Blowback: US-armed 'moderate rebels' slaughter Kurds in Syria

Pushback with Aaron Mate

Pushback with Aaron Maté

News

4.7 • 594 Ratings

🗓️ 25 October 2019

⏱️ 20 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Amid outrage over Turkey’s atrocities against Kurdish civilians northern Syria, Max Blumenthal discusses how some of the Syrian militias committing the crimes are composed of the same "moderate rebels" that the US, Turkey, and Gulf states armed, trained, and supported during the multi-year Syria proxy war. Guest: Max Blumenthal, Editor of The Grayzone and author of "The Management of Savagery." Support Pushback at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/aaronmate Pushback on Twitter: https://twitter.com/pushbackshow Aaron Maté on Twitter: https://twitter.com/aaronjmate Pushback on Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lu7MGQ Pushback on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/pushbackshow Pushback on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2mpwIQm Pushback on Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/s?fid=465855 Find transcripts and more at https://thegrayzone.com/pushback ||| The Grayzone |||||| The Grayzone ||| Find more reporting at https://thegrayzone.com Support our original journalism at Patreon: https://patreon.com/grayzone Twitter: https://twitter.com/grayzoneproject Facebook: https://facebook.com/thegrayzone Minds: https://minds.com/thegrayzone

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to pushback. I'm Erin Mate, joined by Max Blumenthal, editor of the Gray Zone, author of several books,
0:09.0	including his latest, The Management of Savagery. We are talking now about Syria, a lot of developments, Max, just in the past week.
0:16.6	You've just written a piece at the Gray Zone looking at one irony of all this, which is that, you know, for so many years, we were told about these moderate rebels that the U.S. was arming as part of its proxy war in Syria.
0:31.4	Your piece points out that a number of these militias linked to the Free Syrian Army, the same ones that we were supposed to cheer for before
0:40.3	and that the US armed, are now being used by Turkey
0:43.3	to commit atrocities against the Kurds.
0:46.3	I did write that and, you know,
0:51.3	I want to just first comment on the kind of the reaction to this whole unfolding,
0:58.9	which is that it may have shocked a lot of people and Trump may have gone about it in an abrupt way.
1:05.3	I don't exactly know what took place or what Trump's thinking was,
1:10.4	but it was very clear that the countries
1:13.9	involved in the Astana process, which is the real peace process surrounding Syria, Turkey,
1:20.5	Iran and Russia were prepared for this moment. And I believe that the YPG leadership, which was rebranded by a U.S. general as the Syrian Democratic forces, were prepared for it as well.
1:35.1	Basically, it was inevitable, especially after the Turkish invasion of Afrin, another area with a large Kurdish population where Kurds were threatened with ethnic
1:46.5	cleansing in northern Syria that took place last year, that the YPG, who are constantly referred
1:54.8	to as the Kurds, although Kurds live in many countries in that region, or actually Syrian Kurds, we're going to have to
2:04.2	strike a deal with the Syrian government that would guarantee their protection against Turkey
2:10.5	in exchange for their autonomy.
2:13.9	And that played out in very rapid fashion.
2:17.5	And the meltdown that we're seeing across the board, I mean, we saw Pat Robertson
2:21.9	meltdown about it.
2:23.0	And then you have all of like these like anarchists who fetishize Rojava freaking out about
	...

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