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Right now, like the
Kurds, the Shi'a need us to help contain the Sunni
Arabs who blow them up. After we help them further
achieve their own goals, however, and we leave, the
fun will really start. Shi'a Arabs have voiced the
same disdain for the Kurds as Sunni Arabs have.
They're just biding their time.
If America's ideal of a federalist state - which is
a good one, but which Sunni Arabs mostly reject -
collapses, then what's next for the Kurds? They have
repeatedly been slaughtered over the decades in the
wake of America's games in the region. Kurds have
repeatedly been used and abused by the Foggy Folks,
the CIA and others, as well.
As America now insists on the birth of Arab State
no. 22 in Israel, if Iraq goes sour, then -- at long
last -- Kurdistan must enter into the realm of
nations as well.
Iraq was an artificial state to begin with, no more
real than Yugoslavia. Its opposing ethnic groups
were forced together for others' interests,
especially those of the Arabs and the British after
World War I. British petroleum politics colluded
with Arab nationalism to shaft the Kurds out of the
one best chance they had at independence. Among
other opportunities lost, President Wilson's famed
Fourteen Points had earlier addressed the
self-determination of these folks.
The fears of the Turks that Kurdish independence
will spread to Turkish Kurdistan must be addressed;
and they can be.
The proportion of Kurds to Turks in Turkey is the
same as Arabs to Jews in Israel proper, one-fifth of
the population. Turkey also dwarfs Israel
geographically. Yet, this doesn't stop the Foggy
Folks from insisting that another, hostile,
adjacent, independent Arab state emerge right on
Israel's doorstep, in close contact with that
potential Arab fifth column in Israel. State
routinely uses this as a key argument, however,
against the birth of a Kurdish state. Along with
angering its Arab buddies, of course;
"destabilizing" and so forth.
Regardless, those fears cannot condemn 30 million
people to a perpetually stateless condition.
If there's a parallel to the plight of pre-1948
Jews, it is the Kurds not the "Palestinians," most
of whom were new arrivals -- Arab settlers --
themselves into the land, as the Records of the
Permanent Mandates Commission of the League of
Nations and other solid documentation show.
Again, for all the attention Arabs get on this
issue, they already have some two dozen states. They
renamed themselves "Palestinians" instead of Arabs
late in the game so they could argue the point
better.
Zuheir Mohsein, an official with the PLO's military
wing and Executive Council, in his interview with
the Dutch newspaper, Trouw, on March 31, 1977,
stated, "There are no differences between
Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians, etc.... It is
only for political reasons that we now carefully
underline Palestinian identity... this serves only a
tactical purpose... a new tool in the continuing
battle against Israel."
Using this Arab line of reasoning, then, Kurds
should rename themselves after geographical regions
in Iran, Iraq, Syria and so forth that they live in
and demand multiple states, as well. And likewise
for the Jews. Get the picture?
This won't happen, of course, for lots of reasons,
but if justice demands yet another Arab state,
America must also finally demand a share of justice
for its strangely loyal Kurdish friends.
No matter what we do, we're largely despised in that
region.
And if you believe the Arabs' nonsense that it's all
Israel's fault, you know nothing about their
still-pervading, Dar Al-Islam versus Dar Al-Harb
worldview. Israel is just another manifestation of
this; a painful one, admittedly. After all, how dare
kilab Yahud (Jew dogs, half of whom in Israel were
refugees from so-called "Arab" lands) ask, in one
tiny state, for what Arabs demand for themselves in
some two dozen of their own? In Arab eyes, there is
no justice besides their own. And so, Kurdish
children in Syria are forced to sing songs praising
their Arab identity, Kurds in Iraq received similar
treatment and worse, and so forth.
Unlike elsewhere, American bases will be welcome in
Kurdistan. And, with its vast oil deposits, it will
be an economically viable, democratic success story,
unlike anything over two hundred million Arabs have
created to date. In other words, it will be
something we can really be proud to be a part of. As
we have built up despotic Arab regimes militarily,
we must also do no less for Kurds who truly share
more of our own values.
America's hope for a united Iraq is a noble one. But
it will most likely be unattainable given the bloody
realities at hand, realities that date back
centuries and are out of our control.
Again, think Yugoslavia and the Serbs, Croats,
Bosnians, Macedonians, Albanians, and so forth, who
were held together only by the likes of a Tito. How
much longer will we be willing to expend American
treasure and blood over such an unrealistic goal?
Arrangements can be made to share Kurdish oil wealth
with Arabs, Turks, and others, as conditions permit.
The Shi'a, for their part, have their own oil
wealth.
The fate of the Kurds, however, must not forcibly be
tied, as Condoleezza Rice & Co. insisted back in
2004 and still do now, to Arabs of either Sunni or
Shi'a stripe to the south. If a civil war breaks out
among them, Kurds, who have supported America the
most, ought not to suffer.
In other words, when America withdraws and all hell
breaks loose among the Arabs, America must then come
up with a well-thought-out Plan B. We must not leave
the Kurds at others' mercy, as we've done too often
before.
The Roadmap for Kurdistan is long overdue.
Gerald A. Honigman is a Florida educator who has
done extensive doctoral studies in Middle Eastern
Affairs. He has created and conducted counter-Arab
propaganda programs for college youth, has lectured
on numerous campuses and other platforms, and has
publicly debated many Arab spokesmen. His articles
and op-eds have been published in dozens of
newspapers, magazines, academic journals and
websites all around the world.
www.israelnationalnews.com
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