I shamelessly cribbed this from the "GodFather"
Tom Kratman. Apparently the Neocons and the media are using President Trump's decision to pull out of Syria and the Kurds, and they all are having meltdowns"Orange Man Bad". I am of the mindset, Obungler shouldn't have put us in the middle of the clown circus to begin with. Sure the Kurds are allies, but which Kurds? There are Iraqi Kurds, Syrian Kurds and Turkish Kurds. I am not a peacenik by any means, but we can't be the worlds Policeman. Nobody over there is our friends, well perhaps the Kuwaiti's and the Israili's. The others.....well not so much. The "GodFather" posted this on Facebook and it was a worthy rant.
Our Gallant Allies, the Kurds (and other fairy tales)
Ah, the Kurds. How can mere words render a proper appreciation? They’re trustworthy, loyal, helpful, frie
ndly,
courteous…um…no; no, they’re not. Oh, sure, as individuals they can be
fairly boon companions, but in the main and in the mass? Not so much.
My first experience of the Kurds – rather, of how the rest of the area
thinks of and feels about them – was before I’d ever met my first one.
This was at a majlis, in the town of Judah (or Goodah), Saudi Arabia,
sometime in December or so, 1990. Citizenship is kind of an iffy and
flexible concept in that part of the world, so there were folk from
Saudi, from Oman, from the Emirates. There was even one Arab who
insisted he was a citizen of the Gulf Cooperation Council, since he was a
fully documented citizen of so many places in the GCC. I had my doubts
right up until he pulled out a bilingual ID card which, indeed, did seem
to list him as a citizen of the GCC. One of the attendees had brought
with him a book detailing the results of the chemical attack on the
Kurdish town of Halabja by the army and air force of Saddam Hussein.
It was really heartbreaking, all those picture of gassed, dead,
discolored, and decomposing Kurdish kids, who are, in fact, every bit as
cute as the papers and television made them out to be. At least when
they’re not dead they are. My team sergeant, Sig, and I were duly
appalled and sickened.
The Arabs, though, didn’t seem to
understand. To paraphrase, “What’s the problem? Don’t you understand
that these were _Kurds_ who got gassed?”
At the time, I found that attitude completely inexplicable.
Fast forward a few months; we’ve incited the Kurds and Shia to rise up
and overthrow Saddam. They didn’t, of course, while such an uprising
would have looked difficult and might have done us some good. Oh, no;
instead the Shia – whose rebellion was spontaneous, anyway – waited
until it looked like the Iraqi Army was crushed and such an uprising
would be easy. The Kurds – who were organized – waited even longer.
Sorry, boys, but when we offer you a quid pro quo, that doesn’t
translate into “free lunch.” Moreover, when we’ve already offered
someone a ceasefire it’s a bit late to try to get us to start
hostilities again. In short, we owed them nothing.
Fast forward,
again, to late May, 1991. I’d come home from the Middle East, hung
around a while, and been sent back, this time to Operation Provide
Comfort, the Kurdish Rescue, there to quasi govern a few towns, run
refugee camps, coordinate humanitarian relief, and such like. While
we’re waiting in the camp on the Turkish side of the border, not too far
from Silopi, overwatched by a Turkish police fort on a hill, some Kurds
got in position to fire at the fort such that, should the fort return
fire, the Turks will be shooting at us. So much for gratitude from
people you’re trying to save, eh?
Fortunately, Turkish
discipline held firm and enlightened Kurdish dreams of advancing the
cause of having a homeland of their own by getting their rescuers killed
came to naught. After a couple of days at the camp, the crew I’m with
and I are ordered forward to link up with the British Marines and their
Dutch counterparts, already inside Kurdestan. We’re riding in on the
back of a British Bedford Lorry, one which, based on the comfort of the
ride, probably crossed the Rhine with Monty in 1945…after enduring the
entire war in North Africa. If it had a suspension it was tolerably hard
to see, and impossible to feel.
Sitting next to me is a Staff
Sergeant Farnsworth. Farnsworth and I are both grunts, so we’re doing
what grunts do when there’s nothing better to do and neither sleep nor
playing cards nor reading are possible; we’re analyzing the terrain. It
is fiercely rugged, with winding roads going through narrow passes
between hills and mountains difficult enough to climb on foot and
impossible for vehicles. Reverse slopes were of such an angle as would
make defenders largely invulnerable to artillery and would make even
high angle mortar fire of much reduced effect. In any case, at a certain
point, looking over a particularly defensible pass, Farnsworth and I
looked at each other. I no longer remember who spoke first but the
conversation went like this: “If the Kurds“ “couldn’t defend
themselves“ “in this kind of terrain“ “they don’t deserve“ “their
own country.” And that was before we even knew how much they used mines.
*****
A little digression is in order here. As
mentioned previously, Kurdish kids are adorable. (The women are also
quite fetching, right up until they’re worn out, usually by age
twenty-four or so, from being used like mules, which is to say, beasts
of burden, but who, unlike mules, can still bear young…and must.) Most
people shy away from or are at least ignorant of the reason so many of
those adorable kids died. It’s simple; the Kurds starved them to death
themselves. It’s a cultural imperative among them, when times get hard,
to let the little girls die of starvation (first, of course), and then
the little boys. Good guess, dear reader; why, no, I didn’t like that
for beans. As a matter of fact, now that you ask, I’m not much for
multiculturalism, in general, either.
*****
Interestingly, before we even arrived in our area, there had been an
incident – a firefight resulting in several Iraqi dead – between the
British Marines and some Iraqi troops guarding one of Hussein’s palaces
in that part of Iraq. I asked a British officer about it and his answer
was to the effect that, “As near as we can figure, as one of our patrols
was passing, two Kurds, from different positions but surely with
coordination, took a shot each, close to simultaneously. One shot was at
our patrol, the other at the Iraqi on the gate to the palace. Both
shots missed, but the Iraqis and our men, thinking they were under
attack, reacted as one would expect. We were just a lot better shots,
better led, than they were. Poor bastards. One of the reasons we’re
quite sure that the Iraqis didn’t shoot first was that, as our men
passed, they waved at each other, as soldiers will who have no
particular reasons for enmity.”
*****
The main town I
ran was Assyrian and Christian, Catholic, actually, having their own
rite but being in full communion with Rome. It was an experience to
attend mass held in Aramaic, the language of Jesus, a memory I rather
cherish despite not understanding a word of it. They are nice people,
the Assyrians, seriously nice people. I’ve dealt with a lot of different
kinds of foreigners, over the years, even married one, for that matter,
and liked almost all of them. But the Assyrians have a special place.
They’re also amazingly hardworking. They can’t defend themselves or, at
least, they don’t think they can, which amounts to the same thing.
Everyone knows about the Armenian genocide. The genocide of the
Assyrians, around the same time period, was about as bad and may have
been worse, as a percentage of the premassacre population. And among
the chief agents of that genocide? Of both of them, really? You guessed
it, the Kurds.
I asked my Assyrian translator there, once, what
he and the other Assyrians really wanted. He answered, “We’d like the
British to come back and run the place, permanently. Failing that, we’d
be very happy to be subjects of the American Empire, if you would just
declare one. If that’s not possible, then letting the Iraqis back would
be minimally acceptable. Under no circumstance, however, do we want to
be under the Kurds.”
That main town was the only one in which no
Kurdish babies died, of the smallish number that the Kurds didn’t let
starve anyway, and the only one in which there were no political or
ethnic murders in that time period. Part of that was probably my own
rather forthright approach to domestic harmony – “One incident, just
one, and I’ll cut off your food, medical care, and other goodies,
causing all your followers to desert you for other groups and leaders I
haven’t proscribed!” – but part of it, too, at least for the long term
maintenance of the thing, was probably the perception among themselves
that the various Kurdish groups needed one safe area in which to engage
in local diplomacy, and, since this one area was peaceful, well, why
not? That meant a lot of luncheons, meaning, yes, I had the chance to
meet most of the bright lights of Kurdish domestic politics and
self-determination of the day. I’ve long since forgotten their names,
but am pretty sure I could identify most of them in a police lineup and
wouldn’t, of course, mind doing so. One in particular stands out in my
mind, a rather distinguished looking middle aged barbarian who had once,
over what amounts to a domestic dispute, murdered some thirty-seven
Christian men, women, and children. And then there was the day the Kurds
demanded to be paid. Paid? Why, yes, we were providing free food, free
medical care, free shelter, and free security, but they saw no reason
not to be paid for unloading the free food and other goodies. I sent the
trucks back with the food until they knuckled under.
*****
Thus, it might be better for the United States, before pinning too much
hope and faith on the Kurds, to understand that they’re military
imbeciles with an unearned and undeserved reputation, that their culture
is barbaric, they their one talent seems to be propagandizing and
manipulating liberal Western opinion, which is eager to be manipulated,
anyway, that any kids who die usually do so because of their own neglect
of those kids, that they have no sense of gratitude for any help you
give them, that they treat women like donkeys, and that they place zero
value on the lives of those who try to help them.
Why we, or
anyone, would place our faith and trust in them…well, it eludes me. To
help that lesson stick in your mind I offer a Kurdish National Anthem,
written by my team sergeant, Sig, in a moment of complete disgust with
them. Every line tells a story: (Tune: O Tannenbaum)
A voice without a hint of shame
Cries, “It’s all your fault; you’re all to blame.
We must be clothed, we must be fed
And when that’s done build our homesteads”
Chorus:
A Kurd can have no greater love
Than his brand new Kalashnikov;
O Kurdestan, my Kurdestan,
Do what you want; grab what you can.
You gave us shelter overhead
Doctors and blankets for our beds.
You’ve saved us from Iraqi raids,
Now tell us when do we get paid?
Chorus
We fought the Turks, we fought Iran
We fought Iraq for Kurdestan.
And now you’ve made us free and strong,
We’ll kill the Christians when you’re gone.
Chorus
This column is dedicated to the memory of Father Hanna Marko, of Mangesh, Iraq.
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