Never liked him. Sucks he's dying but I can't stand the guy, people like him are responsible for unimaginable number of deaths.

guy got captured, wasn't even a war hero

damn, that sucks. i didnt like him as a person or politician either, but no one deserves this shit.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Jul 19 2017 06:22pm

I won't send anyone the insincere virtue signalling thoughts and prayers of an ambivalent atheist, but I will spit on anyone who disrespects him as he and his family grapple with imminent death by cancer. Its a terrible thing and he's due his respect and civility

Letting them in was the only moral thing to do. Germany was already responsible for one Holocaust, if they failed to prevent another one....they wouldn't deserve to exist.

And they did something similar with the refugees from the Balkans....they came for awhile, until the genocidal causes of the war were arrested, and then they went home. The only difference is that the genocidal cause of the war remains so it might be a little harder to convince them to go back this time around.

But the people from the Balkans were a little...lighter complected than Syrians, so there was a lot less fuss about it....the sky didn't fall then...but circumstances are different, as the causes are still there and there are many more Arabs than people from the Balkans.



It is amazing considering Saddam Hussein didn't destroy his own cities or use chemical weapons on Iraqi children, like Assad. He used them on the Kurds though, and he was executed by Iraq for much less than Assad has done.

For real though, Saddam was a fucking saint compared to Assad.



How can you say this and support Assad again? Just cognitive dissonance?

This post was edited by Skinned on Jul 19 2017 07:17pm

He is a remarkable man and as an American I'm very proud of him.

That's brutal, RIP

The size of the Turkish army isn't relevant. Their ability, or lack thereof, to project that power isn't substantial, and several European NATO members have superior militaries. Turkey has the power to close down the Bosporus, but in the grand scheme of things, the ability to restrict the world's access to the Black Sea is trivial. The Russian navy based there isn't a true blue water navy in the first place, so the USN wouldn't have much difficulty in keeping them in check even without the threat of closing the strait.

On the other hand, creating a genuine ally in the Muslim world should be a matter of strategic importance to the west, as Kurds generally do not adhere to the doctrine of Istihsan and thus are not susceptible to the issuance of fatwas by irrational zealots. On the other hand, Turkey is rapidly falling into a militant religious state, as evidenced by the power grabbing by Erdogan.

fun fact
john mccain's mother is actually still alive
how nuts is that

The kurds suck. Turkey might be an islamist dictatorship verging on theocracy that's farther gone than Iran and going further, but its still a hugely important player even without our base in Incirlik (and Izmir) and even with our nuclear weapons removed. Turkey is big and reasonably powerful, Kurds are a bunch of mountain people. Ceding Turkey to the Russian sphere of influence would be a huge strategic mistake, even if trying to keep them as our 'genuine ally' isn't remotely plausible at this point. The best we can hope for in the near term is keeping Turkey in NATO and not openly rebellious or defecting.