The U.S. is prepared to use military force to end a civil war in Syria if a political solution can’t be reached, U.S. A non-military resolution to Syria’s conflict “would be better,” but force could be used for “taking out” Islamic State if necessary, Biden said Saturday following meetings with Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Istanbul.
“We do know that it would be better if we could reach a political solution,” Biden said. “We are prepared if that’s not possible to have a military solution to this operation.”
The U.S. has been carrying out “precision strikes” on Islamic State in the Middle East based on intelligence, and last year President Barack Obama criticized Republicans who urged carpet bombing of the group’s strongholds.
A Biden official traveling with the vice president told reporters the comments represented no change in U.S. policy, according to a press pool report that didn’t name the official.
| "Someone get a statement out to the press while the nurse gets him sedated!" |
| Agree on what? Erdogan has a well-known opinion of the PKK, and a well-recognized tolerance for the ISIS... |
| Assuming that's what the Turks want, which they don't. |
| The Washington Post has a different view: |
...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire....
and the United States continued Saturday to disagree about the status of Syrian Kurdish forces who have become a key part of the U.S. strategy to defeat the Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling
Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
in Syria.
That means the Kurds are gonna take it in the national shortskis.
| ...on at least both sides of the Syria-Turkey border. Bombing runs in Syria, destroying the cities in order to save them in Turkey. Probably more bombing runs in Iraq, as well. |
But while saying ties with the United States were strong, Davutoglu repeatedly referred to the Syrian group -- called the People's Protection Units and known by its Arabic initials as the YPG -- as a terrorist organization on par with the Islamic State and as a component part of Turkey's own Kurdish Death Eaters, who have long used violence to try to carve out their own state inside the Turkish border.