Thread by @sfrantzman

Powerful statement, under the former US administration these genocidal groups were unleashed by Ankara against the peaceful people of Syria to commit war crimes. It could have been prevented, but it appears increasingly Ankara had inroads in DC and some wanted to ally with these

https://twitter.com/_____mjb/status/1420393043358896130

It's extraordinary how close some in key positions in the US came to Ankara's extremists between 2016 and 2020, particularly in 2018-2019...there were those who quietly wanted to work with these groups, who saw them as the future of Syria.

Then these horrid people who wanted these groups to harm Qamishli, Kobani, Derek, Hasakah and basically all of Syria, after destroying Afrin, those "Turkey first" folk...got the boot and left the US admin and went to work for think tanks and other places...

It's awful, but some people even wanted to work with HTS...always imagining these horrible far-right fascist, extremist genocidal groups can be "moderated" or "used against Iran"...but they are only "used" against the poor and the minorities. They never "fight Iran"...

The great myth of some "foreign policy" commentators has been this "Sunni vs. Shia" myth whereby the West, like the US, can "take sides" and work with one extremist group against another...it's bizarre...people don't get it, the extremists can't be "used" against Hezbollah, Iran

There is no policy whereby the extremists can be "used"...first of all because they aren't stupid, they use the US...the US never get anything out of it...the poor and minorities are harmed...and in many cases it is other extremists who win.

In every instance where a policy included the quiet belief that extremist groups can be "used" and "well, they are anti-Iran so that's good" is the logic...that belief flops on the rocks because the "anti-Iran" extremists never fight Iran, they fight random poor people

Never accept a logic by an outsider who proposes that some local group that is extreme can be "used" to achieve some other objective. It never works, never has worked and never will work.