↓ Archives ↓

Posts Tagged → Kurdistan

Time to create Kurdistan out of Iraq

Now that a slim majority of the Iraqi parliament has voted to demand the full exit of American everything from Iraq, it is time for America, the liberator and vanquisher of Iraq, to decide what to do next.

Note that Iraq is roughly 60% Shia Muslim, who identify closely with Shia-majority Iran. That 60% of Iraq’s population lives in a relatively small region adjoining Iran, and despite holding such a small geographical area, about 15% of Iraq’s surface area, the population dominates the entire country.

One of the enormous mistakes made by the Bush administration when invading Iraq were these assumptions: 1) Iraqis will welcome Americans as liberators the same way Europeans welcomed American GIs in World War II; 2) Iraqis will be forever grateful for America’s liberation of Iraq, and they will therefore become a key ally in the region; 3) Iraq was, is, and will be fertile ground for planting western-style democracy, thereby creating some form of democratic government that will naturally cooperate with America and other Western nations.

These assumptions were rightly questioned at the time of the Iraq invasion, and they were further questioned during the occupation and subjugation of the native jihadis there. In recent years a kind of quiet war of careful positioning has followed, and so the newest assumption was that America had been successful in all ways, and had brought lasting peace to Iraq. And so, the thinking has gone, America can just pull up stakes and move everyone back home.

Not so fast.

Being anti-war is understandable if it applies to unjust wars, unwarranted wars, stupid wars, wasteful wars, and artificially inhibited wars, all of which applied up front to the American invasion of Iraq and then the occupation. Perhaps the most dispiriting aspect of the Iraq occupation was the ridiculous “rules of engagement,” created by Bush and further tightened by Obama, whereby our own troops pretty much had to bleed before they were allowed to return fire against aggressors. These insanely restrictive rules of engagement inhibited American forces from doing their job effectively, quickly, and safely. These rules led to years of IEDs and snipers killing and badly wounding American military personnel who were in Iraq to bring peace and prosperity to Iraqis, and to an anti-warrior culture at the Pentagon back home, whereby devoted fighters like Navy SEAL operations chief Edward “Eddie” Gallagher were often held to impossibly impractical standards for conduct on the field of battle against merciless enemies. And then made an example of by desk jockeys and armchair generals.

Almost all of those IED and sniper attacks on American forces could have been prevented by having either no rules of engagement, or rules of engagement that greatly and quite naturally favored the interests of our forces over vague concerns about perceptions and lingering “feelings” of Iraqis.

However, the rules of engagement stayed on and what was done was done; now twenty years later, America has spent trillions of taxpayer dollars and tanker trucks of American blood to bring peace and prosperity to yet another group of Middle East/Near East/ Muslim people who really don’t value peace and prosperity, nor democracy, either. None of these things that Americans and Europeans value are valued by Muslims, plain and simple. This is proven by the lack of peace, the lack of prosperity, and the lack of democracy or the rule of law in every..single…Muslim country.

So now that the vanquished are demanding that the conqueror leave Iraq, what should America do?

Our main options are to stay and fight all over again, or to appease the Iraqi government, which is now largely a Shia proxy of Iran’s theocracy, or to turn and leave.

Staying and fighting is unappealing, because we did that already, at great cost. The “no blood for oil” cries of the initial invasion were prophetic, as America stupidly declined to take any payment of any sort for our efforts. Not even in abundant Iraqi oil, which could have been easily and fairly shipped home to offset our huge investment in Iraq’s freedom and stability.

Appeasing the Shia-led Iraqi government is also unappealing and impractical, as appeasement never works, it just delays the inevitable conflict while our enemy prepares overtime for violent conflict. Thus prolonging the inevitable.

Finally, America can turn and leave, pulling up stakes and bidding farewell to Iraq with a “pox on your house” tossed over our shoulder as we send everyone home. This option has the greatest emotional appeal, and for good reason: Those who love and cherish American military personnel are loathe to see them sacrificed once again or any longer in the pursuit of vague, poorly defined, or improbable geopolitical goals. And the oil-less Iraq war and occupation was nothing if not poorly defined with vague, improbable goals at huge cost. But leaving cold turkey is a terrible option, because it will mean America invested trillions of dollars and thousands of wonderful young men for nothing. Not even for oil, and yet we will be in a worse position than we were when we first invaded.

A fourth option exists, and will take some creativity to implement. But it is doable, and is the best of all our options, because it allows America to meet all of its geopolitical and strategic goals at minimal cost to our servicemen and taxpayers.

This fourth option is to subdivide Iraq into new states, based on ethnicity and or religious makeup. Similar to how Pakistan was created out of India in 1948.

We will support those new states that share our interests, and we will harass and undermine those states that ally themselves with our sworn enemies, like Iran (and yes, theocratic Iran has been America’s sworn enemy long before Israel had a dog in that fight). Thus, breaking up Iraq into Sunni, Shia, and Kurdish states will allow us to more easily identify and help our friends, and more easily isolate and fight our enemies. It will take the vast majority of Iraq’s Shia Muslims and keep them in the smallest geographical area of Iraq where they already live. It will also enable America to finally begin to take payment from the vast oil fields that are mostly surrounded by pro-America Kurds. Most of Iraq’s geography is already divided up along ethnic and sectarian lines, so the new state lines on the map can be pretty easily drawn to match.

By creating the modern Kurdistan, America will implement several goals. First, we will be placing most of the existing oil fields in the hands of a people who have been and who still are naturally inclined to ally with America. America will benefit from the oil not going to Iran, and we can always set up a long-overdue financial debt repayment program with the Kurds, in oil or in oil receipts.

Second, we will be undermining two of the most dangerous states in the region, Iran and Turkey, both of whom have openly demonstrated clear goals of regional domination at any cost and with any method. Recall that Turkey has been quietly allied with ISIS, and also has been openly in pursuit of genocide against the Kurds while lusting after their oil fields. Iran’s ideological threat needs no explanation, as they openly wish to explode many nuclear bombs across America, and for years they have been quietly exploiting our open southern border in preparation to do just this.

In the spirit of the times, I propose the creation of Shiastan (capital city of Najaf), Sunnistan (capital city of Baghdad), and Kurdistan (capital city of Kirkuk) in response to Iraq’s declaration of war against America.

Source: Ohio State University Department of History, which in turns attributes the US government

 

 

Israel’s Independence Day, Holocaust Remembrance Day, So Where are We Today?

Israel Independence Day and Holocaust Remembrance Day are here.

Obviously these two milestones are related in the sense that out of the ashes of the European genocide against Europe’s Jewish minority (not to be confused with the similar and nearly simultaneous Muslim Arab ethnic cleansing of the Jewish minority once living in the Middle East, now presently applied to Christians there) arose the modern state of Israel on the soil of the ancient state of Israel.

Here in America most Jewish communities spend a full 24-hour period on Holocaust Remembrance Day reading the names of Nazi victims. By reading their names, they are in some small but meaningful way not forgotten. And by remembering them as people, larger society is supposed to remember what happened so that people, and government, do the necessary things so genocide does not happen again.

This is all sound logic to me, although it is questionable whether it works, or not.

Why am I sounding a bit skeptical here? Because the evidence isn’t supportive that this approach works, in the sense that it does not inspire humans around the globe to treat one another better, much less treat Jews any better. The evidence in front of us demonstrates that Holocaust Remembrance Day, with all its universalist activities, primarily appeals to Jews, their friends, and liberal-minded news reporters. Meanwhile, plenty of genocide is going on ever since, namely in Rwanda, Bosnia, Kurdistan, and now once again in the Middle East, where Muslim Arabs are sadistically rampaging among the religious and ethnic minorities among them.

And Israel has been under sustained and increasing attempted genocide from the day it was founded in 1948. Every libel, slander, lie and contrivance has been drummed up to delegitimize Israel and to justify the ceaseless murders of unarmed Jews within and outside Israel. Boycotts, divestment from Israeli companies, and sanctions against Israeli academic institutions and the government of Israel are proof that Israel, and Jews, receive an incredibly harsh and unjustified treatment from a world that really ought to know better.

Making things even worse, and totally odd to me and to most people I know, is the overwhelmingly liberal mindset American Jews maintain. Their liberal political views, on a policy-by-policy basis, are completely contrary to the Torah (the Bible) to which their ancestors swore loyalty and which created Western Civilization.

Abortion-on-demand and as a form of birth control, faith in big government, rejection of religion’s role in good government, gun control, you name it, every single one of the politically correct issues that liberal Jews believe in are at odds with their own founding document, the Bible.

One would logically conclude that a group of people who had recently undergone such incredibly painful and devastating attacks, round-ups, shot on sight, murder in the street, painful medical experiments, gassing, bodies burnt to hide the atrocity, and so on, you would think that the survivors and heirs would adopt a more self-preserving view. That is the conclusion that their friends have arrived at and said is needed many times, and asked why Jews don’t, for many years.

You know, why do most Jews vote for people and policies that are against their own interests? Like for Obama, or against gun rights?

That American Jews are overwhelmingly supportive of intense gun regulation is without question. Public surveys show it. Even more to the point are the lists of leaders on gun regulation; nearly all of them are Jews – Past and present US Senators Feinstein, Schumer, Metzenbaum, Lautenberg, Boxer – joined by an endless list of Jewish members of Congress, and not to mention the actual leaders of gun regulation, Josh Sugarmann, Shira Goodman, to name but a few, and not to mention the Jewish donors to anti-gun rights groups, like Bloomberg and Hechinger, to name but a few.

More locally, two years ago I sat in on a meeting between my then-newly elected state senator Democrat Rob Teplitz and a group of citizens gathered at a local Harrisburg synagogue. As the morning Boy Scout function there was the drawing attraction, and not everyone there was Jewish, there was one group of men who had just completed their prayers and who had then gathered to join in the following meeting with Senator Teplitz. Either the first or second question of the event came from a man in that group, who asked Senator Teplitz when he was going to become an ardent and active advocate for serious gun regulation. Heads nodded in agreement around the table, and Teplitz responded that he would be neither “too pro gun nor too anti gun.”

Further confusing many Americans is how vociferously anti-Israel so many American Jews have become. Whether by strongly supporting an obviously anti-Israel Obama or by actively participating in anti-Israel actions and activities, lots of American Jews clearly are at war with the one nation designed to protect them should the very things they are remembering now begin to happen once again.

Why would a tiny group of people, who have experienced such awful tragedies and injustices over and over again, seek to both disarm themselves and their fellow citizens in favor of big government, which has never anywhere been a friend to Jews or liberty, and also disarm and undermine the one country capable of protecting Jews should the you-know-what hit the fan?

Folks, I know you are moved by recalling victims and inured to maintaining victimhood. It is practically the Jewish identity to the point where “Holocaust worship” has been decried by the more religiously observant Jews; you know, the Bible believers.

If you really want to remember the European Holocaust and say “Never Again!” in a way that means something, then be able to defend yourself. Get a 12-gauge pump shotgun, learn to use it with buckshot and store it safely, and support a strong Israel capable of easily defending itself against all attackers. That’s it.

Otherwise, you just make people ask “Do Jews today really remember what happened, and do they really understand how important Israel is to them?”

In other words, people just must ask “are Jews really so smart?”

Long live Kurdistan!

The Kurds are an old ethnic and linguistic group in the Middle East, and they are the largest ethnic group in the region to not have had a homeland in the modern era.

The Kurdish homeland was broken up in the 1920s by the winners of World War I, and the various pieces were rudely tossed into the aggregated melting pots that became Syria, Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Lebanon, and Israel.

But as Iraq and Syria have disintegrated, the Kurds there have naturally coalesced into their historic homeland, bolstering their communities.  And they are motivated, powerful warriors, whose culture is highly secularized and pro-West.

The result is that Kurdistan exists in all but name, and this week the Kurds took formal control of Mosul, a huge and symbolic city formerly in Iraq.  Congratulations, Kurds!

What is so intriguing is the Kurds have received zero support from the political Left, who are in love with the murderous culture of hate and evil developed by the so-called “Palestinians,” an ad-hoc ethnically and linguistically diverse group of people mostly emanating from the regional Bedouin.

More or less the Arabs in and around Israel have been turned into international heroes for murdering children and opposing the only indigenous ethnic group there – the Jews.  Never was there a “Palestine,” never was there a “Palestinian people,” and the egregious lying necessary to invent this anti-Israel movement prompted Newt Gingrich to call these Arabs “the invented people” in 2012.

In fact, the so-called “Palestinians” are the best representatives of Islamic imperialism and Arab colonialism, two forces on a collision course with America.

So once again, the Left (the American Friends Service Committee being the worst; how is it that the Quakers of all religious groups became so radicalized that they promote murder and mayhem?) is supporting the bad guys, the violent evil people, the inhuman butchers, and again doing nothing to support the good guys, the Kurds, or the Tibetans for that matter.  When Kurdistan is finally recognized as the free, stand-alone nation it is, it will be a big step forward for the good guys.

Long Live Kurdistan.