Pearls of expression.

The Turkish military are mostly in the countryside east of the Idlib city and in a town called Atarib. The real fighting on the ground in Idlib is not conducted by Turkish soldiers – but over 80% by the militia nebulae of jihadis and proto-jihadis that the West loves to describe as “rebels”; Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS, aka al-Qaeda in Syria), the Turkistan Islamic Party and other smaller outfits.

Ankara’s spin is that those “rebel” units will be dissolved once there is a political settlement. But that is nonsense. The Turkish government expects people to believe that one day these tens of thousands of “rebels” are weaponized, and the next they will drop everything, go back home and open a kebab stall.^[1]

That would be "rebels" whom the U.S. has energetically supported, protected, and coddled in its mad – truly mad – exercise in yet another effort at regime change in the sovereign nation of Syria. The Syria that happens to be a secular Arab nation that is PRECISELY the kind of polity that we would want to see operating in EVERY nation that presently suffers under the yoke of Islamic obscurantism.

The hypocrisy of the State Department is gastronomical. We are, it is said, embarked upon a noble crusade to rid the globe of "terrorism" but, in the up-to-date, state-of-the-art iteration of that endeavor, we are joined at the hip with the scum of the earth. Head choppers, POW incinerators, sex traffickers, hostage takers, indiscriminate killers of civilians, liars, thieves, tyrants, and organ traffickers all. Completely without table manners.

As with America's resolute, intentional, dedicated, and motivated support for and defense of AntiFa and its street thuggery and attacks on law-abiding citizens, the King's Peace, and basic freedoms, we have marked out for ourselves a role as pariah in the eyes of all decent people.

When you hear the U.S. government talk about common decency, international law, basic freedoms, and "our democracy" best keep one hand on your bullet launcher of choice and one eye on your stash of dehydrated dihydrogen monoxide.

Notes
^[1] "Escobar: Putin Keen To Cool Turkish Hawk Down." By Pepe Escobar, ZeroHedge, 2/25/20 (emphasis removed).