It’s been repeated we cannot pull US forces out of Iraq before we have established an Iraq military with which the Iraqis can defend themselves. Not a police force, not a constabulary or carabinieri, but a veritable army to defend Iraq against its neighbors. Unless we’re talking about Turkey.
It did sound surreal the first time they made the case, didn’t it? The US expends all that ordnance to destroy the Iraqi army, then we claim to need to build it up again. But Iraq has enemies besides just us, we’re told, so fair enough, we’ll defend them until they can do it themselves. But that doesn’t apply to Turkey.
Apparently, the US, and the Iraqi Puppet military role with respect to the Iraqi northern neighbor of Turkey, is to hold the region open to surgical strikes on select Iraqi malcontents. The Turkish incursions have the same elements of Israel’s excursions into Lebanon. They are facilitated by the US.
These extra-judicial posses, lynch mobs I suppose you could call them, are like the raids General Pershing used to conduct into Mexico in search of Poncho Villa. Complete violations of another nation’s autonomy. The US provides the equipment, the intelligence, often with advisors, and the diplomatic cover. When international outrage reaches critical mass, the US finally relents and expresses its concern that the offender show proper restraint. In Israel’s case, the US withheld its admonitions like an old man who’d lost his hearing aid. Watch if the same is not happening with Turkey.
Turkey’s beef with Iraq has to do with the longstanding effort on the part of the Kurdish minorities in Iraq, Iran and Turkey to call for an independent Kurdistan. Turkey does not want to lose its mountainous regions to the Kurds, and has suppressed its own Kurds by even criminal means. Turkey resists admitting responsibility for the Armenia Genocide lest comparisons be drawn to how it has been resolving its Kurdish problem.
Turkish General Haldun Solmazturk describes the latest Turkish incursion into Iraq on Voice of America as having dealt a blow to the PKK, the faction in the highlands of Iraq and Turkey which is fighting for Kurdish independence.
“Fatal would be too much to describe the potential effect,” he said. “But it would be a major blow. Because in any conflict you do not fight the people, you fight the minds and wills of the people. Such an operation will be a major blow on the will of the people.”
Like the Pentagoon describing the use of “tame” Muslim chaplains at Abu Ghraib…
..it “makes it easier to bend them to OUR Will”…
“a blow against the will of the people’ says it all.
I wouldn’t even have to mention the words “imperialism” or “an economy of Pillage” but I am anyway, just as a free gift.
The U.S. military still backs with personnel, logistics, intelligence and equipment, the ongoing Turkish operations against the Kurds. Some of those operations have historically also included the Soviet Union, Iran and … Saddam Hussein… as partners in these Joint Actions.
and it’s going on now even as Mr Bush and his puppets here are talking about how the invasion and occupation were to “protect” the Kurds. And Ms Rice is frantically negotiating with them to “Hurry up, sign the papers, we only have 9 more months, just sign the damn papers”
That being the agreement, closed – ended for the Iraqi peoples but open ended for Exxon Mobil, to “share” their oil wealth… only they’ll be sharing more of it with Exxon-Mobil than with the Iraqi people. So the Bush people can “repair the damage” caused by 3 decades of war and enhanced by a decade of sanctions.
“We broke it, we bought it” but you get to pay the bill for us buying it. And, (ahem) for us breaking it in the first damn place.
Business as usual… nothing to see here, citizens, keep moving… nothing to see…