Bill RoggioVerified account

3) Again, the support of YPG/PKK was bound to fail at some point. Why weren't US policymakers prepared for the inevitable? Either the Turks were going to come in or the Syrian gov't would regain control of NE Syria. The YPG/PKK was not a viable option.https://twitter.com/billroggio/status/1183410072510185472…

2) US "strategy" in Syria since 2014 (if you can call it that) has been muddled. Was it to deny Assad control of NE Syria? Prop up the YPG/PKK? Prevent ISIS from returning? All three or some combination of the above?

1) This raises interesting questions: If the US goal is to prevent the Islamic State from regaining territory, isn't the Syrian government (of which I am no fan), a viable option?https://twitter.com/LizSly/status/1184068669007126528…

At the end of Sept. the Afghan & US military took out Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent's command node in Helmand during a raid in Taliban-controlled Musa Qala. AQIS leader Asim Umar, his courier to Zawahiri, & others were killed, along with numerous Taliban sheltering them.

Also, the @wsj report uncritically repeated the "Taliban would renounce all ties to al Qaeda" canard. There is no evidence of this. In fact, there is evidence the Taliban-al Qaeda ties could not be any stronger.

The @wsj report contains several factual errors. The Taliban never agreed to a cease fire with the Afghan government during 2018 Eid. The Taliban announced a unilateral 3 day ceasefire.

12) Context to how we got here is key. There is little context in today's news reports on this topic. Most of it is vapid Trump-bashing. The YPG is treated as innocent Kurds when it is in fact the PKK. This problem was years in the making and did not appear out of the ether.

11) Instead, the US military and policy makers that continued to back the YPG/PKK kept kicking this can of problems down the road, without realizing the plug could be pulled at any moment. It was no secret Trump wanted to leave Syria. Why was no effort made to to mitigate this?

10 The @realDonaldTrump admin is not absolved. It has owned this problem for almost 3 years. Like the Obama admin, it made no effort to reform the YPG, make it drop its radical Marxist ideology, and convince the Turkish gov't that it was important it to fight ISIS.

9) So the Obama admin outsourced the war & chose terrible partners (PKK in Syria, PMF in Iraq). The US chose terror groups to fight terror groups (Iraq is a bit more complicated as the Iraqi military was part of fight, but Iraqi govt backed PMF & even made it a legitimate unit).

8) What is happening in Syria and Iraq today did not happen in a vacuum. These problems stem from a decade of bad foreign policy decisions. After withdrawing from Iraq as the Syrian civil war raged, the Obama admin wanted to outsource the war against ISIS...

7) When the US, under the Obama admin, pulled support from the Iraqi Kurds (the real good Kurds), as the PMF rolled over them in Kirkuk and elsewhere, where was the media and "experts" outrage. @brett_mcgurk, who has been vocal about the current betrayal. was silent on that.

6) Ironically, @brett_mcgurk also whitewashed the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces, the Iranian backed Shia terror groups, as it battled ISIS inside Iraq. The PMF is now killing Iraqis who are protesting. We shouldn't be shocked about what is happening there.

5) Let me be perfectly clear: I'm no fan of Erdogan. He has and continues to support terrorist groups, and is using HTS to battle the PKK right now. But if Erdogan was not president and the Turkish military was in power, it likely would doing exactly what he is doing.

4) The US, under the advice and direction of @brett_mcgurk, chose the "YPG" (PKK) as its ally to fight the Islamic State. There was no consideration of Turkey's very real national security interests and concerns.

3) This is disgraceful. The PKK is a specially designated terrorist organization. The PKK is responsible for killing tens of thousands of Turks during a bloody civil war.

2) If you insist on pretending the YPG is not the PKK, here are photos of US Special Forces at a "YPG" funeral in 2017. Note the PKK and Oculan flags flying at the funeral, with US armored vehicles flying Old Glory in the background.https://twitter.com/Ozkok_A/status/858372661772201984…

1) @realDonaldTrump's withdrawal from Syria is a big foreign policy mistake. The US is selling out yet another ally. But this was a mistake that predated Trump. US chose a poor ally. YPG is not the "poor Kurds" that the media makes it out to be. This is the PKK's Syrian branch.

Abdul Rashid Baluch, a Taliban leader and drug dealer whos served as an "liaison officer" to al Qaeda, was among 11 Taliban leaders freed by the Afghan government in exchange for 3 Indian engineers.https://twitter.com/LongWarJournal/status/1181348716801908736…

Note that the US military and al Qaeda have not officially confirmed Asim Umar's death. The Taliban is denying it, but it also denied al Qaeda camps were raided in Shorabak in 2015...https://twitter.com/LongWarJournal/status/1181636613287358464…

The last time the US military dropped as many bombs (948) in Afghanistan as it did last month was in Oct. 2010 (1,043). US also had over 100,000 troops in 2010 & Taliban wasn't defeated. Today the US has around 14,000 troops in country. You do the math. https://taskandpurpose.com/most-bombs-afghanistan-droppedhttps://taskandpurpose …