: re: New U.S.-Backed Alliance to Counter ISIS in Syria Falters

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Tue, Nov 3, 2015 at 1:52 PM
Subject: re: New U.S.-Backed Alliance to Counter ISIS in Syria Falters
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

   It is perhaps fitting that " the Syrian Democratic Forces...[which] exists in name only" should serve a country that exists in name only. Syria's borders were drawn in 1916 by Mark Sykes and Francois George PIcot without regard to ethnic or cultural cohesion, before the Ottoman Empire was even defeated. Since then, it has been held together by repressive governments, only to fly apart like Yugoslavia when the fist relaxed. The U.S. would do better to work for UN charter's guarantee of a people's self-determination than to futilely tape up the territory of a paper state whose own residents don't acknowledge.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/03/world/middleeast/new-us-backed-alliance-in-syria-exists-in-name-only.html?ref=world