NOW THE DONALD’S TURN?
October 9, 2019
Dear Editor,
A cursory study of the Great Powers’ Middle-Eastern interference/domination history, from France’s 18th-century invasion of Egypt up until a century ago, reveals the Great Powers’ forced rearranging of historical Middle-Eastern borders.
At least Greece was then liberated from 400 years of Turkish Ottoman-Empire subjugation. However, the chickens (today’s unfortunate Kurds) are, 100 years later, finally coming home to roost, only to be roasted by Turkey!
Has The Donald made a proper goose of himself by turning chicken…just when the incredibly courageous, mostly-Muslim Kurds, after fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with their American-soldier “brothers-in-arms” against barbaric, Islamic terrorism, now need the most “Free-World” military support against Turkey? That nation has shown itself to be a truly powerful modern-day, supposedly “civilised-society” enemy which is increasingly and rapidly descending into radical Islamic fundamentalism.
Yours,
Howard Hutchins
Victoria, Australia
The Kurdish MUSLIMES have been fighting the Turks and other MUSLIMES for centuries. America paid the Kurdish MERCENARIES very well for fighting against their own enemies. DUH! Prez Trump is right!
When it comes to the Middle East, never trust appearances. IMHO, there has always been a disconnect between our cultures and theirs. Put simply, we think like nations, they think like tribes. We tend not to hold grudges, they do – 500 year grudges. Their blend of values insures they stay primitive. Take any village in the Middle East, take away the electricity and there is no difference between now and over 500 years ago.
So, what they have as a “nation” rests on extremely weak cultural foundations. It is this misunderstanding that I believe has created this mess. Some suggest Churchill pushed for certain boundary lines for the express purpose of upsetting old alliances. If the objective was to make a weak Middle East that we can exploit, well I guess we can say that worked. Yet, at the same time, these warring relations still exist only to be layered over by the Muslim Brotherhood, ISIS and Al Qaeda along with the many splinter groups that have formed. They take apostasy a little too seriously.
Religious extremism, factionalism, tribalism all cohere into this blob of political goo we can’t shape into anything. It is what it is. Some of our most brilliant geopolitical minds have managed to fashion some forms of diplomacy, but the article is right. What a mess.
I see two choices. Get in or get out. The expensive decision to get in was made a long time ago. Frankly the errors culminated in Bush’s decision to go into Iraq. We, with the UN, helped to create that stage of dissolution of the Middle East. But much like a breaking wave, it has resolved itself into a puddle of Shia politics with no real border anymore between Iraq and Iran. That was not the result we wanted, that was not our intention.
The current distraction with Turkey is serious enough. People forget we have an air base, Incerlik, in Turkey. So, pissing on the Turks over the Kurds is a bad idea. Instead, I believe, our president, has wisely drawn a new set of lines that reflect the current political reality between Syria and Turkey..
I also go back to my first point. You can’t trust appearances. Don’t think for a minute that the Kurds are being left helpless. No one has asked the question, who else are the Kurds allies? Also, euphemistically, there are all kinds of cut outs and front groups which serve to keep helping the Kurds. The ugly reality is that powerful others are content to maintain a violent equilibrium with no winners or losers.