The Kurds get the Shaft….Again
Dr. Steven LaTulippe for Westernthinker.com
While imbibing in my daily dose of geopolitical analysis on the Stratfor website (an amazing compilation of foreign policy and global economic information/analysis that no thinking person should do without), I stumbled upon a rather unpleasant article which noted a few occurrences that I believe are important and merit comment.
In a nutshell, the current US administration is cooking a deal with the Turks to share in the burdens of the occupation of Iraq.
Given the nasty business that this occupation entails, one might reasonably wonder: What is in it for the Turks? Why should they get bloodied patrolling a nation whose conquest by the US they opposed?
Furthermore, the Turks might seem to be the last nation we should recruit for this particular duty. The Arabs have a deep-seated animosity towards the Turks which was spawned from several centuries of Ottoman occupation of Arab lands (including Iraq). In addition, the Turks have been actively fighting a vicious war with the Turkish Kurds for decades….and Northern Iraq is full of their Iraqi Kurdish brethren.
Wouldn’t this be like sending the Nation of Islam to patrol a Jewish neighborhood?
Who thought up this crazy idea?
When we entered Iraq, the Kurds were the only one of the three major population groups to actively aid us in our misbegotten adventure. They provided troops and scouts who participated in actual combat operations against Saddam’s army. The Sunni’s, who ruled Iraq and claimed Saddam as one of their own, were obviously opposed to the invasion and have actively resisted every step of the way. The Shiites, who have close relations with their co-religionists in Iran, were also opposed to the invasion. They have resisted, but in a more muted fashion than the Sunnis.
And it is clear that allowing the Turks to occupy large swaths of Iraq will have several negative consequences for the Kurdish people.
First, it will bring parts of Iraq under occupation by the Turks, whom the Kurds consider to be their mortal enemies and oppressors.
Second, it will squash any hope that the Kurds may have had to establish an independent or even autonomous entity in northern Iraq (the Turks are likely to demand this as a precondition for their participation in Iraq’s occupation).
Third, it will likely result in Turkey seizing a portion of the oil wealth in Kurdish northern Iraq. This plundering of this valuable resource will also likely be a precondition for their participation. Every barrel taken by Turkey leaves one less barrel for the Kurds.
How is that for payback to the Kurds for their loyal wartime service?
What makes this backstabbing even worse is that this is the second time around for the Kurds. After the first Gulf War, President Bush (I) encouraged the people of Iraq to rebel against Saddam. He gave them the distinct impression that the USA would aid in their uprising. When they rose, America left them to the fates. Saddam--never one to use a velvet glove--slaughtered them.
The Kurds are a long-suffering people who have sad history of massacre and oppression by a variety of nations in that area. They also represent the largest ethnic group in the world without their own state. Twice they have done our bidding in the hopes of realizing their longstanding hopes of freedom and independence, and twice they have been sold down the river by an American government which was more concerned with its own corrupt political maneuvers than the well-being of these poor people.
But the bottom line is that the costs of Iraq occupation, in men and treasure, are drastically escalating. The US public is becoming frustrated with the daily body bags and the billions of dollars in extra costs to taxpayers. To make matters worse [for the administration], this is all happening with a presidential election looming.
The machinations of hegemony are not pretty. Morality and ethics are among the first casualties. Any nation which embarks on world domination had better accept that it will leave a trail of treachery which will blacken its name through the pages of history.
We should all pray for the day when America’s course is righted. And we should pray for the Kurdish victims…in the past, the present, and the not-so-distant future.
It’s a sorry state of affairs when our once-pristine Republic has degenerated into a conniving, two-timing behemoth. But such sins are the wages of Empire.
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