about as accurate as it gets, unfortunately the resident saber-rattlers will disagree

Herp derp up is actually down.

‘Russia hacked the election Pres Obama said couldn’t be hacked’

next?

I'm a little more understanding of his restraint on Iran, but it does show weakness to not respond forcefully to what they've done the past number of months.

But I don't see how anyone could argue progress on North Korea is fine. We're not making any real progress, and they are launching missiles and pulling out of meetings. This isn't a situation where time is on our side... they can keep building nukes while we're desperately trying to strike some grand bargain.

they already have nukes. the strategical boon this gives them defensively is already there. they will not be able to develop serious offensive capacities, ever. they know very well that if they nuke any US city, their entire country will be a flattened, 1000° hot boiling wasteland 2 hours later. they also know that if they developed the capacities to be a real threat to the americans, they would by definition also be a potential threat to china - and that china will never allow this to happen.

having nukes which make it practically impossible for foreign powers to invade their country and overthrow their regime is pretty much the end of the road when it comes to NK. by far the biggest danger their nukes pose from that point on is proliferation, not a North Korean first strike or shit like that.

Your question makes no sense. US troops near the Turkish border is not an existential threat to them. Having 10s of thousands of YPG grow strong on their border is. What Turkey is doing is wrong and needs to be condemned but to pretend that the YPG threat to them is nothing long term is nonsense.



And how are the 2 scenarios even remotely similar? Crimea is mostly Russian, Rojava is not mostly Turkish. A strong Kurd Rojava may lead to eventual Turkish Kurd regions to wish for independence and/or be funded by the Kurds in Rojava, is this true of the Crimea? This question honestly makes no sense and i would be shocked if you could make a coherent comparison.
Pragmatists look around the world and see failed after failed intervention and the US tax payer footing the bill. That's the realities of Iran, Afghanistan, Libya, etc. You not being able to see this basic truth is a problem.

Some great historical context:

https://theintercept.com/2019/10/07/kurds-syria-turkey-trump-betrayal/

You're missing the point. You've said that people of distinct ethnicities should be able to govern themselves. Therefore, the Turkish attempts to crack down on these Kurdish controlled areas should offend you. Your position should be that the Kurds deserve their own state.

They absolutely do and Kurds are in the right here. In an ideal world Turkey would be willing to grant them their sovereignty in the east and we can all sing kumbaya. But we don't live in the world, we live in a world where Turkey has an army of 600,000 soldiers. We live in a world where they are in one of the most strategic places in the world. We live in a world where we have nukes against Russia in Turkey. We live in a world that if we fucked with Turkey they could weaponize immigration and really fuck Europe. We live in a world where if we lose Turkey as a geopolitical friend to Iran or Russia that we would be much weaker in the region.

So while i feel for the Kurds you can't simply ignore all of those realities and ramifications. The world is really complex, you can't have absolutist positions on right and wrong.

https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/the-remnant-with-jonah-goldberg/e/64615626

Jonah hits the Syria issue in the beginning.