war , a full scale war , is an equation with so many variables and unknowns . Making it living in interesting times , as the Chinese curse is supposed to be . Leading to its avoidance .
there has been lots of talk of war on both sides of the Aegean and in mid-1990s they shot down a Turkish jet with the justification that it might have been unarmed but it was well flown . Yes , exactly that . With close passes it was a danger , more than our usual spats we have with the Greeks ; you know we don't accept their views and have no intention of accepting . All of which lead to our flights in international airspace . Finally one day they showed their teeth . The Greek propaganda machine actually made much of the well flown part , it had to be an Israeli exchange pilot and he was saved and sent back , nothing to see here , all is well , move away . The backseater was Turkish , of course , and nobody from Greece mentioned him in their dispatches to the aviation media . He remains with that F-16D to the day . A Greek pilot was pictured with a Turkish flag under the canopy of his Mirage , him beaming with his one-fifth of acedom , though he soon quit his job as a colleague died in an accident that affected him deeply . People this side of the sea are sure they shot down the right one .
a snippet of time long past and it has all of it . Use of violence to get what one desires , desire to keep the violence limited to prevent further and/or return violence , accepting the tit-for-tat (just check the last part here ) , preceeded-accompanied-followed with talk and talk .
not a post on Greeks , but a general observation on how stuff works . It takes a certain amount of lies to get people die for the country and practically anything else ; this screen from reality needs to be protected , if men are to be willing to die in case of need . Hence we can't be flying good enough on our own and so on . War has been described as the ultimate and unkindest judge . War -where everthing goes up or down is an immediate indicator of what's true and what's not- can tear the very of fabric of society , the norms and all . Something to ponder on why it doesn't happen much between equals . Staying in the 1990s , it was a terrible shock for Athens to discover there would be not much help for them in their rightful struggle against us . We were chasing the dear seperatist leader across continents and somehow the words came loud and clear . That barring the way would lead to , you know ...
not a post on how great we are either . In the same exact episode , our generals and goverment was in the bog standart "Oh , the great America , allow us to rule the place AS IF we are fit to do . We will do your bidding in return , just watch us threatening Syria so that the most valuable people can sleep tight occupying the Golan Heights and below " mold when we threatened action if Damascus didn't kick the dearest of the dearest out immediately . PR and nothing else ! Had people in Ankara known it was about to erupt into a three versus one , Syria and Iran to the East , limited Greek action in the West to deny NATO's stinking Article 5 , with inevitable internal stuff , they would have all shut up .
huh, you still wondering the peace in the Aegean ? With picture contests on the web to decide who is the Turk and who is the Greek ?
full scale war is terribly risky , that's why people avoid it . Nothing ever happens in a vacuum , everthing interacts with something else . War is uncertain , you might have all the tables of equipment and all the computing power with all the math geniuses in the world but it will not guarantee victory that you weigh heavier on the scales . It took America 12 years to wear down Saddam's Iraq to be safe enough for the transformation through occupation . The math side was crystal clear even in 1991 , even the Syrians being on the Allied side , something else , a tiny spectre in the mind was not . America was the leader of the pack undisputably , with the Soviets visibly melting down ; it didn't mean the process could be started immediately ...
returning to Syria , the math of the 1980s showed Israel was far stronger , as it would be soon demonstrated over the Bekaa Valley , though nobody exactly wanted a showdown as experience had long proved there was nothing better to poison international relationships than a war in the Middle East . Which in the end led to a "What the..." moment for London as Argentina invaded the Falklands . While the world attention focused on a British victory , and an easy one as this balance of power thing rests very much on the idea that the big boys must prevail no matter what and that all the time , Argentinians were utterly confused on why their freshly delivered Israeli equipment was not working as advertised , you know , right at the moment when Tel Aviv was ripping the Syrians apart . Quite a few quite proper men died in vain , in attacks against British shipping , as an explosives disposal expert afloat could see the British made bombs lacked their fuses even as they were midair , arching down onto their targets . Famously , the BBC opinionated the attacks were too low and too fast , hence the weapons couldn't find time to go off , and the Argentinians took the hint to return on the morrow with retarted bombs . Not that widespread but a certain sourness still exists in Britain at their American allies that gringo advisors remained in Argentina while the junior or senior or whatever part of the special relationship was in a life or death struggle in the South Atlantic . Ai caramba , had the Americans left , what would have happened to Royal Navy ?
ı am personally ashamed -to a certain degree- 'cause at the age of 11 ı thought that since we were in the same Alliance with UK we had to root for the British . The analogy most apt this time should be the army general who was photographed at the wall in Kudüs wearing the skull cap . What was he thinking , certainly not that our Allies would choose democracy and he would be questioned in court for that very picture ? Now that our democracy must be an Islamic one and anti-Semitism works all the time in the Middle East ...
war being expensive and uncertain , especially in this modern era where people have somehow gone soft , the dictum has been modified from the Clausewitz's original version , politics are now the continuation of war . The transformation of this country still looks surreal , one or two years ago we were about to abolish borders with Syria and Iraq , which in itself was weirdly weird . Now that we are no longer friends Damascus accuses Ankara of being interested only in getting more and more for the Islamic Brotherhood in the future Syria , that our people talked nothing of but giving this post or that business permit to the Sunnis . We still have no word on what the Syrians were demanding from us .
though despite all the rhetoric on how we will direct the reformation of the area , the shamelessness of writing that we are the new owners of the Middle East , all is not well . There is a quest for superiority inside the new elites and people look on dumbly as the supposed allies in the fight against the worthless , pointless and still worthless Turkishness challenge each other . One of my ideas -and mind you ı have never been anything but a fool- suggested that the new process would destroy any influence this country might have in the area , people are now more and more making a point of Arabs closing their TV sets when Turkish officals appear in the news , and somehow it must be Turkey alone who hides a run-away politician wanted by the Interpol and not Qatar , which was funding the "murders" ; no sir , the famous Turkishness must be shown to be disrespectful of international codes of behaviour - in case we complain about people doing this or that . Back to squabbles of this country , one finds the shreds of evidence whereever one looks to . Somebody leaked the new education reform where apparently high school students are now allowed to be married , no doubt to increase the marketability of girls who inevitably gain weight as years pass and hitching early would prevent the kind of "adultery" that goes on especially in the Western parts . And the number of days a student are allowed to miss school increased from 20 to 45 -out of 180- , leading to cries of increased opportunities for child labour . No such thing said the education minister . Of course not , the elites have their kids educated in undeclared military scale discipline , while the rest is given even more leeway for absenteeism . One example ı often quote , some years back ı overheard two students in discussion over the immediate future on the second or the third day the schoolyear started . One was already set on missing the two , three weeks ahead so that he would fail the classes and be free for the year ... The new elites will no doubt be proud to watch their offspring to get the degrees and the jobs as they were fittest to survive and thrive . The only official complaint was of course for those who leaked it .
people are cutting the tree branch they are sitting on , being a proverb this sentence makes more sense in Turkish . As my stuff makes 0 in English , still not much though . It seems brilliantly easy to destroy and start anew from a clean sheet , but people abroad have no interest in a Turkey that can be influential and a Turkey destroyed means no influence for people who are eagerly taking the reins . Was kinda amused to see a vocal critic of the past saying all the choice words for once allies . It appears he and a few similarly minded intellectuals have been talking to English / Irish people with the experience of IRA-Sinn Fein deals to do something similar here . And militant Islamists have called them as collaborators with the seperatists , meaning the militant Islamists have proven themselves to be immoral liars . Didn't hear an iota of that from him when the said militants were whacking the old order . It comes incredible that the West can abandon them the newly elites with the exact same abandon they showed to the old order . but every "democrat" will learn it one day . The US Cavalry rarely arrives on time , when it comes to people they don't like anyhow .
... avoidance of the notion that everybody will become old , passe , out of date , as anachronistic as the horse dropping on 21st century asphalt pavement ... is not the virtue some people take it to be .
must take care with what one says , the goverment generals are incensed with the formerly pro-military old order . So easy to get stamped but one can not avoid the laughter when the new elites rush to the defence of the new army . It gets repeated 50 times a day that a critic of the present day goverment said a couple of things that implied the Turkish Armed Forces was a paper tiger . Isn't it ? Now that the newly elites riveted themselves in by saying the same thing ? Even myself have been harping on it with the cardboard Panther theme . And the generals are particularly angry with the NCOs who are twitting in practically open rebellion for larger pay-checks , apparently to a tune of 150 000 personnel and family members . All evil moves to provoke them . The title goverment general surely hints that nobody expects anything from them . It will be huge fun when people notice the different colour code .
must not diverge too much from justifying politics , ee uhm , war . As said , it took awfully long for America to justify the invasion of Iraq , to themselves and allies . The issue was of course what to do with the platform to modify the country . Despite what they preach to outside world , both sides , that are working for the establishment of the "right thing" for the Near East are aware that Iran has been around for long time and can play the game of hypocracy . The problem arises with the Sunni leadership . Say, the Saudis were "desert people" until they got to smashing all the mirrors in Mecca-Medina 1920ish when they toppled the Hashimites who were clearly asking too much from the otherwise benevolent Britain . You know , the ban of images thing . They don't have the strategic patience arising from millenia of double dealing on a state level . And since traditions shape today and the future they know they will be back in the deserts when they run out of oil . And even the camels are not what they used to be ... Maybe 20 maybe 50 years . And this shapes their "agony" .
the sole reason why Saddam survived 1991 and the aftermath was that the Shia numbered far too much to enable the rule of the oil empire in Iraq . Saudis and their pals had this campaign with America until it was cut down to a reasonable size in October-November 2001 in some Asian backwater so that Sunnis could see the writing on the wall . Whatever happened in Iraq afterwards was an attrition campaign that tempered undeniable Iranian opportunitism and a certain pruning of Sunni ranks . Didn't like Zerkavi either . Iraq post 2003 is a solid American success if you look at it from a certain viewpoint . Before it was also likewise , when they "created" another bunch of oil-loving people right under our noses , from bases in our country , firing on us when grumbling too much .
we are always a consideration for those who create empires in the Middle East . The Turk has been around for a long time and we have it good in Anatolia , quite proper as real estates go . Weirdly or maybe not then we have to have our heads on the chopping block . Though one must remember the lies needed to send the soldier to die for country , and a straight action against us would expose a few , slightly more than a couple . Leads to stuff . We were to be in that attrition campaign of the paragraph above , Americans justify - watch the word justify - their consequent actions against us by the supposition that we betrayed them . My posts never have much connection to reality , especially those which claim we were already outbribing them in our designated operations zone , right in the middle of Iraq , away from the common border where we were sure to be killing seperatists as well , discouraging the people of the shining success story which Americans will sell you remorselessly . And the story goes on that the most modern American division , the laptop one , got sidelined when we declined to accept American troops here .
now when ı was a museum guide ı could afford buying books and sifting through stuff in the basement on a different errand recently ı found an American POP , piece of propaganda . It is once again proven that ı am a careless reader . It turns out in addition to the American Fourth , a British division equivalent was supposed to go to Northern Iraq , so that steely Brits could solidly face us from meddling with the poor Kurds and keep us marching to South and ı wasn't personally aware of that . Oh yes , the book of course doesn't say anything like that at all . It says :
British military strategists had actively participated in the U.S. war games and planning exercises dealing with the Middle East since 1995. Prior to spring 2002 they had focused largely on supporting an American drive north from Kuwait to Baghdad. But in June of that year, as the possibility of war grew, [American commanders] tasked British forces to participate in the drive from Turkey through Northern Iraq, to seize Tikrit and eventually push on to Baghdad. In this plan, only a portion of the 3rd Commando Brigade would remain in the south... Who instituted this shift from the south to north, and why, is not entirely clear...
As negotiations with the Turks dragged on into December, British ... planners increasingly recognized that... [Turks] would not allow the British to be part of the northern operation. Why the Turks held such an attitude was never clear. The best the British officers could offer was that several senior Turkish generals still resented Britain's role in the 1932 Treaty of Laussanne which awarded Mosul, with its rich oil fields, to Iraq. Strange as it may seem to many Americans who have never lived in the southern part of the United States, history has an odd way of lingering around for decades to affect the contemporary landscape.
despite the claims of Americans knowing there would be no permits from December , as if there could ever be , they kept their shipping in the Med off our ports so that Iraqis would bank on a massive Northern offensive and would pay less attention to the border with Kuwait . All changed once the action started and ended . Heavy equipment in the wrong place , poor America hand an arm tied behind back , one third of Army missing or what ... They had to rush to South and moreover the failure to capture Musul early , due to lack of troops in enough numbers , allowed El Kaide a presence there which meant adding 2 years to the butchery in Iraq . Yeah right . Yeah , one thing that would never happen in the CFC , Americans claiming the 173th or anybody else had absolute need for freaking Turkish assistance . 5 M-1 tanks flown in and it was not more than enough ? ı guess ...
the two authors have been described as first rate American military historians in the bookjacket , so the treaty date of Lausanne must be a misprint ... Just like the part when they write Washington largely ignored Saddam's faults and took advantage Iraq vs Iran fighting until the ... day of reckoning came in July 1990, as Iraqi troops moved into Kuwait in an almost bloodless military occupation. Now , the date is kinda etched into my memory . August 2 , 1990 was an unbearably hot day . Was helping father at work , mixing concrete with shovels is kinda backbreaking even on cool days . To protect my chicken neck from the merciless sun ı had to take the cotton garment you wear under the shirt and wrap it around my head under the baseball cap ... Have been an armchair strategist even then , was kinda ashamed to hear it from a co-worker of father's that Iraq had invaded , despite my assurances to anybody that showed an interest , who unfortunately quickly got to regret their interest . If this post was printed it would probably be around 5 pages or so , and probably ı have a dozen grammar failures and a couple of misspellings , never minding the dots and commas ; it is really obvious that one can have a couple of mistakes in 200 pages of a book . So , the authors are not definitely mentioning anything about the British-civilian-armchair-armour-enthuasist's-uninformed-gloating about the days of fighting the Kuwaiti Chieftains shone , by their mention of July . Most improbable , by now while everybody knows the Kuwaitis were stealing oil with horizontal drilling under the border , that they invaded first ? Fat chance this being the reality ...
cavalry performs well in Hollywood's golden days . Never arrives on time when the Injuns have guns .
one must avoid too harsh an indictment of any POP , anybody has them one way or the other and for the proffessional observer they can be very useful to show who is in and who is not . This book was an immediate product of the fall of Saddam and sets the record straight to justify the second round by underlying the failures of the first ; it ends with the notion that by June 2003 American troops had failed to find weapons of mass destruction ...
has a few particularly nice quotes too:
Kind hearted people might think of course there was some ingenious way to disarm or defeat an enemy without too much bloodshed, and might imagine this is the true goal of the art of the war. Pleasant as it sounds, it is a fallacy that must be exposed: war is such a dangerous business that the mistakes which come from kindness are the very worst.
from the Bible , oh no , On War by Clausewitz . There are a couple from the Bible , not this one though . Kinda explains , as far as this biased guy can tell , the shock and awe , not only the bombing on the CNN and other channels . In the book the quote starts a chapter dealing with how no-fly zones were established , after Bush the First asked for rebellion and Americans watched Iraqis crushing it so that world opinion could not fail to see the misery , which was really there for people who suffered .
Our opinion of the Gods and our knowledge of the men lead us to conclude that it is a general and necessary law of nature to rule whatever one can. This is not a law we made ourselves, nor were we the first to act upon it when it was made. We found it already in existence, and we shall leave it to exist forever among those who come after us.
some guy named Thucydides , presumably historian , starts a section on Saddam's pointless attacks on Iran and Kuwait which then led to no doubt righteous Western intervention . Can not possibly refer to anything else , especially -uhm- civilized countries ...
In war the will is directed at an animate object that reacts.
whatever ...
regarding people in and out , and to bolster my wannabe attempts at history : John Warden , an USAF colonel seems to be even more out in 2003 than he was in 1991 . Chuck Horner , the general who ran the actual Desert Storm was more neutral , ı know since ı have his autobiography in Turkish somewhere . Maybe because it was him who sacked the colonel or maybe it is truly obvious that it was the general himself who asked for the Instant Thunder , an emergency bombardment plan in case Saddam rolled into S.Arabia before US troops arrived in theater en masse . [Wouldn't have happened as Saddam Hussein had not briefed it with the US Ambrassador to Iraq . It being further operations that might happened beyond Kuwait .] No word on General Dugan though , who was sacked by Washington from overall command of USAF for stealing the limelight by suggestions of a full scale airwar . USN gets it badly for conduct in 1991 , asking for Route Packs a la Vietnam . No mention of USAF taking the entire responsibility for CAPs rather forcefully so that only USAF could shoot down jets , even Capt. Al Shamrani tailed by a couple of Eagles just in case , which still resulted in air combat for USN and a weird case where Scott Speicher was lost . Which might have somehow been the reason for the affair where USAF proved the MiG-25 could be a tough nut to crack with 4 F-15s firing 11 Sparrows at a single Iraqi flight over an "impossible" geometry . Wouldn't have happened with the F-14 . Due to previous bad experience over Iran , the Iraqis regularly broke contact when Tomcats were around . A reputation not even the French Mirage drivers could blemish , it appears they were around at the later stages of the 8 year war . Indeed ı recently read it might have been French themselves who attacked USS Stark to force America react to Iran , just to save Saddam .
umm Kasr changing hands repeatedly between the US and UK doesn't get that specific nod either ...
law and order aspect mentioned only by the glorious British success in Basra in securing "the largest collection of single malt whiskeys ... seen outside of the liquor stores at Gatwick and Heathrow." , which certainly covers the aspect , without any need to mention that the only Iraqi Official building that wasn't looted was the oil ministry in Baghdad , because it was the only one guarded by the Allies .
what's it to us , apart from the foolish notion that this country must go under , because it doesn't fit in with smart plans for a smart future , that it doesn't fit the smartness of people that we could be wiped out in 30 minutes or an hour or a day or a week if our enemies are not primed up , as such a civil war is a good thing to start in this country and it has taken Uncle Sam and Uncle's cousin Johnny Bull some 20 years to create a center of gravity for our otherwise fractured East to gravitate to , at the cost of million and a half plus dead Iraqis , as the Islamists and Leftists of this country give the numbers ? It certainly makes no impression on our allies the Civil War here has been wargamed to a million dead , why should it afterall ? Mind you , our Easterners are needed elsewhere , as such we -the rest- are still to squabble in the rest of the country , after the world saves them from our nefarious ways . This thread has something on civil wars , something about the elites losing priviliges and resorting to violence . Say , was Ahromeyev , ı get to talk good of him without the slightest info on why - was Ahromeyev afraid of losing his dacha , of people who would come and send him to mines before sitting in his table to eat his dinner and sipping his Votka? Or was it something like preserving something , work of years , of sweat and of far too much tears ? Considering , with the possible exception of the Baltic states , Commies in one form or the other are still in charge in all of the former Soviets , only that they go to bazilikas for coronotion , why not simply getting accustomed to new realities ? In the one where son replaced father , our beloved Azerbeycan , the one nation two states thing , they have banned foreign TV series , of Turkish in addition to Russian , Brazilian and all . Pour souls , not even DVDs bought on discount and shown on TV without licence ... Where is America , to save people , from goverment oppression ? ( The reason for the rant ? ı watch their satellite channels , DVD thing means ı never have to go to or buy movies , they will be on within a month or two . )
afterall , does America feel much shame when declaring that the US State Department have been providing unhackable phones and training for their use , in a so-called NATO member , in the same breath like the countries like Libya or Syria ? Things have changed that much that people in TV debates and news don't have that much of a funny feeling telling the Northern Iraqi Kurds trust on us to protect them from Baghdad when they declare independence . If we were to do that why did we die for the last 30 years , us , them , citizens of this country or not , to the tune of maybe 50 , maybe 60 thousand ? More and more people want them out of Turkey , or whatever that gets left after they get their municipalities out , is that enough ? No , Uncle Sam wants us to become Serbians , so that they can bomb us to Kingdom come ... Come onnn , let's see who are bigger liars .
But seriously folks, if anyone wants to take himself out of the judging business, that's fine, just don't expect the rest of us to play along.
Man I think your exposure to moral philosophy just went terribly wrong. If anything, religion abused and raped morality like the power-graping rapist it is.
I merely thought you deserved this reply. Provoking thoughts is the fundament of a good debate culture. I'm happy you found I was so wrong that you had to answer.
