Yes, Erdogan first said he wouldn't meet with Pence but then changed his mind, he will meet Pence a day after he shows up but it won't matter, because the US under President Wimpy Pussy doesn't matter anymore:
Cascading Humiliations
Jay Nordlinger reminds us that the late Charles Kraithammer once wrote that "decline is a choice."
And we are seeing the consequences of that choice playing out in real time:
A headline from the Associated Press reads, “Russia moves to fill void left by US in northern Syria.” (To read the article, go here.)The chief foreign-affairs correspondent of the Wall Street Journal, Yaroslav Trofimov, retweeted a Russian video. He commented, “Russians have fun exploring the hastily abandoned American military base in Syria.” And he quoted a Russian on that base — the man who made the video: “Yesterday it was them and today it is us here. Let’s see how they lived and what they ate.”
The humiliations just keep coming: This is just brutal.
LONDON — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said he will refuse to meet with Vice President Mike Pence, who is due to travel to Turkey to argue for a ceasefire in the ongoing Syria conflict.
"I'm not going to talk to them. They will be talking to their counterparts. When Trump comes here, I'll be talking," he said in comments made to Sky News, referring to the U.S. delegation.
The vice president’s office announced Tuesday that Pence would lead a U.S. delegation including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, national security advisor Robert O’Brien and the special representative for Syria, James Jeffrey, to Turkey on Wednesday. The aim of the trip was to persuade Erdogan to stop his offensive into the region.
On Tuesday, Erdogan vowed that he would not declare a ceasefire in northeast Syria.
“They say ‘declare a ceasefire’. We will never declare a ceasefire,” Erdogan told reporters after a visit to Azerbaijan.
Update: Erdogan apparently has changed his mind about meeting Pence... but his overall attitude remains unchanged.
Exit take: this is what irrelevance feels like. This is what weakness looks like. So much #winning.
bulwark |
