[Qnnoshxj]

"Parliamentary approval, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said before the debate, would not necessarily trigger immediate military action and many analysts doubt a full-scale invasion will be launched."

This sounds hopeful.

[Lenny Hensley]

90% certain that it will be limited to the immediate border area. The US policy seems to be privately giving the Turks a free hand to root out PKK from the immediate border area while publicly giving weak protests to keep the Iraqis happy.

[fhutiussk]

Turkey

[GenrieAB]

Originally posted by Riesstiu IV
You know what we should do. As soon as the Turkish army enters Iraq, we withdraw all our forces to Kuwait. Then Iraq becomes Turkey's problem and we pretend like nothing happened.

And then say, well, you can't leave... you'll create a civil war!

Brilliant! We should push through that Armenian Genocide vote to make it more likely Turkey will invade .

[jesyflowers]

Pelosi

[RicyReetred]

What do you call holding a few press conferences but not actually doing anything meaningful? Reasonable people call that a weak protest.

[Repwailia]

I'm not sure the Turks will actually invoke the Bush Doctrine (ie, attacking states that harbor terrorists), but they want to try to force the US to change its policy or they'll threaten to use more force. Meh, if Iran did this, we'd tell them to screw off.

[Agehoobionibe]

Patroklos thinks this has anything to do with a House Bill which will never be passed into law?!

Dude, you are dumber then I thought. This has everything to do with the on going 30 year long civil war in Turkey and the US & Iraqi refusal to take responsibility for policy Iraqi Kurdistan. Turkey is responding to the PKK attacking it's soldiers from safe havens in Iraq. If you can't figure that out on your own then you should just stop posting.

[viagradiscounttt]

Can't we just, well, let them go in and kill the terrorists? We don't like terrorists, do we? Patrokolos, are you or have you ever been a member of Al Qaeda

[mtvlover571]

The House resolution was ill-advised and certainly doesn't help the diplomatic climate, but it had almost nothing to do with this authorization. States simply don't behave that irrationally.

[Hokimjers]

Edit: Oh misread what you wrote. It's not just just that it wasn't done on purpose, it's that the resolution was not particularly significant. A poor choice (and far from the worst aspect of foreign policy derived from identity politics that we've seen - *cough*Israel*cough*), but had almost nothing to do with the authorization to use military force. States do not go to war due to a non-binding condemnation of a century old regime from a completely different country.

[Yessaniloas]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
[q=Patroklos]Yeah, because I can't see why labeling the Turkish people as genocidal manicas at this juncture would have any effect on our ability to talk them down from this[/q]

A. Condemning the Ottoman Empire does not equal "labeling the Turkish people". This is the nuance that conservatives seem to not understand. This nuance also appears to not be understood by the Turks.

B. If you think the resolution had that much to do at all with this measure, you are seriously deluded. The Turks have been making noise about going into Kurdistan for years now. It's been building to a crescendo over the last few months and a Armenian genocide resolution has little to nothing to do with the Turkish government taking another step forward in this problem with the Kurdish terrorists in Iraq. ...or, it may have been the straw that broke the camel's back.

As an afficianato of irony, I would have liked to have seen Turkey pass a resolution condemning the U.S.'s genocide of its Native American population. (It's a rare country in the world that doesn't have some skeleton in its closet -- and usually the skeleton is that of an ethnic minority.)

[sat23neus2]

Originally posted by Patroklos

Awesome Oerdin, you can grasp the obvious, now as was asked earlier, what do you want the US to do about it? The answer is very simple, numbnuts. Actually police northern Iraq and either arrest or drive out terrorists camped out there. Surely even your little mind can understand that?

If we'd actually bothered to do something about the PKK over the last 3 years that the Turks have been complaining about this then things wouldn't be where they are now. Bush didn't care about Kurdistan or Turk's objections though just like he doesn't care about anything until it becomes a crisis.

[FreeDownloadOEMsoftware]

Originally posted by Ramo
The House resolution was ill-advised and certainly doesn't help the diplomatic climate, but it had almost nothing to do with this authorization. States simply don't behave that irrationally. Which is why Patroklos's claims are so laughable. The poor guy's brain has rotted away from watching to much rightwing media.

[IvJlNwum]

If we have extra troops, why aren't they in Iraq helping out with the assault? For some reason I have a feeling it's not something as simple as "lol we like not using all of our troops effectively" ...

[Grarypealumma]

edit: crosspost. Damnit, Wezil!

Seriously. There are no more troops to be had. If there were, they'd have been involved in the Surge, or the Surge would be set to last longer.

If we had enough troops to control the entire country, Kurdish areas included, this conversation would be a lot different. But we do not.

-Arrian

[Wxrxnhar]

Sure. But the lack of enough troops plays a big part too. If we had a spare division lying around, it might be different (I very much doubt we'd "assault" the PPK, but patroling the border might be an option in this alternative universe).

-Arrian

[JesexhiSeeces]

[q=Patroklos]what I said is it makes them less likely to want to listen to us on anything[/q]

Well, I'm not sure they are very likely to listen to us anyway. The American approval rating in Turkey had been dropping steadily since our invasion of Iraq.

[PWRichard]

I feel especially sorry for the Turds, those who are of mixed Turkish and Kurdish background. I imagine that their rejection by both sides and this conflict will only serve to further isolate the Turds.

[Tyncneiff]

Kurds
Turks
So, you hanged Saddam for gassing the "noble freedom fighters" of the Iraqi north (as well as some other stuff), but now you let Turkey do they same to the "brutal separatists" of the Iraqi north? Isn't this this: ?