Turkish warships will escort aid vessels to Gaza

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

A bunch of Iranian backed religious zealot nutters don't make for an organized fighting force. Shooting rockets from schools and firing AK's up in the air is one thing, fighting against an organized military force backed up with air power is another ball game all together.

If I was an Arab I wouldn't be so much worried about Israel as I would be about living a third world existence in a third world country.

Hezbollah was much more extensively equipped than simply "firing AKs up in the air" - the report I cited from the U.S. Army Combined Arms Center Combat Studies Institute goes into this in explicit detail.

The fact is, conventional warfare is sooo last week. It has become increasingly ineffective in fighting homegrown guerrilla resistance groups, a fact that has been confirmed by Gen. David Petraes himself (the new Director of the CIA.)

The War Nerd sums it up:

I'll give you the bad news first: no 21st century war is "purely military." The days when countries duked it out on the battlefield are over for the foreseeable future. What we have now is something very strange. It goes by a lot of names, from "terrorism" to "asymmetrical warfare" to "fourth-generation warfare," depending on whether you're for it, against it, or just trying to sound cool. But whatever you call it, the key factor is that it never involves WW-II style conventional war between nation-states.

...

...there's a much cheaper, easier way to make war. This way doesn't require any of the building blocks of conventional war: you don't need industry, aircraft, armor or massive armies. In fact, this kind of war can be played by any group of wackos that can round up a dozen or so bushwhackers. All you need is small arms and a grudge -- and those are the only two commodities most of the world has a surplus of.

It's a heartbreaker for you hardware freaks, this idea that it just doesn't matter whether our tanks are better than their tanks (or planes or artillery or whatever). But it's time you grew up, guys: haven't you kind of noticed that in most wars, the other side doesn't even use tanks, or planes, or artillery (except mortars, which are so portable they can be considered small arms)? You guys are stuck in the dream about a classic NATO/Warsaw Pact Sumo match in Central Europe, and you just don't want to think about all these brush wars. Well, time to wake up.

...

All you need for an effective insurgency is a few hundred urban guerrillas (with a much bigger base of civilian supporters). So they're never going to run out of young men. And no overwhelming force short of neutron bombs will solve the problem. Which brings us to another very interesting question, the future of genocide and nuclear weapons. But as long as we're wimping around with this "no nukes" rule, there just ain't no kind of overwhelming force that can convince every testosterone-poisoned Sunni kid to join the Pepsi Generation. Consult your own experience, remember what young males are like! Remember high school PE! How hard would it have been to get those guys, Beavis and Butthead times 80, to plant a bomb or shoot a sentry if they thought they could get away with it, or better yet, be seen as heroes by their fellow countrymen? Teenage boys are the cannon fodder of any guerrilla war, and teenage boys are nothing but weasels who stand on their hind feet sometimes.

...

Just remember, everything they told you is wrong. Here's a quick list of the main points. Go and meditate upon them. Memorize them while I whack you with this stick like a good Zen teacher should.

1. Most wars are asymmetrical / irregular.

2. In these wars, the guerrillas / irregulars / insurgents do NOT aim for military victory.

3. You can NOT defeat these groups by killing lots of their members. In fact, they want you to do that.

4. Hi-tech weaponry is mostly useless in these wars.

5. "Hearts and Minds," meaning propaganda and morale, are more important than military superiority.

6. Most people are not rational, they are TRIBAL: "my gang yay, your gang boo!" It really is that simple. The rest is cosmetics.

- Gary Brecher, The War Nerd (2008)

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

Naïveté in extremis.

Turkey is in this for Turkey, not for some noble cause. I never said Erdogan was clueless, but I suspect his motives differ a great deal from your idea of them.

You apparently don't understand my take at all, although I have already posted several times that Turkey wants to re-assert its historical role as a dominant political power and leader in the region - and a big part of that is standing up to Israel's unilateral actions. Of course this is for Turkey's benefit. (Same thing going on in Egypt.)

Before you cream your pants at the thought of Israel's destruction by the unlikely alliance of the Turkish Navy, Egyptian Army, Hezbollah and Hamas, let me remind you that it wouldn't be the first time Israel faced overwhelming odds against the combined military might of its neighbors and won.

Read what I write more carefully, instead of listening to the figments of your own paranoia.

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

As for "no longer kept on a leash by a US-bribed dictator", have we cut our foreign aid to Egypt? No? Then they are still on a leash.

That's because there have not been elections in Egypt yet, the region is in flux and nothing has been sorted out yet. You can bet that there will be negotiations and discussions of the U.S. foreign aid. However, the "leash" has obviously been loosened, as the point man is in the docks.

Things will get even more interesting next week, as Erdogan visits Egypt and hammers out a military cooperation agreement. The future is an unknown; a lot of things could happen, and I have not offered any predictions (other than demographics.)

[Dan and Judy 614]

Alaska's a third world country compared to the rest of the US

Yeah but

You can't stare down Putin from your front porch in New York

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

Lieberman is also planning to set meetings with the heads of Kurdish rebel group PKK in Europe in order to “cooperate with them and boost them in every possible area.” In these meetings, the Kurds may ask Israel for military aid in the form of training and arms supplies, a move that would constitute a major anti-Turkish position should it materialize.

However, the violent clashes between Turkey and the Kurds only constitute one reason prompting accusations that Ankara is violating human rights. Hence, another means in Lieberman’s “toolbox” vis-à-vis Erdogan is a diplomatic campaign where Israeli missions worldwide will be instructed to join the fight and report illegal Turkish moves against minorities.

The tough response formulated by Lieberman stems, among other things, from the foreign minister’s desire to make it clear to Erdogan that his anti-Israeli moves are not a “one-way street.”

Seems the Israeli government can now add the PKK to the growing list of folks who are demanding an apology from Israel:

The leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party has demanded that Israel apologize for its part in the capture of the PKK’s imprisoned leader Abdullah Öcalan in 1999 after a report that Israel was planning to use the PKK against Turkey, the Turkish newspaper Today’s Zaman reported on Monday.

...

According to a report in Yedioth Ahronoth, Lieberman assembled a team in charge of retaliating against Turkey. The team reportedly recommended to Lieberman that Israel should cooperate with the terrorist organization PKK and even consider supplying it with weapons.

...

PKK leader Murat Karayılan told the pro-PKK Firat news agency on Monday that his group is a “principled organization” and that it is not a movement that “could be used against any state”, the Turkish newspaper reported.

The PKK leader said that if Israel wishes to solidify relations with the group, they will first need to apologize to the Kurdish people and the PKK for its part in an international effort that led to the capture of the PKK’s leader.

The PKK is listed as a terrorist organization in many countries, including in the United States, Israel’s ally.

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/after-turkey-pkk-now-also-demanding-apology-from-israel-1.384197

[Craneman 2]

Before you cream your pants at the thought of Israel's destruction by the unlikely alliance of the Turkish Navy, Egyptian Army, Hezbollah and Hamas, let me remind you that it wouldn't be the first time Israel faced overwhelming odds against the combined military might of its neighbors and won.

If Isreal attacked Turkey from behind, Do you think Grease would help ?????????

[Ban Hammer 13,352]

If Isreal attacked Turkey from behind, Do you think Grease would help ?????????

it could bore them to surrender.

[Craneman 2]

it could bore them to surrender.

Love It

[Dan and Judy 614]

There is a squirrel staring in my window. I'm getting a little uncomfortable. I think I'll put on some clothes