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Bill Clinton: We need to stay in Iraq to
protect the Kurds from the Turks
27.12.2007
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December
27, 2007
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 Kurdistan 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
screwed up about our policy in the Middle East. In
the 1980s,www.ekurd.net
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. |
Former president Bill Clinton |
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, 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
history of arming third world countries and then of
sitting back and watching their arms be used against
each other and us.www.ekurd.net
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. Most of Saddam's
weapons were 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.
huffingtonpost com
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