The Times' Friedman...Still Not There Yet

Still Not There Yet…

by Gerald A. Honigman



New York Times syndicated columnist, Thomas L. Friedman, has gained some wisdom over the years.


For a journalist, he has achieved a level of knowledge on matters pertaining to the volatile Middle East that most others in his profession seldom achieve.


Having said that, what I have forgotten over the decades at professional and academic levels, Tom will never come to know--regardless of how many free trips his boss sends him on.


First, let’s look at the good side…


He’s correct when he states in a recent op-ed that America must end its oil addiction as it attempts to exit Iraq and presumably try to solve other issues in the region as well. And, in another recent article, he proclaimed that Iraq is so severely fractured, that it is beyond being the Arab Yugoslavia anymore.


I can agree with all of that and have written the same things much earlier in many of my own widely-published articles--including ones showcased by the Kurdish Regional Government itself in Iraq.


But Tommy fails to make necessary connections to what he himself writes.


While repeatedly expecting Jews to bare the necks of their kids in a return to the Auschwitz/armistice lines (which made Israel a mere 9-miles wide at its strategic waist)--not borders--of 1949 with an Arab enemy sworn to the destruction of Israel no matter who is at the helm of the Arabs’ proposed state # 22, here’s what he had to say to some 30 million truly stateless Kurds, who have been slaughtered and displaced by the hundreds of thousands over the last century by Arabs both in Syria and Iraq (and many more by others as well) in a March 26, 2003 op-ed. Friedman advised that the Kurds in Iraq should be told point blank:


“What part of ’no’ don’t you understand? ..You Kurds are not breaking away.”


Just imagine if Israel was to say that under no circumstances would another state be permitted to be created for Arabs in “Palestine“ (Jordan having been carved out, in 1922, of some 80% of the original borders of Mandatory Palestine as Britain received it on April 25, 1920).


Tommy would have a bloomin’ fit.


Yet he told Kurds, who were repeatedly massacred by Arabs, that they were not entitled to even one of what he claims Arabs are entitled to some two dozen of--most created, by the way, by the conquest and forced Arabization of non-Arab peoples and their lands.


I guess, for Friedman, imperialism is only nasty when non-Arabs are engaged in it.


But I will give him his due. In another op-ed which appeared in my local Florida paper on March 12, 2006, he finally came around a bit and stated that we should now tell the Kurds, “You’ve behaved most responsibly…If Iraq falls apart, we will make sure you’re taken care of.”


Notice, however, he still doesn’t call for a roadmap for Kurdistan. That’s still only reserved for his Arab buddies.


You know...such a Kurdish state would be “destabilizing” and all that stuff.


Of course, we all know that a murderous Fatah or Hamas-run state (makes no difference--despite what the Foggy Folks say), set up in Israel’s very backyard after its forced return to its nine-mile wide existence, won’t be destabilizing...


And would you also like to buy a bridge I’m selling?


Now, I’m sure Tommy knows that, besides the Jews, the Kurds are the one people in the region whom Foggy Bottom has shafted over and over again the most…with often bloody results. And since President Truman was correct regarding where the buck stops, that means American Presidents have gone along with this as well. Which brings us at least partly back to Friedman’s correct observation regarding petroleum politics.


While it’s well known that the very rebirth of the Jew of the Nations was opposed by the Foggy Folks, it perhaps is not as well known that British petroleum politics--in collusion with Arab nationalism--put the kiss of death on the one best chance Kurds ever had--before right now--at independence with the break up of the Ottoman Turkish Empire after World War I.


Kurds were indeed promised that independence, but after the Brits received a favorable decision from the League of Nations regarding Mosul and the oil around it in 1925, Kurdish hopes and dreams were aborted. A British-supported, united, and Arab-ruled Iraq emerged in all of the Mandate of Mesopotamia instead.


While the Brits’ other Mandate, the Mandate of Palestine (which was smaller than Mesopotamia) could undergo successive partitions and partition plans to address the needs of competing nationalisms, the Kurds were told that their cause was not worthy. And it has remained this way for three quarters of a century now.


Where have Friedman’s op-eds been over the decades regarding this tragic issue?


After all, he likes to write from an alleged position of morality, ethics, and such.


He’s not afraid, for example, to demand that Jews return to those Auschwitz lines, while anyone truly familiar with the goings on after 1949 (after Israel survived a massive Arab attack on its miniscule rebirth) would realize that this just ain’t so.


A reading of the U. N.‘s Ralph Bunch’s ‘49 armistice dealings would help Tommy as would readings of Under Secretary of State Eugene Rostow, U. N. Ambassador Arthur Goldberg, Britain’s U. N. Ambassador, Lord Caradon, and other architects of U. N. Security Council Resolution # 242 after the Six Day War in ‘67. They all explained why Israel was not expected to return to the status quo ante and was entitled to secure and real borders--not indefensible armistice lines. Yet that’s what Tommy continues to chastise Israel for.


Here’s Lord Caradon, for example…


“ It would have been wrong to demand that Israel return to its positions of June 4, 1967, because those positions were undesirable and artificial. After all, they were just the places where the soldiers of each side happened to be on the day the fighting stopped in 1948. They were just armistice lines. That’s why we didn’t demand that the Israelis return to them.”


In Friedman’s most recent op-ed which appeared locally on December 26, among other things, his Rule #11 ( Mideast Rules For U.S. to Live By) proclaims that the Arabs have really “…been hurt by Jewish settlements on Palestinian land.” True, he also mentions the Arabs own faults here as well.


So, there’s Tommy’s continuing problem…despite some admitted improvements.


Forget the fact that most of his so-called “Palestinians” were newcomers themselves into the Mandate--to the point that the very word refugee had to be redefined by the United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA) to accommodate all of the Arab newcomers…some only arriving a mere two years before the combined Arab assault on Israel.


But, just where does Friedman think those territorial rectifications (allowed by 242, etc.) of the travesty of Israel’s 1949 armistice line existence are to be made if not in Judea and Samaria---aka, only via British imperialism in the last century, now known as the “West Bank?” Israel has already totally withdrawn from Sinai and Gaza.


Again, Tommy needs to read Rostow & Co. very carefully. And if he has already done so, why does he act otherwise?


And why has he repeatedly championed the Arabs’ twenty second state and still has not come out for even one for tens of millions of victimized, stateless Kurds--who predate the Arabs in both Syria and Iraq by millennia?


I can understand--but not like--the real politik, use and abuse, games of the Foggy Folks and such.


But for a justice for poor Arabs (who now have “only” over six million square miles of territory under their rule) Friedman to take this hypocritical stance is beyond nauseating.


He perpetually worries about Jewish settlements in Judea (“land of the Jews“), but is mum about the majority of Arabs who were newcomers there themselves, i.e. Arab settlers setting up Arab settlements.


A look at the Records of the League of Nations Permanent Mandates Commission only tells part of this story. Indeed, there is plenty of evidence and solid documentation for this if one is truly interested.


And has Tommy read Ismet Cherif Vanly’s The Syrian (Arab) Mein Kampf Against the Kurds (Amsterdam, 1968), accounts of the Arabs’ ANFAL Campaign against Kurds in Iraq, the Arabs’ decades’ old genocide against black Africans, their continuing subjugation of Assyrians, Berbers, Copts, native kilab yahud “Jew dogs,” etc. and so forth in what Arabs proclaim as purely Arab patrimony?


While Mr. Morality complains about colonialism as well as settlements in his latest op-ed, why does he ignore all of the Arabs’ own victims mentioned above who were and are still subjected to the same thing--but only far worse--at the hands of his alleged Arab “victims” of injustice?


Where are Friedman’s op-eds about them and their share of justice?


He’s written many articles--reaching millions of readers--taking Israel to task for not unilaterally caving in to Arab demands regarding disputed territories which he incorrectly calls “Palestinian.” Again, a reading of Rostow on this is a must.


Well, this article must now come to end (while there‘s still much more to write)--or my publishers will have a fit.


But I think you get my drift.


Tommy has improved…a dose of reality seems to have set in. But he still has much to learn.


One day he’ll arrive at being able to point the finger of blame in the right direction without trying to look politically correct by “balancing “ it with defaming the Jew of the Nations’ mere attempts at survival as well.


Few nations--if any--would show the restraint Israel is repeatedly expected to display to those who deliberately try to kill and maim its people and destroy its very national existence.

No terror...no checkpoints...no fence...etc. and so forth.

Get It?


One day, perhaps…but as of December 26, 2006, Tommy obviously isn’t there yet.

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Eilat Will become Egyptian When...

Eilat Will Become Egyptian When...

by Gerald A. Honigman



Egyptian Arabs, who conquered Egypt in the 7th century C.E. from native Copts and Nubians (who predated Arabs by millennia) return Egypt to the native peoples whom they continue to subjugate, murder, and forcibly Arabize.


And we won’t even mention anything about Egypt’s ancient Jewish population--who also pre-dated the Arabs by millennia--and which is virtually non-existant today. Most of Egypt’s last 100,000 Jews were forced to flee during the last century. The Egyptian Jewess, the historian Bat Ye’or, is one of the leading experts to especially consult on such matters.


One of my favorite journalists, David Bedein, had a piece in the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin on December 22nd which reported that, in the course of a debate over Eilat in Egypt’s parliament, among other things it was stated, “Eilat belongs formally to Egypt and administratively to the Palestinians.”


Eilat, the southernmost city of Israel, is located on the north shore of the Red Sea, and is named for the Hebrew Bible’s Elath, which is believed to have actually been located across the gulf in Aqaba in what is now Jordan. Eilat’s importance to the Jews came via its connection to King Solomon: King Solomon also built a fleet of ships at Etzion-Geber near Elath on the shore of the Red Sea...(1 Kings 9:26) It was (and is) an important port located on the trade route to the East.  The 1956 and 1967 wars largely started over Egypt’s blockade of Eilat.


Several facts related to all of this are worth noting...


First of all, the Ottoman Turks ruled the entire area in question from 1517 until after World War I when the Sinai was awarded to Egypt. Prior to that, the Roman and Byzantine Empires ruled it from the 1st through early 7th century C.E.


There were others as well. And the Arabs only acquired Egypt via their own massive imperial conquests, after exploding in all directions out of the Arabian Peninsula in the 7th century C.E...the same time and way they came to acquire the land of Israel.


So, for Egypt to pretend as if the Sinai itself is its assumed birthright--let alone adjacent Eilat--is a stretch, especially since nations and empires who have waged war against their neighbors and lost territory as a result rarely get rewarded with a return to the status quo ante.


But the Jews did just that--and after developing oil fields, some of the world’s most advanced air bases, etc. and so forth in the Sinai. Egypt lost Sinai in ‘67 because of its blockade of Israel--a casus belli--and other blatant and overt hostile actions.


In return for a very cold peace after President Sadat’s assassination in which Israel gave up all of the above, it got a massive Egyptian arms build-up (largely courtesy of the United States), huge quantities of arms being smuggled into Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and other terror groups via the Egyptian Sinai, government-sponsored anti-Semitism which ranks with Hitler’s propaganda machine, etc. and so forth.


As the PLO was created in Egypt under Nasser’s watch back in 1964 (Arafat was born in Cairo) as a tool to further the latter’s agenda, Egypt continues to bleed Jews via the same and other proxies today.


Eighty million Egyptians. Hundreds of millions of other Arabs--not to mention non-Arab Muslims.


Five million Israeli Jews.


Do the math...The Arabs certainly are.


Egypt, like the others, is merely biding its time...and the results in Lebanon not long ago don’t help matters any. Reports have it that the Syrians are already making their moves--and not only in Lebanon.


Unfortunately, new rabbits must repeatedly be invented by Jews to be pulled out of their collective hat of survival.


The new year ahead will certainly be no exception.

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Chanukah Corroborations

Chanukah Corroborations

by Gerald A. Honigman

The year was 1887.

An Egyptian woman discovered a treasure-trove of over three hundred clay cuneiform tablets that would shake the world of religion and the study of ancient history.

Named for a local Bedouin tribe, the Tel el-Amarna tablets (which can now be found mostly in the Berlin and British Museums) were mostly the official correspondence between Pharaoh Amenhotep IV--Akhenaten--and his governors and vassals from places such as Canaan, Syria, Babylonia, etc. They date mostly from around 1380 B.C.E. and were written in Akkadian, the language of diplomacy of the era.

So, what does all of this have to do with Chanukah ?

Patience, please...

Now, guess what repeatedly comes out in this official correspondence between Pharoah and his vassals in Canaan and the surrounding areas?

Complaints about invasions of the Habiru…the Hebrews.

While some scholars debate the details, most agree that the time--with even newer confirmations by excavations in Jericho--fits into the period of Joshua’s conquests of Canaan.

Like many other accounts in the Hebrew Bible, we indeed have good supporting evidence from elsewhere to support the Jews’ own version of these events. And what makes it even better is that this often comes from those viewing the events from the “other side” of the picture.

This is no small point.

Corroboration is very important to any serious scholar. Not many religious texts can match the corroboration found in those of the Jews.

Jumping ahead about eight centuries, Babylon became a powerhouse, and the Jews’ remaining southern kingdom, Judah, fell captive to Nebochadnezzar. The northern kingdom, Israel, fell to the Assyrians a few centuries earlier.

The Jews would next find a hero in…hold onto your seats…an Iranian ruler, Cyrus the Great, who allowed their return to Judah in 539 B.C.E.

Not exactly current Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s type…if you know what I mean.

Again, while the Hebrew Bible gives the Jews’ account of this episode, we also have it from the “other side” as well.

Take a look at this ancient quote from an Iranian source, The Kurash Prism, courtesy of the Iran Chamber Society and other historical sites...

“I am Kurash [ “Cyrus” ], King of the World, Great King, Legitimate King, King of Babilani, King of Kiengir and Akkade, King of the four rims of the earth, Son of Kanbujiya...I returned to these sacred cities on the other side of the Tigris the sanctuaries of which have been ruins for a long time, the images which used to live therein and established for them permanent sanctuaries. I also gathered all their former inhabitants and returned them to their habitations.

Furthermore, I resettled upon the command of Marduk, the great lord, all the gods of Kiengir and Akkade whom Nabonidus had brought into Babilani to the anger of the lord of the gods, unharmed, in their former temples, the places which make them happy.

Now, check out the Jews’ own version of this in Ezra 1: 1-8 in the Hebrew Bible...

“In the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia, in order to fulfill the word of the Lord spoken by Jeremiah, the Lord inspired King Cyrus of Persia to issue this proclamation throughout his kingdom, both by word of mouth and in writing: “Thus says Cyrus, king of Persia: “All the kingdoms of the earth the Lord, the God of heaven, has given to me, and he has also charged me to build him a house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Whoever, therefore, among you belongs to any part of his people, let him go up, and may his God be with him! Let everyone who has survived, in whatever place he may have dwelt, be assisted by the people of that place with silver, gold, and goods, together with free will offerings for the house of God in Jerusalem.”

Corroboration.

The names of Israel, Judah/Judaea, Hebrew kings, etc. and so forth are also found in the records of the Jews’ ancient neighbors.

There are indeed many examples of this, but the last one I’d like to review for now before tying all of this together is one of my favorites. It involves the Arab claim that they were the original “Palestinians.”

There was no country or nation known as “Palestine” during the time of Jesus. The land was known as Judaea and its inhabitants were Judaeans… Jews.

Tacitus and Dio Cassius were famous Roman historians who wrote extensively about Judaea’s attempt to remain free from the Soviet Union of its day, the conquering Roman Empire. They lived and wrote during, or not long after, the two major revolts of the Jews in 66-73 C.E. and 133-135 C.E. They make no mention of this land being called “Palestine” or its people “Palestinians.” And they knew the differences between Jews and Arabs as well.

Listen to this quote from Vol. II, Book V, The Works of Tacitus:

“ Titus was appointed by his father to complete the subjugation of Judaea… he commanded three legions in Judaea itself… To these he added the twelfth from Syria and the third and twenty-second from Alexandria… amongst his allies were a band of Arabs, formidable in themselves and harboring towards the Jews the bitter animosity usually subsisting between neighboring nations…”

After the 1st Revolt, Rome issued thousands of Judaea Capta coins which can be seen today in museums all over the world. Notice, please… Judaea Capta… not “Palaestina Capta.” Additionally, to celebrate this victory, the Arch of Titus was erected and stands tall in Rome to this very day.

When, some sixty years later, Hadrian decided to further desecrate the site of the destroyed Temple of the Jews by erecting a pagan structure there, it was the grandchildren’s turn to take on their mighty conquerors.

The result of the struggle of this tiny nation for its freedom and independence was, perhaps, as predictable as that which would have occurred had Latvia taken on the Soviet Union during its heyday of power. Unfortunately, two thousand years later, the Jews are still in that same struggle.

Listen next to this quote from Dio Cassius:

“580,000 men were slain, nearly the whole of Judaea made desolate. Many Romans, moreover, perished in this war (the Bar Kochba Revolt). Therefore Hadrian in writing to the senate did not employ the opening phrase commonly affected by the emperors, ‘ I and the legions are in health.’“

The Emperor was so enraged at the Jews’ struggle for freedom in their own land that, in the words of the esteemed modern historian, Bernard Lewis…..

“Hadrian made a determined attempt to stamp out the embers not only of the revolt but also of Jewish nationhood and statehood… obliterating its Jewish identity.”

Wishing to end, once and for all, Jewish hopes, Hadrian renamed the land itself from Judaea to “Syria Palaestina"-- Palestine--after the Jews’ historic enemies, the Philistines, a non-Semitic sea people from the eastern Mediterranean or Aegean area..

So sorry Arabs...trying to hijack the latter’s identity as you’ve tried with that of the Jews won’t work either.

Corroboration.

And now (drum roll please), let’s see what all of this has to do with Chanukah…

In the ‘70s, while a grad student at the Kevorkian Center For Near Eastern Studies (a consortium of Princeton, Columbia, and New York Universities based at N.Y.U’s Washington Square campus), I had the privilege of having Dr. F.E. Peters as one of my professors.

A leading expert of the ancient Near East (along with other related subjects as well), one of his specialties was ancient Greece.

Fluent in the language and immersed in the primary sources, Peters’s The Harvest Of Hellenism largely supports the Jews’ own accounts of their struggle for independence against their latest conqueror, the Seleucid successors to Alexander the Great. After the latter’s death, his generals fought for the pieces of the pie. Ptolemy wound up with one of the main prizes, Egypt.

Listen to these scattered quotes from Peters, who devoted a good portion of this over 800-page book to the same subject found in the Jews‘ own writings in the First and Second Books of Maccabees.

“ The Seleucids, like all other Hellenistic monarchs, with the exception of the Macedonian Antigonids, were worshipped as gods…Jew and Hellene clashed on the issue of conduct…Hellenism could allow almost any eccentricity in private behavior…however…the polis found it difficult to accept a large-scale and public refusal to share in its life and rites.”

Whatever else may or may not have happened in Judaea during the time of Antiochus IV Epiphanies (“the god made manifest”), and while the good professor takes issue with some aspects of the Jews’ own accounts, both he and Jewish tradition agree that the clash he himself wrote about above inevitably led to the first war ever fought--at least partially--over religious freedom.

Proclaiming yourself a god among pagans was one thing. They could just add Antiochus to a long list.

But to do this with Jews, whose religion teaches that no man--regardless of how great--could be divine was explosive. Add to this his attempt at squashing their attempt to retain their own way of life and religious practices, and the revolt of the Maccabees became inevitable.

Here’s the Roman historian, Tacitus (Volume II, Book V), again, a few centuries later on the same subject, writing after the Jews next took on the Romans:

“The Jews acknowledge one God only, and conceive of him by the mind alone, condemning, as impious, all who, with perishable materials, wrought into the human shape, form representations of the Deity. That Being, they say, is above all, and everlasting, neither susceptible of likeness nor subject to decay. In consequence, they allow no resemblance of Him in their city, much less in their temples. In this way they do not flatter their kings, nor show their respect for their Caesars.”

That above passage, by the way, explains the main schism between Judaism and Christianity as well.

Corroboration.

At a time when the Jew of the Nations--who was making history and causing a revolution in religion, ethics, and morality millennia before most peoples made their historical debuts--still has to fight for its right to take its place among those newcomers on the world scene, the story of Chanukah and its message of rededication is as important today as it was when Judah the Hammer took on his mighty pagan rulers over two thousand years ago.

Chag sameach!

Happy Chanukah!

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Let's talk (It's time to Shaft The Jews And Kurds Again...)

Let’s Talk…

by Gerald A. Honigman

Lots has been said by both this author and others about that much-anticipated report from the Baker-Hamilton Commission regarding America’s next moves in Iraq. So I’m not planning on just repeating more of the same… I hope.

Driving to work today, I happened to hear former Senator Alan Simpson--one of Baker’s current Iraq teammates--being interviewed on one of Al Jazeera’s American soul mates, National Public Radio.

Repeating what we’ve known through leaks weeks ago, he once again stressed the Iraq Study Group’s emphasis on chatting with Iran and Syria, Iraq’s neighbors, to attempt to seek their assistance.

Now, I’m a reasonable sort of guy…really.

Hey--what’s wrong with talking, after all?

Well, here’s the problem…

Syria and Iran are not reasonable chatting partners. That is, unless one believes that some thirty million stateless Kurds and the Jew of the Nations must once again consent to be sacrificial lambs to Arab interests (and those who become rich tied to them).

And the other problem involves who will do the chatting with them.

Will it be the Baker types and the State Department--who all have a history of shafting Jews and Kurds repeatedly, demanding a 22nd state for Arabs while knowing full well of its murderous intentions--regardless of who is at the helm--towards Israel…and using and abusing Kurds to further American interests, yet denying them the exact same rights freely offered to jihadist Arabs who have suppressed and massacred hundreds of thousands of them over the past century?

Big problem...

Even so, let’s consider a chat.

Let’s first take on our conversation with Iran.

Here’s a few things the Baker Crew are likely to leave out--not that they don’t know them, just that they won’t really enter into their equation. Sort of like Condi’s “assurances” that Hizbullah would be disarmed after the recent war in Lebanon. Some empty words may be uttered, but unless there’s a huge outcry against what’s now being brewed, that’s about the extent of it. Hizbullah, by the way, is now poised for a takeover of Lebanon.

For starters, while Iran calls for Israel’s destruction and the creation of another Arab state in Palestine (Jordan created out of some 80% of the original April 25, 1920 Mandate), why doesn’t it first allow the creation of another Arab state in Arabistan--Iran’s oil-rich Khuzestan province which Arabs have been the majority in and ruled for centuries, up until the early 20th century? Even the Iranians frequently called it Arabistan. While I don’t really think America will endorse this, it wouldn’t hurt to throw hypocrisy into their holier-than-thou faces.

And since Iran is so worried about the plight of Arabs outside of Iran, why does it continue to suppress and/or massacre thousands of Arabs, Kurds, Baluchis, Jews, Azeris, and others within its own borders?

As far as the mullahs go, whom do they think they’re kidding?

Anyone with functioning neurons knows they’re gloating over the prospect of setting up the Islamic Republic of Iraq right next door. They’re already deeply enmeshed in attempting to bring this about, supporting the main Iraqi Shi’a militias as they do Hizbullah in its attempt to accomplish likewise in Lebanon. And what a nice postscript to the bloody war fought with Saddam’s Iraq (largely over Arabistan/Khuzestan) in the ‘80s!

So, just what does Baker think he can offer to convince them to stop what they see as now inevitable?

From a military perspective, I could think of a few things to bring up to try to convince them--especially since they’re determined to become a nuclear power. But that comes with risks too.

And who, pray tell, is the chief arms supplier, trainer, and benefactor of Hizbullah, Hamas, and other groups on the front lines of carrying out the mullahs’ aim of the extermination of Israel?

Turning to the Syrians, we know quite well what they want. And Baker already promised them this decades ago while Secretary of State to George the First.

Having largely instigated the June ‘67 War which lost them the Heights--from which they blasted Jews below for over a decade--they now expect a complete return of the Golan.

Understand that such a deal would yield Israel the same “peace” it got after a complete withdrawal from Gaza and from Lebanon…and with thousands of Syrian tanks, missiles, and such ready to launch or roll down hill into Israel proper. Recall, as well, that Israel indeed offered--more than once--almost a complete return of the Heights for true peace. The latest offer’s exception covered a tiny area Israel needed to insure the protection of its water sources.

Besides Israel, Syria is determined--with Iran’s help--to have its way with Lebanon as well--a nation whose independence it has never truly recognized. Is there really any need to rehash further Syrian machinations on this matter?

Or Syrian-Iranian collaboration on all of these issues?

Additionally, with the eventual disintegration of Iraq (in many ways, the Yugoslavia of the Middle East) expected, Syria may also be eyeballing the oil wealth of the Kurdish north…as Turkey most certainly is as well.

So, coming back to where we started, what shall we chat about with these two nations so diametrically opposed to all that most Americans really value and stand for?

And note, I said most Americans.

If we let those, like Baker, who make millions by befriending such murderous despots, to set the course for our foreign policy by delivering our friends up to them on silver platters, not only will this backfire on us, but we will have lost any semblance of morality still left in that foreign policy.

While there’ s no doubt that American plans and strategy for Iraq need a fix (and I’ve long written about this myself), shafting Jews and Kurds, first of all, won’t bring this about and, second of all, will bring nothing but shame to us in the long run.

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