive" but in geopolitical terms I think it's a fair characterization
Kaputa on
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Kane Red RobeMaster of MagicArcanusRegistered Userregular
Turkey also managed to take some territory, not a lot, but if they manage to hold onto it a respectable amount by modern "war for territorial gain is illegal" standards.
In a surprise to literally everybody in the world except Donald Trump, Donald Trump has announced via Twitter that the war against ISIS is over, we have won, and are leaving Syria
Yeah ISIS is weak but still controls a small part of the Iraqi border and maintains some level of an insurgency in the east. This sounds like Trump caving to Turkey.
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daveNYCWhy universe hate Waspinator?Registered Userregular
Yeah ISIS is weak but still controls a small part of the Iraqi border and maintains some level of an insurgency in the east. This sounds like Trump caving to Turkey.
Quid pro quo for them letting that whole 'dead journalist' thing slide perhaps?
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
Yeah ISIS is weak but still controls a small part of the Iraqi border and maintains some level of an insurgency in the east. This sounds like Trump caving to Turkey.
Quid pro quo for them letting that whole 'dead journalist' thing slide perhaps?
Maybe. Or maybe they agreed to drop the Gulen extradition thing. There a few US-Turkey issues with their own sorts of leverage.
But the biggest is probably that Turkey just signed a deal to buy our Patriot missile system. There was major controversy over their move to purchase a Russian S-400 system, though I don't know for sure if they've canceled that deal now that they're going with the Patriot system.
Edit - no idea why my phone thought I meant "file" by "Gulen"
HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
edited December 2018
This seems extremely abrupt. What has happened recently to make Trump do this? I don't mean his declaration that ISIS is defeated, I mean something else happened and he's trying to capitalize on it somehow.
Edit - A quick news search shows that the Pentagon has been at odds with Trump on this? Is that what this is about?
This seems extremely abrupt. What has happened recently to make Trump do this? I don't mean his declaration that ISIS is defeated, I mean something else happened and he's trying to capitalize on it somehow.
Edit - A quick news search shows that the Pentagon has been at odds with Trump on this? Is that what this is about?
Trump needs a win in order to distract from his many, many issues.
Posts
Which basically sets up a no-fail scenario for western liberalism. Either you did something and look it worked (no matter how marginally) or you did nothing but that's ok too because there wasn't anything to do.
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
I think there is a human impulse to just want some big daddy figure to "fix" stuff and protect them. It is one reason the founding fathers of our country were not in favor of mob rule and made things like the electoral college in theory to prevent people like trump from becoming president.
oh god:
There's also this bit on that Fred Barnes article, since all of the above quotes refer to the dusky natives:
Christ. As The Intercept says:
Depressing to see David Frum get rehabilitated tho
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
No it doesn't. It sets up a situation where you have to answer "So, what are you gonna do about China?". The same way there's questions like "So, what are you gonna do about North Korea?". Or "So, what are you gonna do about Syria?".
It's not a no-fail scenario, it's a no-win scenario because it's not clear if you even have good options.
Yeah but the response is "there was nothing to do because nothing would work".
I mean, is there actually any serious questioning about NK or Syria that doesn't involve own previous actions?
So far nothing has worked.
There needs to be questioning, and I think we are getting there, but we still need to find actual solutions if the status quo isn't good enough. Can't change anything unless you have a safer alternative.
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
Unsurprising.
President Trump clearly loves dicktoaders.
I don't see how their strategies weren't a fucking mess too.
Iran, Russia and Hezbollah/Lebanon's broader strategic goals were to ensure Assad survived and that the fractured Syrian state would therefore remain aligned with them in general. Something they have achieved, broadly.
Assad will no doubt be magnanimous with the money we give him.
Like with Iraq and Afghanistan, this is easy enough to say, but it will turn out that who you help reconstruct and where exactly you reconstruct are important considerations that may lead to another civil war.
Broadly I think is where you are papering over all the ways this was a complete mess for them too. Every stuck their dick into Syria and came out with a mess. I think the best you can say is that anyone who wanted Assad to stay in power mostly got that.
I think Assad might just head that off with concentration camps and religious cleansing.
Iraq at least is heading that direction: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/12/24/iraqs-post-isis-campaign-of-revenge
Its a long article, the concentration camp stuff is towards the end:
Really good article though, worth taking the time to read the whole thing.
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
You're really underselling the importance of determining who runs the country. Especially since a less Iran-friendly Syria would really put a crimp on Iranian activity in Lebanon (and to a lesser extent Iraq). Plus you're ignoring the expansion of Hezbollah and the Revolutionary Guard into Syrian territory. Iran went into Syria with a clear goal that had solid strategic motivations behind it, and they succeeded. It was costly, but it certainly wasn't a mess.
Edit - Syrians in some regions of the country might not see Russia and Iran as "defensive" but in geopolitical terms I think it's a fair characterization
PSN/Steam/NNID: SyphonBlue | BNet: SyphonBlue#1126
Do we still have soldiers at the border?
Quid pro quo for them letting that whole 'dead journalist' thing slide perhaps?
But the biggest is probably that Turkey just signed a deal to buy our Patriot missile system. There was major controversy over their move to purchase a Russian S-400 system, though I don't know for sure if they've canceled that deal now that they're going with the Patriot system.
Edit - no idea why my phone thought I meant "file" by "Gulen"
Edit - A quick news search shows that the Pentagon has been at odds with Trump on this? Is that what this is about?
Trump needs a win in order to distract from his many, many issues.