Kurds, Jews, And Shi\u2019a Shoes
\n by Gerald A. Honigman<\/p>\n
As I\u2019m sure you\u2019ve heard by now, on a recent surprise visit to Iraq, President Bush had to duck when a Shi\u2019a Arab journalist threw shoes at him in protest of American policies and presence in Iraq. During a news conference, Muntadhar al-Zaidi yelled out, “this is a gift from the Iraqis, a farewell kiss, you dog” and fired away. Thrown shoes and dogs are about as low as you go in the Arab world. Forget about “Marley and Me,” “Rin Tin Tin,” or “Old Yeller”.<\/p>\n
I wish I could say that I was shocked by this disrespect usually reserved for such folks as the tolerant Arabs\u2019 “kilab yahud”\u2014Jew dogs. I wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
Polls show that most Arab Iraqis\u2014especially Shi\u2019a\u2014supported al-Zaidi. While he was roughed up by those with a stake in the current regime, those later reports reveal the pulse of the nation. While the Sunni have no love for America either\u2014they were Saddam\u2019s folks\u2014they now fear what\u2019s in store for themselves later on.<\/p>\n
While estimates of the dead vary (some hundreds of thousands), the 60% of Iraq who are Shi\u2019a had their own aspirations suppressed only via the iron fist of the Sunni Arabs\u2019 Saddam. He employed the same murderous tactics against them as he did with non-Arab Kurds in the north. Similar bloody actions against others in neighboring Iran by the majority non-Arab, Persian Shi\u2019a are probably not a bad model for what to expect after America leaves a Shi\u2019a-dominated Iraq as well \u2026Payback time, so to speak. And don\u2019t expect a President Obama to move back in.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, the Kurds will also be caught up in this murderous, age old Arab feud. The one thing both Shi\u2019a and Sunni Arabs can agree on (just like with Israel, the black African Sudan, Berber North Africa, and elsewhere) is that Kurds should have no claims on alleged \u201cpurely Arab patrimony.\u201d<\/p>\n
Having supported America\u2019s move against Saddam, decades of intense study, publication in academic journals and elsewhere, and involvement with the region still made me very wary. <\/p>\n
While the Arabs owed Great Britain a huge debt for the very creation of a united, Arab-ruled Iraq out of the post-World War I Mandate of Mesopotamia, this didn\u2019t stop them not long afterwards from rising up against what they only saw as British imperialism. <\/p>\n
No giving the devil his due here\u2026Use him then lose him. <\/p>\n
I can understand that. Too bad Arabs can\u2019t grant this same understanding to others though.<\/p>\n
Imperialism is only nasty when it\u2019s not Arabs dishing it out. How do you think the region became \u201cpurely Arab patrimony\u201d in too many an Arab mind?<\/p>\n
Without the Brits\u2019 involvement, the Turkish phoenix rising under Ataturk from the ruins of the centuries\u2019 old Ottoman Empire would have surely grabbed the oil-rich region around Mosul (which it formerly ruled) and probably would have extended its claim to the black gold of Kirkuk as well. <\/p>\n
To make the new prospective Arab state viable (the British navy had recently switched from coal to oil and was the main arm of the British Empire), the Brits had to attach the oil of the Kurdish north to the Sunni Arab center and Shi\u2019a Arab oil of the south. <\/p>\n
In the process of siring the Middle East\u2019s version of Yugoslavia, London thus shafted Kurds out of the best chance they ever had at regaining their own independence\u2026something the Brits had promised them earlier as well.<\/p>\n
After having their very country created and handed to them by the Brits (who also supplied aircraft and such to fight the Kurds), the Arabs soon revolted to try to drive the Brits out.<\/p>\n
Granted, imperialism has its nasty side, and the Brits created an Arab Iraq for their own reasons, yet still\u2026 <\/p>\n
So, the point here is that America should have known not to expect any gratitude from most Iraqi Arabs either. Hence the thrown shoes, the thrower now a national hero, and so forth.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s yet another angle to this\u2026<\/p>\n
Think of all the American blood, lives, money, and other aid which have been spent for the sake of Arabs in Iraq, giving them new freedoms which they have never had.<\/p>\n
Trillions of American dollars will be spent before it\u2019s over, billions each month. Visit a local VA hospital to see just some of the other tragic, lasting costs\u2026That shoe-thrower who called President Bush a dog would have literally been fed to the dogs if he tried that trick with the man America freed him from. The innocents who died whom the shoe thrower complained about mostly died because of the same cowardly Arab trick Israel deals with daily. Arabs love to use their non-combatants as human shields\u2026against the Geneva Conventions, and so forth. They shoot and then run behind the skirts of their women and toys of their kids.<\/p>\n
Was\/is America hoping to get something positive for itself as a result of its Iraq expenditures? Sure\u2026But does that erase the above truisms?<\/p>\n
Think about those anti-Israel voices quick to protest about two billion dollars in aid sent to Israel each year\u2026an investment whose return comes back to us positively in many ways.<\/p>\n
The current war in Iraq costs America more (for the sake of Arabs who mostly hate us as \u201cinfidels\u201d in a context of a war for their Dar ul-Islam) in one week than Israel gets in foreign assistance in one year. And, in exchange for that assistance, the State Department feels it has the right to pressure Jews into suicidal concessions.<\/p>\n
America has already spent about $500 billion dollars for Iraq, with much more set to come. <\/p>\n
It would take Israel centuries to get this much aid from America. And Israel doesn’t ask for American blood to be shed on its behalf or to be bribed to display America’s own values and democratic inclinations. How long will the latter last among Arabs after America’s exit from Iraq? <\/p>\n
Ironically, the one people in Iraq who better share our values–the Kurds–are the folks the Arabist James Baker types in the State Department are determined to shaft yet again on behalf of Arabs who want to be sure that oil in Kurdish lands remains part of the “purely Arab patrimony.” <\/p>\n
Sound familiar? <\/p>\n
Same shafting game you read above\u2026just different shafters. <\/p>\n
While I didn\u2019t vote for the Obama-Biden ticket largely because of the long list of known anti-Semitic and anti-Israel friends and advisors Obama has aligned himself with (he\u2019s already brought several into his future Administration), Senator Joe Biden has a better understanding of the Yugoslavian nature of Iraqi demographics than most politicians. <\/p>\n
I\u2019m hoping against the odds that he\u2019ll pull more weight than the shaft the Jews and the Kurds Arabist types which are all-too-common in the State Department (and among Obama\u2019s buddies) which Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton will soon be leading. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Kurds, Jews, And Shi\u2019a Shoes by Gerald A. Honigman As I\u2019m sure you\u2019ve heard by now, on a recent surprise visit to Iraq, President Bush had to duck when a Shi\u2019a Arab journalist threw shoes at him in protest of … Continue reading