It wasn’t a defensive one off. We were protecting our interests in oil fields from Russia.
The simpler explanation to Trump’s foreign policy is that he’s outsourcing it to a wide range of random conservative ppl who care about it (not him).
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This I think is largely true and it’s whoever has his ear and interest. Often that’s MBS or Erdogan or Netanyahu.
If it wasn’t a one-off then surely there are other incidents with 200 Russians being killed by US troops?
If you want to count defending a narrow set of oil interests in the context of a complete strategic retreat from Syrian affairs as acting against Russian interests then you’re seemingly saying that not giving Russia every last thing it could possibly want counts as opposing it, which is weird.
Yeah, you forgot somebody here
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The change in policy, slight as it was, from Obama to Trump was giving Northern Syria to Turkey, which Trump did not do for Russia’s sake.
What’s your line for US policy in Syria?
I tried with a VPN and it was stil blocked for me, too.
iirc didn’t we impose tight restrictions on foreign finance, which would impact their oil exports? Could very well be Putin calling the shots or at least putting ideas into his air head imo
Why are you making me do this? I made a general comment that I wasn’t sure that even SA wants Florida Man clipping senior Iranian leadership willy-nilly because this is dangerous and he is not reliable should the going get tough. I then intimated quite strongly that Russian pressure, which would be applied on Iran’s behalf, could sway how he responds, to the detriment of those who seem like they’d 
Soleimani’s assassination the most. This could play out for instance with SA eating a bunch of cruise missile attacks with no idea at all what America would do about it.
I guess you couldn’t abide the insinuation that the Russians own Florida Man, so you said,
You should say where it is pretty clear, because that’s a relatively high standard. Although I reduced the burden and said,
I can accept with a reservation or two that Florida Man didn’t give up Northern Syria “for Russia’s sake”, but it is clearly in Russia’s interest for the US to be out of Syria. It’s also in Russia’s interest for the US to be perceived as an unreliable ally in the region and around the world.
I don’t have a line on Syria policy except that abandoning the Kurds and other allies was a bad decision. But even before that, Florida Man was one of Assad’s more prominent appeasers. He amplified Russian disinformation that Russia was in Syria to fight ISIS when it was there only to save Assad. What’s left to argue about, I don’t get it.
Iraq is majority shi’ite so of course it is going towards gravitate to Iran. They were enemies of Iran only when they were controlled by Saddam/sunni minority.
This is what Russia wants, America turning its back on its European allies and stretching itself thin militarily with no outside help. The other thing this does is make Putin and the other mobster oligarchs boatloads of money as crude oil prices spike and the Russian economy soars.
It’s almost as if escalation is the goal.
This. Wtf are y’all thinking that Trump has some big-picture strategy he’s following. He’s a useful idiot that can be easily manipulated so long as you are the last person to talk to him (and aren’t named Obama).
More de-escalation bombs. I know Trump’s administration has lied about everything for three years but I think they might have outdone themselves here with this de-escalation business.
Also, Iran was helping Iraq fight Isis. Because there are a lot of sides in the Middle East and most Americans would find it very confusing.
You’re right about Havana. You’re not right about Tehran.
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https://mobile.twitter.com/JuddLegum/status/1213273664780750849
https://mobile.twitter.com/JuddLegum/status/1213274182571765760
https://mobile.twitter.com/rcallimachi/status/1213421769777909761
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https://mobile.twitter.com/rcallimachi/status/1213423621349224448
https://mobile.twitter.com/rcallimachi/status/1213424489679196161
I’m sure that operation he was advocating for won’t get approved now that we’ve shown them how big our penis is 