Paris Attacks

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
461

[quote]pushharder wrote:

[quote]Bismark wrote:

For doing what? Exercising their inherent rights under international law to maintain the sovereignty of their airspace? This is at least the third time Russian strike fighters have violated Turkish airspace…

[/quote]

The several news reports I’ve read question that Turkish airspace was violated in this instance.
[/quote]

Links? Turkey has release radar prints which show that the SU-24 in question had in fact done just that. This would make it the third such Russian incursion into sovereign Turkish airspace.

462

[quote]Aggv wrote:

[quote]Bismark wrote:
Kicking Turkey out of NATO would only leave it open to Russian retaliation. [/quote]

That’s the point. [/quote]

Why? So a region already in shambles can be even further destabilized?

463

[quote]Aggv wrote:
Turkey is upset that Russia is now bombing their cheap oil supply. [/quote]

Turkey is highly dependent on Russian natural gas. Turkey has every right under international law to intercept aircraft that violate its sovereign airspace. This isn’t to say that I agree with the course of action taken, of course.

464


The aforementioned radar print.

465

[quote]Bismark wrote:

[quote]Aggv wrote:
Turkey is upset that Russia is now bombing their cheap oil supply. [/quote]

Turkey is highly dependent on Russian natural gas. Turkey has every right under international law to intercept aircraft that violate its sovereign airspace. [/quote]

and Russian has every right to respond, and the USA does not need to be drawn into a fight we did not start.

turkey is not an ally against the muslim problem

466

[quote]Aggv wrote:

[quote]Bismark wrote:

[quote]Aggv wrote:
Turkey is upset that Russia is now bombing their cheap oil supply. [/quote]

Turkey is highly dependent on Russian natural gas. Turkey has every right under international law to intercept aircraft that violate its sovereign airspace. [/quote]

and Russian has every right to respond, and the USA does not need to be drawn into a fight we did not start.

turkey is not an ally against the muslim problem

[/quote]

Not militarly, they don’t. Cite a source of international law that allows a state to use force in retaliation vis-a-vis a legal response to a prior illegal action on its part. Barring a strategic meltdown on the part of Putin, this incident will not result in great power war. Putin doesn’t want to throw away every Russian aircraft forward deployed in Syria.

I wasn’t aware there existed a “Muslim problem”. Religious terrorism, on the other hand…

467

[quote]Aggv wrote:

[quote]Bismark wrote:

[quote]Aggv wrote:
Turkey is upset that Russia is now bombing their cheap oil supply. [/quote]

Turkey is highly dependent on Russian natural gas. Turkey has every right under international law to intercept aircraft that violate its sovereign airspace. [/quote]

and Russian has every right to respond, and the USA does not need to be drawn into a fight we did not start.

turkey is not an ally against the muslim problem

[/quote]

A lot, I think depends on the fate of the pilots whom I have heard conflicting reports. I know some idiots were shooting at them yelling ‘Allah Akbah’ as they were parachuting down. If the pilots lived and are returned safely to Russia then I believe the Turks and the Russians can reach some sort of agreement. If one or both are dead, that’s bad news.

And I really don’t know why the Turks would be all that bent out of shape about Russia violating that little sliver of air space. After all, Russia is doing something about the problem on their border that they themselves are not willing to do. So instead of shooting missiles at the terrorists that are causing all kinds of problems for Turkey in refugees, porous borders, terrorists running through out the country, etc, etc, etc.

So Turkey doesn’t want to fight the terrorists, and they show little to no patience with somebody who is fighting the terrorists… hmmmm… 1+1+1+1+1+1+1,
Turkey is not looking good here.

468

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]Aggv wrote:

[quote]Bismark wrote:

[quote]Aggv wrote:
Turkey is upset that Russia is now bombing their cheap oil supply. [/quote]

Turkey is highly dependent on Russian natural gas. Turkey has every right under international law to intercept aircraft that violate its sovereign airspace. [/quote]

and Russian has every right to respond, and the USA does not need to be drawn into a fight we did not start.

turkey is not an ally against the muslim problem

[/quote]

A lot, I think depends on the fate of the pilots whom I have heard conflicting reports. I know some idiots were shooting at them yelling ‘Allah Akbah’ as they were parachuting down. If the pilots lived and are returned safely to Russia then I believe the Turks and the Russians can reach some sort of agreement. If one or both are dead, that’s bad news.

And I really don’t know why the Turks would be all that bent out of shape about Russia violating that little sliver of air space. After all, Russia is doing something about the problem on their border that they themselves are not willing to do. So instead of shooting missiles at the terrorists that are causing all kinds of problems for Turkey in refugees, porous borders, terrorists running through out the country, etc, etc, etc.

So Turkey doesn’t want to fight the terrorists, and they show little to no patience with somebody who is fighting the terrorists… hmmmm… 1+1+1+1+1+1+1,
Turkey is not looking good here. [/quote]

From what I’ve been reading, one of the pilots was killed by ground fire from rebels, not the Turk military; but I don’t think anything’s been confirmed. No word on the other pilot.

469

[quote]pat wrote:
So Turkey doesn’t want to fight the terrorists, and they show little to no patience with somebody who is fighting the terrorists… hmmmm… 1+1+1+1+1+1+1,
Turkey is not looking good here. [/quote]

pretty sure they’re supporting terrorism, and a major part of the regional problems.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/11/24/us-mideast-crisis-syria-turkey-pilot-idUSKBN0TD2EX20151124?mod=related&channelName=worldNews#PJOJ83p0LhUDHitJ.97

1 pilot dead, rescue helicopters shot down, all to the chorus of “allahu akbar”

470

2976×3968 1.78 MB

[quote]pat wrote:

And I really don’t know why the Turks would be all that bent out of shape about Russia violating that little sliver of air space. After all, Russia is doing something about the problem on their border that they themselves are not willing to do. So instead of shooting missiles at the terrorists that are causing all kinds of problems for Turkey in refugees, porous borders, terrorists running through out the country, etc, etc, etc.

So Turkey doesn’t want to fight the terrorists, and they show little to no patience with somebody who is fighting the terrorists… hmmmm… 1+1+1+1+1+1+1,
Turkey is not looking good here. [/quote]

First of all, Russia has been doing this constantly with other NATO members, from Norway, UK, Estonia, Lithuania, not to mention Ukraine and even Sweden. All of them let it slide. Not Erdogan.

Erdogan is virtually an islamic doppelganger of Putin and letting Russians strut around in his backyard next to their border with decrepit SU 24s and old Tupolevs making propaganda youtube clips while the not-to-be-messed-with Turkish Army stands idly was not an option for him.

Russians started showing off and Erdogan doubled down. Technically, Turkey is correct - the plane crossed Turkish airspace (albeit for a few seconds) and they show it down. However, they were obviously waiting for such a scenario with a pair of F-16s when Russian planes crossed that sliver of Turkish land creating the flimsiest of pretenses.

On the other hand, Erdogan is trying to regain for Turkey the role of the Ottoman empire so you have to get over this terrorist label that was borne out of Western sensibilities.

Erdogan considers his sunni buddies in ISIS useful idiots for a genocide or two inflicted onto Shias, Alawites, Christians or Yezidis and above all Kurds, whom they hate viscerally.

That’s why Turkey has been funneling ISIS arms, supplies and dumb muslims from French and Belgian suburbs, while at the same time buying oil of them for 10 USD a barrel. Isn’t it strange how all those radicalized youths simply buy a plane ticket to Istanbul and afterwards suddenly appear in Syria couple of hundred miles away?

Turks are extremely good at the whole genocide thing. Armenians. Macedonians in Thrace, Greeks in Asia Minor - and that’s just the 20th century(!) where the survivors are sometimes counted in single digits. Even that sliver of land the Russian SU 24 crossed had a bloody recent history, courtesy of the always correct Gary Brecher in his must read article:

https://www.nsfwcorp.com/dispatch/cleanse-thy-neighbor/

On the other hand, commercial relations between Russia and Turkey are at an all time high, so it will be interesting how this all plays out.

I cannot stress the commercial aspect enough - planeloads of charter planes filled with Russian are landing daily on Turkish seaside resorts, Turkish construction companies have lucrative contracts in Russia and there was talk of a joint gas pipeline for Eastern Europe bypassing Turkey.

Here’s a picture I snapped in downtown Istanbul last year, where store signs are in many instances written in Russian Cyrillic as well.

471

[quote]pat wrote:
Raise your hand if you think Hollande is wasting his time talking to obama?

Obama has made it clear that he’s not going to change or modify the strategy against ISIS one bit. In the mean time, we have the State Department telling us not to stay out to much, don’t go to sporting events, etc. So do you feel safer now?

So don’t be afraid, just stay home? Terrorists 1, obama 0.

Obama is becoming more and more isolated. No one believes him, yet he just won’t admit he might be wrong. He lives in this fantasy world where he can just take his time with ISIS and eventually they will get defeated and while they give us little set backs like the attacks in Paris. Literally, it seems like he’s the only one who believes the current soft strategy is working. Even uber liberals think he’s acting weekly.

I don’t suppose he will ever admit he is actually a war time president. And being at war and pretending like you are not a war time president is kinda dangerous and stupid.[/quote]

Obviously we need a stronger Patriot act, we haven’t sacrificed enough of our freedoms

472
473

A US DOD spokesman stated that Turkish pilots issued 10 warnings to the Russian strike fighter that it was in Turkish airspace, all to no avail. The reports of NATO intelligence assets in the area coroborate the Turkish account.

474

Maybe Russia shouldn’t be flying SU-24s near Turkey when the Syrian Arab Air Force is also flying SU-24s? And after Turkey basically said they’re going to shoot anything that crosses into their airspace?

Or, farfetched, but possibly someone hacked the GLONASS signal and comms so the Russian plane thought they were on course and didn’t received proper verbal warning from the Turkish jets.

This was probably a mistake on both sides; Russia probably actually crossed into Turkish airspace, and Turkey probably didn’t properly warn the Russian plane, and they probably shouldn’t have shot at it.

Hopefully it’s just a blip and everyone moves on quickly.

475

[quote]Bismark wrote:

[quote]LoRez wrote:

[quote]Bismark wrote:
It plays right into the al-Qaida narrative of a clash of civilizations. ISIL has explicitly embraced a strategy of destroying the gray space between Islam and the secular state system. Emotive and from the hip retaliatory responses are exactly what the enemy wants. Why play right into their hands? [/quote]
Can you provide some sources? I’ve seen similar things mentioned elsewhere, but I haven’t seen any firsthand statements.[/quote]

For al-Qaida, see the following essay by Marc Lynch. Constructivism can be a bit tedious, but your posts suggest that you already have a knack for the paradigm. Lots of good primary source quotes.

http://www.marclynch.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Al-Qaedas-Constructivism.pdf

For ISIL, this article by counterterrorism analyst Harleen Gambhir is a good place to start. She quotes an ISIL communique that states that terrorist attacks “compel the Crusaders to actively destroy the grayzone themselve . . . Muslims in the West will quickly find themselves between one of two choices, they either apostatize . . . or they [emigrate] to the Islamic State and thereby escape persecution from the Crusader governments and citizens.”

TLDR: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2015/11/20/the-endless-recurrence-of-the-clash-of-civilizations/

Together with its hyperlinks, a good, concise primer on the subject.

[/quote]

Thanks for the links. That first link is going to take a bit to go through. I know pretty much nothing about international relations as a field of study, so “constructivism” is entirely new.

It’s taking me longer to work through Dabiq than I thought, since I’m giving it quite a bit more than a cursory skim. As of yet, I haven’t hit any discussion of global terrorism, only regional terrorism as part of their military policy. But I’m also still reading stuff from mid-2014, so I imagine they’ll end up moving the rhetoric in that direction eventually.

I was expecting them to have a far more cherry-picked interpretation of the Koran and Hadith (e.g., Westboro et al), but they’ve stuck to a pretty literal interpretation in all of their arguments.

476

[quote]Bismark wrote:

I wasn’t aware there existed a “Muslim problem”.
[/quote]

We’ve noticed. Maybe one day you’ll figure it out. Probably not but one can hope.

477

[quote]LoRez wrote:

[quote]Bismark wrote:

[quote]LoRez wrote:

[quote]Bismark wrote:
It plays right into the al-Qaida narrative of a clash of civilizations. ISIL has explicitly embraced a strategy of destroying the gray space between Islam and the secular state system. Emotive and from the hip retaliatory responses are exactly what the enemy wants. Why play right into their hands? [/quote]
Can you provide some sources? I’ve seen similar things mentioned elsewhere, but I haven’t seen any firsthand statements.[/quote]

For al-Qaida, see the following essay by Marc Lynch. Constructivism can be a bit tedious, but your posts suggest that you already have a knack for the paradigm. Lots of good primary source quotes.

http://www.marclynch.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Al-Qaedas-Constructivism.pdf

For ISIL, this article by counterterrorism analyst Harleen Gambhir is a good place to start. She quotes an ISIL communique that states that terrorist attacks “compel the Crusaders to actively destroy the grayzone themselve . . . Muslims in the West will quickly find themselves between one of two choices, they either apostatize . . . or they [emigrate] to the Islamic State and thereby escape persecution from the Crusader governments and citizens.”

TLDR: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2015/11/20/the-endless-recurrence-of-the-clash-of-civilizations/

Together with its hyperlinks, a good, concise primer on the subject.

[/quote]

Thanks for the links. That first link is going to take a bit to go through. I know pretty much nothing about international relations as a field of study, so “constructivism” is entirely new.

It’s taking me longer to work through Dabiq than I thought, since I’m giving it quite a bit more than a cursory skim. As of yet, I haven’t hit any discussion of global terrorism, only regional terrorism as part of their military policy. But I’m also still reading stuff from mid-2014, so I imagine they’ll end up moving the rhetoric in that direction eventually.

I was expecting them to have a far more cherry-picked interpretation of the Koran and Hadith (e.g., Westboro et al), but they’ve stuck to a pretty literal interpretation in all of their arguments.[/quote]

Here’s an extremely brief overview of an important constructivist work.

http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~plam/irnotes07/Wendt1992.pdf

I commend you for studying Dabiq. You’re clearly someone who is serious about the subject. You certainly put me to shame in that regard. Definitely on my reading list if I ever get around to it.

That’s very interesting. I’m glad that you’re here to contribute to the discussion.

478

[quote]loppar wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

And I really don’t know why the Turks would be all that bent out of shape about Russia violating that little sliver of air space. After all, Russia is doing something about the problem on their border that they themselves are not willing to do. So instead of shooting missiles at the terrorists that are causing all kinds of problems for Turkey in refugees, porous borders, terrorists running through out the country, etc, etc, etc.

So Turkey doesn’t want to fight the terrorists, and they show little to no patience with somebody who is fighting the terrorists… hmmmm… 1+1+1+1+1+1+1,
Turkey is not looking good here. [/quote]

First of all, Russia has been doing this constantly with other NATO members, from Norway, UK, Estonia, Lithuania, not to mention Ukraine and even Sweden. All of them let it slide. Not Erdogan.

Erdogan is virtually an islamic doppelganger of Putin and letting Russians strut around in his backyard next to their border with decrepit SU 24s and old Tupolevs making propaganda youtube clips while the not-to-be-messed-with Turkish Army stands idly was not an option for him.

Russians started showing off and Erdogan doubled down. Technically, Turkey is correct - the plane crossed Turkish airspace (albeit for a few seconds) and they show it down. However, they were obviously waiting for such a scenario with a pair of F-16s when Russian planes crossed that sliver of Turkish land creating the flimsiest of pretenses.

On the other hand, Erdogan is trying to regain for Turkey the role of the Ottoman empire so you have to get over this terrorist label that was borne out of Western sensibilities.

Erdogan considers his sunni buddies in ISIS useful idiots for a genocide or two inflicted onto Shias, Alawites, Christians or Yezidis and above all Kurds, whom they hate viscerally.

That’s why Turkey has been funneling ISIS arms, supplies and dumb muslims from French and Belgian suburbs, while at the same time buying oil of them for 10 USD a barrel. Isn’t it strange how all those radicalized youths simply buy a plane ticket to Istanbul and afterwards suddenly appear in Syria couple of hundred miles away?

Turks are extremely good at the whole genocide thing. Armenians. Macedonians in Thrace, Greeks in Asia Minor - and that’s just the 20th century(!) where the survivors are sometimes counted in single digits. Even that sliver of land the Russian SU 24 crossed had a bloody recent history, courtesy of the always correct Gary Brecher in his must read article:

https://www.nsfwcorp.com/dispatch/cleanse-thy-neighbor/

On the other hand, commercial relations between Russia and Turkey are at an all time high, so it will be interesting how this all plays out.

I cannot stress the commercial aspect enough - planeloads of charter planes filled with Russian are landing daily on Turkish seaside resorts, Turkish construction companies have lucrative contracts in Russia and there was talk of a joint gas pipeline for Eastern Europe bypassing Turkey.

Here’s a picture I snapped in downtown Istanbul last year, where store signs are in many instances written in Russian Cyrillic as well.[/quote]

Good analysis…

479

[quote]MattyG35 wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:
Raise your hand if you think Hollande is wasting his time talking to obama?

Obama has made it clear that he’s not going to change or modify the strategy against ISIS one bit. In the mean time, we have the State Department telling us not to stay out to much, don’t go to sporting events, etc. So do you feel safer now?

So don’t be afraid, just stay home? Terrorists 1, obama 0.

Obama is becoming more and more isolated. No one believes him, yet he just won’t admit he might be wrong. He lives in this fantasy world where he can just take his time with ISIS and eventually they will get defeated and while they give us little set backs like the attacks in Paris. Literally, it seems like he’s the only one who believes the current soft strategy is working. Even uber liberals think he’s acting weekly.

I don’t suppose he will ever admit he is actually a war time president. And being at war and pretending like you are not a war time president is kinda dangerous and stupid.[/quote]

Obviously we need a stronger Patriot act, we haven’t sacrificed enough of our freedoms[/quote]

Obama likes to swipe our freedoms through back channels under the guise of saving the environment and giving lousy insurance to poor widdle millennials. And if you disagree you hate orphans and kill kittens.

480

[quote]Bismark wrote:
A US DOD spokesman stated that Turkish pilots issued 10 warnings to the Russian strike fighter that it was in Turkish airspace, all to no avail. The reports of NATO intelligence assets in the area coroborate the Turkish account.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/11/24/will-this-russia-turkey-business-get-out-of-control/[/quote]

Yeah I heard all that. What we don’t know is if the Russians actually received and responded to the warnings. We don’t know actually how interested the Turks were in warning the the russians that they are about to fly into Turkey for about 15 seconds. It seemed from Turkey’s angry responses from earlier in the week that they were hot-to-trot about taking a shot at Russia.
It’s no secret that Russia has also been bombing Turk friendly terrorists and Turkey has been none to pleased with that.
Quite frankly I trust none of the little armies or militias that have setup camp in Syria. To me they are all just varying degrees of the same thing. ISIS is the extreme terrorists and the Free Syrian Army are more mild terrorists. Quite frankly I am glad the whole training up of the FSA failed. To me they are just terrorists who happen to be more than happy to take our arms, training and money only to turn that shit right back on us at some later date.
If we learned anything from Afghanistan its that you don’t arm local batshit crazy muslims in a war-torn country. That plan can only backfire, sooner or later.

It’s a simple concept really, if someone shouts ‘Allah u akbar!’ from behind a trigger, they are a terrorist.

What I see Turkey doing is an unnecessary complication and possible escalation to a situation that needs no help in getting worse. That 15 km of air space cannot possibly be worth it.