Kurds, Secure in North Iraq, Are Cool to a U.S. Offensive

NYT ^ | 7/8/2002 | JOHN F. BURNS

[a_Turk]

Another elite, another agenda.

[a_Turk]

ping!

[SteamshipTime]

Poor Boy George. Stymied in his nation-building by the reluctance of those expected to do the actual fighting.

[Paleo Conservative]

I can't see why anyone should blame them.

[a merkin]

That's the problem with Realpolitik, isn't it? When you practice it with consistency, potential allies don't want to play ball with you any more.

[lady lawyer]

Then we just quit protecting them. If we do that, their golden era will come to a halt real quick.

[Austin Willard Wright]

Yes, let's quit protecting them by getting the hell out of the Middle East!

[denydenydeny]

For an opposing point of view with very different Barzani quotes, see this article.

[Barzani] chooses his words carefully when talking about the possibility of helping America bring down Saddam. "It is not enough to tell us the U.S. will respond at a certain time and place of its choosing," Barzani said. "We're in artillery range. Iraq's Army is weak, but it is still strong enough to crush us. We don't make assumptions about the American response."

"This is the apotheosis of cultural genocide," said Saedi Barzinji, the president of Salahaddin University, in Erbil, who is a human-rights lawyer and Massoud Barzani's legal adviser. Barzinji and other Kurdish leaders believe that Saddam is trying to set up a buffer zone between Arab Iraq and Kurdistan, just in case the Kurds win their independence. To help with this, Barzinji told me last month, Saddam is trying to rewrite Kirkuk's history, to give it an "Arab" past. If Kurds, Barzinji went on, "don't change their ethnic origin, they are given no food rations, no positions in government, no right to register the names of their new babies. In the last three to four weeks, hospitals have been ordered, the maternity wards ordered, not to register any Kurdish name." New parents are "obliged to choose an Arab name." Barzinji said that the nationality-correction campaign extends even to the dead. "Saddam is razing the gravestones, erasing the past, putting in new ones with Arab names," he said. "He wants to show that Kirkuk has always been Arab."

The current series of "nope, nuh-uh, no way, us Kurds don't want no part of no U.S. invasion, no-siree-Bob" articles are being generated
1) out of fear of Saddam's retaliation, or
2) as pure disinformation in anticipation of an American invasion.

[NationUnderGod]

Actual fighting? Like we did in the Gulf war? The "mother of all wars?" You mean like that? Stupid.

[irish guard]

Kind of interesting that the NOrthern Kurds were living in a realy "tured pile" before the Gulf War and then suddenly things got better because we drop a few bombs on the bad guys every other day! Easy to sound arrogant when you have been living under someone else's protection! If we stopped protecting them, let see if the turd pile returns!!!

[rudypoot]

"This is a golden era for Iraqi Kurds."

They should think long and hard on WHY they consider this to be the golden era for Iraqi Kurds. Just another ungrateful group of people benefiting from our power (and Britian, in this case).

[RonF]

You have to admit, though, that it's true that we've made promises in the past that we haven't kept.

[marron]

They didn't say they won't do it. They said they wanted guarantees that we won't abandon them after Saddam is gone.

Thats not ungrateful, its realistic. They were betrayed by Bush Sr., who left them to face Saddam alone, until the news footage of the Kurdish refugees hit the TV news and embarrassed him into action. Significantly, once he decided to act, it only took a few US Marines and air power to push Saddam back out of the zone.

They were betrayed again by Clinton. They had begun to build up an army that was intended to take on Saddam. The CIA had guys on the ground coordinating it. Iraqi officers and soldiers were defecting and joining the force. For reasons no one has admitted to, Clinton suddenly withdrew the CIA guys, and the following day Saddam's armor surrounded the city, and they rounded up the defecting officers and quite a number of Kurds who were working with us. Executed them, of course.

The rest of our Kurds were forced to flee into Iran, where they were subsequently rescued by a Green Beret operation. They were whisked away to Guam for a year, and most of them have been resettled in the US.

The article above states that Saddam's armor is held at bay by the no-fly zone, but on that fateful day, Clinton looked the other way.

A lot of good men died. The CIA guys involved were so angry at the death of their colleagues that they went public. But of course, no one was listening. If a tree falls in the forest... If Kurds are massacred, and no one hears the screaming, are they really dead?

[rudypoot]

True. But an attack on Saddam is going to affect them no matter what they do because they live there. They see it as: help, and see many causalties, or sit on the sideline and have Iraq handed to them by the US with less casualities. They know that Saddam is going regardless and they are taking the route of least resistance.

[WaterDragon]

First of all, only an idiot accepts without question anything in the New York Times. When the NYTimes isn't blatantly lying and manipulating, it's journalists are lazy, filing stuff they don't check out worth a darn.

Also, it appears to me there is both truth and partial truth in this article. The Kurds have good reason to distrust the U.S., first because the first President Bush allowed Powell to make the decision to leave Saddam in power, and then throughout the nineties because Clinton just abandoned them, and did so in a way leaving the Kurds distrustful of the CIA. Remember, there has been no real CIA presence anywhere for many years. The Democrats made the CIA afraid of its own shadow.

If anything the NYTimes reports here about what the Kurdish leaders said is true even a little bit, then I would suspect that the Kurds are trying to do some bargaining with the US government through our media. The President will have to decide what their bargaining points are worth.

[Tactical Thunder]

Great post! But it is time to take out all the bad guys in All The Arab Countries before they get a Nuk. So lets
do it by ourself and get it done right the first time and save America........It's time they feel the full power of the United States Of America....we lead we don't follow.

[Hugin]

You are correct. Nixon/Kissinger also betrayed the Kurds back in the 70's by supporting them then cutting off support. I don't blame the Kurds for not trusting any outsiders. If we want to get rid of Saddam (we do) we are going to have to do it ourselves, the sooner the better.

BTW, I wonder if all the leaks about an invasion next year could be disinformation to cover plans for an earlier attack? Like maybe in October?

[historian1944]

Aren't these the same guys that the Turks routinely enter Iraq to attack?

[a_Turk]

No, these guys are allied with the Turks against the group you mean, namely the marxist Leninist PKK. A terror group with strap on bombs carried by drugged out operatives, and the works. We gave these guys (PUK, KDP) roads, schoolhouses and other infrastructure, and we help guaranteeing their security from Saddam via our base in Incirlik (the Lick).

[river rat]

Your bias and stupidity are equally obvious.
Semper Fi