Now, and unfortunately probably not without good reason, Erdogan suspects that the Obama Administration may have had a hand in the plot. Turkey is a member of NATO and has been a willing partner (until recently) in all of Obama's intrigues in the Middle East and North Africa. But relations soured last month when the treacherous Obama began supporting anti-Erdogan Kurdish forces who are operating in neighboring Syria and Iraq.
Erdogan is not only angry with Obama's duplicity, but also with the fact that the US has given asylum to a radical cleric whom Erdogan blames for having instigated the coup. To make matters worse, there is mounting evidence that the CIA knew about the coup attempt and failed to warn the Turkish government. Today, Erdogan's party news outlet accused US general John Campbell of being involved in the coup. During the last week, Turkish authorities arrested their military leaders at the jointly-run Air Force base at Incirlik.
Why is any of this important? Well, while the Pentagon was busy eradicating the Culture of Masculinity from the military; integrating homosexuals, transgenders, and pushing women into combat roles, nobody bothered to remember that the Incirlik Air Force Base has 90 medium-range ballistic missiles equipped with atomic warheads deployed there.
Atomic weapon deployment in Turkey is not new, President Kennedy installed the first ones there in 1962 to counter the Soviet Union. But, the USSR fell in 1991. Clinton and Bush left them there---allegedly to counter Iran---but in 2011 things changed radically in the region. Understand that Turkey borders Syria and Iraq. Up until recently, Al-Qaeda controlled a part of Syria 100 miles away from these missiles and ISIS was operating not much further away. These terrorist groups, along with the anti-Erdogan Kurds, cross into Turkish territory fairly regularly.
And it never occurred to anybody in our LGBTQ-friendly Pentagon that keeping 90 advanced atomic missiles within roughly the same distance from Al-Qaeda and ISIS armies as it is from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara posed any kind of national security threat. Nor did anybody bother to consider that Turkey has sustained 26 terrorist attacks since 2010. Nor did anybody imagine that the potential for a military coup was present in Turkey; nor that Erdogan's obvious mental instability and close ties to Radical Islamist groups might have been a potential problem.
For the last few years, the Beltway and Wall Street have been beating the tocsins over North Korean and Iranian nuclear weapons programs---which are about as advanced as our program was in 1943. And now, their own incompetence may well have put 90 modern nuclear warheads into the hands of a paranoid Moslem Brotherhood madman who's publically stated his desire to restore the Ottoman Empire. And so far, hardly a peep out of the Corporate Media.
Knee-jerk pro-Pentagon Ameroboobs who blindly salute our brave men and women in uniform imagine that anyone who puts on a military costume automatically becomes a national hero. Unfortunately, when it comes to National Defense, quality does matter. Otherwise, things like this happen: we get Marines crying and bowing to foreign armies and atom-bombs left lying around for Jihadists to expropriate.
Not that this will actually matter to most Americans; after all, none of these rockets have the range to hit the US mainland, so why worry? There's the Hilary-Bernie Show in Philadelphia and LeBron James' new comedy series debuting Monday. We in the Prozac Nation have our priorities.
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