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Clinton: Stay in Iraq to Protect Kurds From Turks
10-Jan-2008
Unlike inexperienced Obama, the Clintons understand pulling Americans abrubtly out of Iraq creates even a bigger disaster. It would leave the Turkish government to destroy the nacent 15-year old peaceful, thriving and secular Kurdish autonomy, and allow Iran Islamic Repbulic and Dictaorship Syria to carve up the rest of Iraq - with their HezboAllah and Syrian Baathists - as they did in Lebanon.
The Huffingto Post: Blake Fleetwood Exclusive -- Bill Clinton: We Need To Stay in Iraq to Protect the Kurds From The Turks Read More: Bill Clinton, Clinton, Hillary, Iraq, Kurdistan, Kurds, Saddam, Turkey, US Foreign Policy, Breaking Politics News
This is America's nightmare.
Just before Christmas, Turkish warplanes (F-16s made in the USA) and helicopter gunships bombed 200 Kurdish targets in northern Iraq, killing 150 people, after dozens of Turkish soldiers were blown up by a large contingent of Kurdish terrorists.
There are reports that some 60,000 Turkish troops are massing on the border for a land invasion of "Kurdistan". The bombings continue today.
It is a thorny dilemma, emblematic of what is so schizophrenic up about our policy in the Middle East. In the 1980s, the US gave Saddam chemical weapons to gas the Kurds. Then we gave the Kurds arms and money to rise up against Saddam; now the Bush administration is giving the Turks military intelligence, money and arms to blast the Kurds.
Ironically, the Turks and the Kurds are the only people in the Middle East who seem to be able to tolerate Americans and now they are in a slowly escalating war with each other.
Bill Clinton, in prescient talks to 50 wealthy supporters at a fundraiser last summer, off limits to the press, said:
"The two wrinkles in her policy that some of the purists won't like, but I think she is absolutely right, are that she would leave some troops in the Kurdish area in the north because they have reconciled with each other and they enjoy relative peace and security...And if we leave them...not only might they be gone into a long civil war...the Turks might be tempted to attack them because they don't like the fact that the PKK guerrillas sometimes come across into northern Iraq and hide after staging attacks in Turkey."
"We don't want that,"
the former President went on to say.Last June, in answering questions at a leadership conference, Hillary Clinton made headlines in the largest newspaper in Turkey with her mildest of answers about the Kurds, calling them close US allies. None of this was reported in the US press.
But Bill Clinton, in his "off the record" remarks, carried Hillary's statement much further and will cause much consternation in Turkish ruling circles.
The Turks, our most loyal Muslim allies (most of the arms and weapons that the US needed for our invasion and occupation in Iraq came overland through Turkey) have been worried about this flip-flopping American policy for some time.
Opposition to an independent Kurdish state has been a longtime linchpin of American policy in the region, going back to the Clinton era, because of fears that it would threaten Turkey, a major regional ally, which has a large Kurdish minority of more than 10 million who seek independence.
In March of 1995, 35,000 Turkish troops invaded northern Iraq using the US imposed "No Fly Zone" as protection for its own jet fighters, a move which annihilated dozens of Kurdish villages and killed tens of thousands of Kurds.
Not surprisingly, Turkey used Pentagon supplied weapons to attack the Kurds in this latest foray and the Kurdish rebels used US bombs and other US weapons to blow up the Turkish military convoy. America is supplying arms to two "friendly nations" at the same time to fight each other!
This is nothing new. America in recent decades has a zany history of arming third world countries and then of sitting back and watching their arms be used against each other and us. Let us not forget that the Taliban weapons used against American troops were largely manufactured in the United States to help defeat the Soviet occupation. Many of Saddam's weapons were originally supplied by the US to help Iraq in its war against Iran.
George Bush is in a tricky position. According to a headline in the Washington Post, the US, "HELPS TURKEY HIT KURDS IN IRAQ" by providing real time intelligence to the Turkish military.
Previously, the US warned Turkey not to invade Iraq, as this would interfere with our invasion of Iraq.
Meanwhile, the Kurds - with large oil reserves now pledged to US companies - have a history of divided loyalty. One large faction was allied and close with Saddam Hussein; another sizably large group was allied with Iran and still another group was allied with the Kurdistan Workers' Party. During the invasion, the US could not figure out which group to back and, ironically, ended up supporting the Iranian faction to rebel against Hussein.
Naturally, as the Arab proverb says, "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." But the conundrum is: which of my friends do I support if they start fighting each other and will I lose my one friend if I support my other friend?
It's awfully messy out there. And watch the price of oil skyrocket.
The Huffington Report, Blake Fleet Wood. Posted December 26, 2007.
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Freedom given by the US will evaporate again!
by Hesam (not verified) on Sat Jan 12, 2008 11:01 AM PSTDo you think that Kurds would have been able to liberate northern Iraq if Americans had not bombed the rest of Iraq to ashes? The problem of Kurdish leadership is that they don't learn from their past mistakes and associate themselves to different enemies from time to time. I'm sure you are well aware of the ups and downs of Barezani's relation with the Shah and the US. This is not intelligence, this is opportunism at work for grabbing power.
They have achieved much
by Concerned Iranian (not verified) on Sat Jan 12, 2008 10:36 AM PSTAt least the Kurds have accomplished much more than the rest of us Iranians when it comes to freedom: They have consistently resisted the force of the Islamists in Iran, they have liberated Iraq's Kurdistan (Remember, All Kurds are Iranian by ethnicity and culture); and are fighting the arrogant Turkey. In comparison, the rest of Iran has lied down and let the Islamists run them over and over again. Who has more intelligence here? Come on.
But I am not suggesting anyone is more intelligent. It is just the Kurdish spirit yearns for freedom and seeks it out.
Achieving freedom requires intelligence!
by Hesam (not verified) on Sat Jan 12, 2008 07:49 AM PSTWell, apparently being liberated and bearing the flag of freedom-loving alone haven't worked quite well for them; otherwise, they would have been free by now. The fact that they resist to coexist with others and to bring down their false ego is indicative of their lack of social and political intelligence, which has been the primary cause of their failures throughout the history. Unfortunately, this characteristic of inflated egoism applies to all of us Iranians to some degree, but our Kurdish friends have it all.
Thank you!
by Concerned Iranian (not verified) on Fri Jan 11, 2008 09:00 PM PSTI want to thank you for sharing your experience when you were in college in Iran. You say that the Kurdish students were the only ones who organized riots and agitated the government. If every Iranian (including) yourself did that then we would not be in the mess we are today. Kurds are freedom loving people. They will not (as every freedom-lovng person should) rest until they are heard. This is a sign of a liberated mind. I am not surprised that you were not happy with that. But you should be very happy that the borders of our country is protected by these freedom-loving people. Imagin, if instead eveyone sat o their hands and let dictators rule over them. Thank you for sharing though, despite some of the other typical negative comments in your letter. It confirms what many of us already know.
Hillary is a lier bitch, and
by Hesam (not verified) on Fri Jan 11, 2008 06:42 PM PSTHillary is a lier bitch, and Kurds deserve how they have been treated throughout the history. They are the most arrogant, selfish, disloyal, and stubborn pests in the world.
I don't want to sound like a racist, but these people have created problems wherever they are: in Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and Syria. They have fought with everyone: with the Shah, IRI, Iraqis, Turkish, Syrians, and God knows who else. They are never happy with what they have and don't want to live peacefully with others. They think they are the most intelligent, bravest, and the best ethnic group in the world and look down on everyone else.
I remember when I was in college in Iran back in 1970's, there was a group of Kurdish classmate. They never wanted to socialize with others and used to criticize, ridicule, and bully others. They always got themselves and others in trouble by starting riots and agitations against the government, university, and other ethnic groups every semester.
The US is the one who has stabbed the Kurds in the back the most throughout the history. Now they think that a lier opportunist like Hillary will act as a savior for the Kurdish people.
hilary is paid by FOX? + Experience + AfroAmerican
by Observer (not verified) on Fri Jan 11, 2008 03:07 PM PSTBernard Kouchner, the humanist, socialst/left-wing politician, Doctor, founder of Medicins Sans Frontiere - Doctors Without Borders - now the French Foreign Minister, also officially threatened the use of force if Iran does not renounce its nuclear arms ambitions. Kouchner's statement, like Clinton's purported declaration, could just be the language of strong diplomacy.
It is seductive to fall for cheery optimism of the new kid on the block. Given U.S's role as the world's super power, U.S. can, under the right leadership, still do good around the world - as it finally did in Bosnia and Kosovos where an end was finally put to ethnic cleansing and the raping of Muslim women (sadly too late... after more than 20,000 women were raped while impotent U.N. looked the other way and Euro governments stood by awaiting American action.
U.S. can do as much damage to World diversity, equality and freedom - which we all (should) cheerish - if it were to standby passively under Obama watching Goliaths like Turkey - use our taxes and American weapons - to kill little David (Kurds)...Or, to let corrupt, greedy oily Russia and the oxymoronic Repbulic of Iran spread its inhuman policies to Iraq. Read about Iran's child executions and barbaric amputations in today's New York Times. And how about Russia's Putin's popular dictatorship and his elite mafia killing all independent journalists in Russia while taking over all Oil and all important businesses for their own profits...
Recall how Germany (and Western Europe) for decades relied on U.S against East Germany and Moscow; how Turkey for nearly a century has relied on U.S. and Nato's support and advanced weapons of destruction which it used to illegaly invade and occupy Cyprus (to this date defying U.N. resolutions) and destroy about 4000 Kurdish villages; and now how the Palestinian leader kisses George Bush and begs for U.S. help to set up an independent Palestine; and how all Arab (unfortunately undemocratic) leaders also seek and rely on U.S. support...
As for "it'd be nice to elect an AfroAmerican', let's please not forget that it was the over 'confident', 'clear' AfroAmerican Colin Powell who sold the Iraq War at the U.N. to the world by his brilliant, high-tech proof of the existence of Saddam's Weapons of Mass Destruction.
And just because Fox Corp for its own reasons maybe supporting a candidate, it is not sufficient justification to vote against that candidate. That would be an emotional reflex and an over-simplification of the complex U.S. election prorcess and its huge funding needs.
Let's not look for the best human for our President. We are electing a politician, not a Human Rights activist, to lead the world's super power against the leaders of the world, many of whom are crafty, corrupt, racist, kings, dictators, religious fanatics and despots...
So let the best (or least worst, the cleverest and the most experienced POLITICIAN win, regardless of religion or race or sex or color or source of some of its election funding!
Experience
by Troneg on Fri Jan 11, 2008 12:57 PM PSTBecause she is exprienced, she would keep US soldiers in IRAK and because Bush was inexprienced he went there ?! It reminde me : Yek Divneh sangi ra mindazeh to Chah, Sadta Aghel bayad Daresh Biarand ! I don't live in US but I'd prefer Obama. I'd be surprised if americans vote for an afroamerican ! It would be great
hilary is paid by FOX
by noname (not verified) on Thu Jan 10, 2008 11:27 PM PSTHilary is paid by Fox and is going to do and say what Fox and other people want. She wants to bomb Iran and has said it publicly at the AIPAC meeting.
DO NOT SUPPORT HILARY.