Posted on 04/11/2003 4:29:07 PM PDT by MadIvan
Ha ha ha yeah. You guys were wishing you would have an opportunity to gloat about how dumb the Kurds were, how they screwed everything up by taking Kirkuk and launching a wave of violence and disorder in the region. Too bad ya didn't get your way, huh?
Like the Germans and the Russians, the Turks bet on the wrong horse.
I agree and am glad to see the Kurds take the initiative. I'm sure that GW was and is well aware of the situation on the ground. As for the Turks,...put some ice on it.
I expect that Bush and Co. have a much better grasp of Intel than anyone since Franklin and Churchill.
And Psyops.
So the people in Bhagdad (and some other places) looted.
This is allowable. It lets them blow off a little bit of that pent-up steam that the regime built up in them.
I have been talking to a Kurd (from Turkey) today. He is very cautious. He does not want a Turk backlash.
However, the fact is that the Coalition now has rights in the former Iraq.
If it was up to me I would call the lower two thirds of Iraq, Iraq.
The 'Northern No-Fly Zone' would be Kurdistan, on the sole condition that the Kurds go there, and not try to take anymore territory, if they did, MOAB.
Unfortunately for you, it won't be Turkey.
puke puke puke
gobble gobble gobble
Well, since this is between the Turks and the Kurds, I hope y'all can become human enough to keep from butchering each other.
Or is your veiled threat directed at America?
Don't be so sure that what Turk2 was trying to convey does not have merit.
From my limited studies, 20th century Kurds have been described as secular anarchists. They are not tribal or even clanish but rather hold their loyalty to members of their immediate families. Because they were the outcasts of the region oft described as "Kurdistan" they have freqenlty resorted to theivery as a means of support. Their recent campaign in Turkey, to break the backs of their Turkish oppressors, has oft times victimized their own with a cruelty usually reserved for enemies.
If this group can mature along the way then all in the region are the better for it. If, absent the enviornment of oppression, they fall back to the historic behavior they have exhibited in Turkey, Iran and Iraq then Turk2 may be right.
I don't think the Kurds and the Shiites have particularly bad feelings, historically speaking, between them. I predict the future government of Iraq will be a coalition between the Kurds and the Shiites, with the "rights" of the Sunni minority at least theoretically protected. We'll see I guess. If the Sunnis don't like that, they can move to Syria or Saudi Arabia.
I am impressed with the Kurds. I believe they see their greatest potential in a unified civil Iraq. I believe they may prove themselves over time to be a strong, unifying force in the New Free Iraq and a key ally beyond the borders of the new republic.
Time will tell...
That implies that their is no environment of oppression for them in Turkey and Iran, which is clearly not the case. Some of them are pretty bad ass it's true, but then so were the likes of the "Swamp Fox", the Green Moutain Boys and others suffering under British (and New Yorker) oppression in the late 18th century. Oppression continued over generations bends peoples minds, and they can take some time to unbend, even after throwing off that oppression.
Yesterday I read how the Kurds treated Iraqi POW's, with kindness and compassion, and I was so proud of them. These are a great people and they show that democracy CAN work in that part of the world.
You bet they won't.
Turkey's historic oppression of their ethnic minorities has much to do with the problem at hand.
Some on this forum, beyond ethnic Turks, have a great deal of trouble recognizing the acusations of genocide and ethnic cleansing lodged against the Turkish government by it's ethnic minorities.
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