Battlecheese

A lot of people we were paying turned out to be less moderate than we had been telling people. Well. Turkey and Jordan did not permit it on their territory, for reasons which are fairly obvious. Pretty much everywhere else was fine though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Syrian_presidential_election#Refused

Ahem. Your criteria includes most of the ISIS fighters. Assad did pretty well in those refugee camps during the last election. Seems strange for people who were worried about reprisals to vote for him.

There are lots of reasons why the domestic political imperative in Turkey is to resolve the refugee and southern border situation urgently. I suspect they are tired of america stirring up a hornets nest on the border, and he told Trump he was coming to do it anyway. Trump has no leverage, no credible ability to stop Turkey, no legal right to be there in the first place, and doesn't want to be fighting with another NATO member anyway. He had to choose between a humiliating retreat, or getting soldiers entangled with a Turkish advance.

Right-wing nutjobs have been more and more popular all over the world. In hard times people gravitate towards the comfort of religion.

There is some really interesting variation on budget per soldier in that list.

Oh, so even by your numbers it's only 5 times harder then.

Well, without our support (including doing our best to convert Iraq into a failed state) ISIL would not have existed...

Well, that russian guy from a few years ago was tried in Russia for the crime.

Actually I think they will relax a bit. Washington is retreating to avoid NATO complications after being unable to prevent Turkey from third-partying a war. A colossal black eye for the world police.

The Ottoman Empire was losing wars and in a final collapse. It's a bad time to be perceived to be a group of "outsiders". Much like the later problems Jewish people had. Given this topic, most histories of this time note that Kurdish militias were enthusiastic participants in this.

I am pretty confidant that it would have been much less dramatic for the population of Syria without US involvement: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timber_Sycamore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American-led_intervention_in_the_Syrian_Civil_War#Support_for_Kurdish-led_ground_forces

Assuming, of course, that retirement is still a thing. Currently my office is supporting a charity for the unemployed elderly. A nice lady came along to talk about it to us, during which she put up a table showing how we will be swamped with oldies in a few years. Her final projection datapoint was for 2050 when she was expecting there to be 1 retired person for 2 working people. No. This will never happen. The system will fall apart long before we get there. Things will change.

There has never been such a thing. Ahem: https://www.longtermtrends.net/home-price-median-annual-income-ratio/ Only one of my grandparents didn't live past 90. It is likely most will be retired for years before they get in on this Transfer of Wealth.

Well yes. We effectively had two proxy armies fighting each other. Fantastic.

Pft. Engineers and their numerical approximations. Not the people to be denouncing other fields as "soft". This classist attitude is because there are so many clueless boomers who do not understand they lived during a golden time in history. It's wonderful you worked your way up. Fantastic. Don't talk shit about people who are doing it afterwards without cheap houses, decades of reliable employment and wage growth.