First off, it’s sad to report that Hillary Clinton may have sabotaged the bill for recognizing the Armenian Holocaust. But with that told, this brings me to a most astounding revelation this week: that some conservatives were against the bill…becau….

“There is planning going on,” a Pentagon official said privately. “It’s just looking at what other options are available because there are serious operational impacts” if the Turks deny passage of US military supplies bound for Iraq.

The grandstanding over the past may have made Clinton personally feel better, but the Rwandan victims were no less dead.

A sure marker of a liberal: do something that makes a statement about yourself. Drive a Prius, condemn past/ancient bad deeds, become a vegetarian, take a “strong” stand in a manner that can’t possibly make a difference.

The danger in this philosophy (if it can be called that) is that these “statement” libs will likely vote for Hillary just because “it’s about time we had a woman running things.” And “I like what it says about me, that I’m brave enough to vote for a woman.” Without seroius consideration of the person, the idealogy, the policies she’ll promote, and the catastrophic repercussions.

Save me from those pale green pants with nobody inside them!

Just as an aside, you have an awful lot of confidence that poking ancient ethnic conflicts and starting brush wars will have predictable results to go around snarkily accusing others of “having it all figured out.”

I guess fighting proxy wars by favoring some parties over others in the Middle East has always worked so swimmingly in the past that it’s worth giving it another go, eh?

I did notice a complete lack of content in your “it’s time to reap what they so” post. I mean, “they deserve it” isn’t a reason, it’s an assertion unbacked by a reason. As far as the conditions being in our favor, it seems that others here aren’t so sure that cutting off a portion of our supply lines and opening more guerrilla fronts in this war is quite so delicious.

Merovign on October 16, 2007 at 8:48 PM

I don’t think I was the one who began the snark, but that’s neither here nor there. Bryan knows I respect his opinion regardless, things just get heated sometimes.

Plenty of world powers have played around in the middle east, but that’s just the nature of the Middle East. Middle Eastern countries themselves are constantly doing this. Why can’t we?

The assertion that, “It’s time they reap what they sow” needs no backing to anyone familiar with Iran’s proxy wars in Lebanon and Iraq, or Turkey’s extermination of the Greeks and Armenians, or simply with Islam. Little has changed in Turkish thinking since the days of the Ottoman empire, and Iran will soon be at war with somebody, either the Sunnis or Israel, or us through the terrorists they have in the U.S.

As somebody said above, anytime we need to intervene in the middle east, are we really sure we want to rely on Abdullah Gul and his ilk to keep some of our supply lines open? We put a man on the moon, but we can’t find a work-around for Turkey?

I have to strongly disagree with you on the whole premise of your argument, and I think it will come back to haunt you. It was the turks who committed the genocide, and it is the turks who have consistently engaged in not only denial of that fact, but the repression of those who seek to point out the truth of it.

The notion that we ought to play along with evil because our values and virtues are for sale every time we need an airbase, is abhorrent to everything America stands for. It is no different than news organizations who propagandize on behalf of dictators in order to ensure access. Why is it wrong for CNN to keep quiet about Saddam in the 90s, but it is not wrong for the US to keep quiet about the turkish genocide of armenians now? In both cases, you are talking about one party compromising its integrity in exchange for a bribe: access to either interviews or military bases.

I think you are criticizing this merely because the democrats have done it. Had the republicans condemned the genocide, I believe your post would have been different. I am extremely conservative, but I have to say the democrats were right on this one. We are not ar Turkey’s mercy, and you need to stop acting like we are dependent on them logistically. We aren’t. We conducted Iraqi Freedom despite Turkey having cut us off. We have other allies with coast-lines, like Israel and (you forgot this MAJOR one) KUWAIT. We have air bases in nations like Qatar. THAT is how we have kept the logistics in place.

Pandering to Turkey is not going to help our relations with them. Our relations have worsened because of the erosion of Turkey’s secularism, and because Turkey feels that oppression of the Kurds, LIKE THE ARMENIANS BEFORE THEM, are its right, and US forces have stopped them from doing this, which culminated in the humiliation of Turkish special forces which were on an assassination mission.

So we need to play this from a position of strength instead of kowtowing to the Turks. You USED to understand that Bryan.

Just as an aside, you have an awful lot of confidence that poking ancient ethnic conflicts and starting brush wars will have predictable results to go around snarkily accusing others of “having it all figured out.”

I guess fighting proxy wars by favoring some parties over others in the Middle East has always worked so swimmingly in the past that it’s worth giving it another go, eh?

I did notice a complete lack of content in your “it’s time to reap what they so” post. I mean, “they deserve it” isn’t a reason, it’s an assertion unbacked by a reason. As far as the conditions being in our favor, it seems that others here aren’t so sure that cutting off a portion of our supply lines and opening more guerrilla fronts in this war is quite so delicious.

They have more to lose if the Iranians become a nuclear hegemon than we do

Bryan

No, they’ll simply align themselves with Iran against us. As they’re doing anyway.
PRCalDude on October 16, 2007 at 5:38 PM

We know that Turkey assisted Israel’s strike on the Syrian nuclear processing plant in September.

Syria is a client state that answers to Iran.

My question is:

how is Turkey currently aligning itself with Iran? It seems to me that Turkey is currently aligning itself with Israel against Iran?

Where am I mistaken here?

I often lead off Quick Takes column’s with an interesting quote. However, this time around an excerpt from Winston Churchill’s Nobel Prize winning history of the Second World War seems more appropriate. It’s a catalog of lost opportunities at …

We’re in the middle of the war, right now, and contemplating a move that may start more wars, but it’s “too late to debate all that?” That’s where I get off this train, I guess.

You seem to have it all figured out, Bryan. Kurdistan has been essentially independent since we’ve been enforcing the no-fly zone, but Turkey was kept out by Saddam. Now that he’s gone, Turkey’s going to do something one way or the other.

You seem to want this resolution because you want it to start some new war with Iran somehow, er, by alienating Turkey. I don’t because I’d like to finish the one in Iraq at some point and we’re supplying that war through Turkey. If we fight Iran, chances are we’ll need the Turkey supply lines for that too.

Bryan, you’ve got a fundamental misunderstanding about the nature of war in the modern era, I believe. We won’t fight Iran. We’ll let the various ethnic groups do the fighting, not us. We’ll give them the money and whatever other support they require. They do the fighting.

If we fight Iran, chances are we’ll need the Turkey supply lines for that too. If we’re talking past each other, it’s because you keep targeting the wrong country

Turkey’s targeting us.

Here’s a thought: Why not maintain the Turkey alliance and use it against Iran? They have more to lose if the Iranians become a nuclear hegemon than we do.

This is a somewhat puzzling statement. Turkey, who has been all to eager to ally itself with IRan, is going to suddenly reverse course and help us fight Iran, (provided we drop the resolution passed by only Senate Dems), because we want to fight them? After they caused problems for us before the Iraq war?

They have more to lose if the Iranians become a nuclear hegemon than we do.

No, they’ll simply align themselves with Iran against us. As they’re doing anyway.

On the domestic side, what do you think Pelosi et al intend this resolution to do? Do you think they have any idea what the potential consequences are?

That’s the great thing about this idea. We don’t rely on the sub-morons in Washington to wage war. We give money to other people so they can wage war the way they see fit. The Kurds are not dumb.

Have you factored the Democrats’ likely response into Spengler’s dreams?

Worst case scenario, they side with Iran. They may do that when Bush leaves office anyway. They’ve shown every intention of doing so. This could take things out of their hands.

It’s too late to debate all that.

We’re in the middle of the war, right now, and contemplating a move that may start more wars, but it’s “too late to debate all that?” That’s where I get off this train, I guess.

It’s too late to debate something that hasn’t happened yet, but might happen if we make the wrong move. But it’s not too late to pass a resolution over something that we’ve already acknowledged 26 years ago and that happened 90 years ago. Ooook.

You seem to want this resolution because you want it to start some new war with Iran somehow, er, by alienating Turkey. I don’t because I’d like to finish the one in Iraq at some point and we’re supplying that war through Turkey. If we fight Iran, chances are we’ll need the Turkey supply lines for that too. If we’re talking past each other, it’s because you keep targeting the wrong country. If you want this Armenia resolution because it’ll touch off a war with Iran, well, I think that’s an insane way to go about doing that. Here’s a thought: Why not maintain the Turkey alliance and use it against Iran? They have more to lose if the Iranians become a nuclear hegemon than we do.

On the domestic side, what do you think Pelosi et al intend this resolution to do? Do you think they have any idea what the potential consequences are? Do you think they’ll do anything helpful when the bad things start happening after they pass it? Will they rally ’round the flag or just keep acting like the ignorant fools that we know they in fact are? They evidently don’t have a clue, though I do suspect that the resolution might be a back door way of screwing up the progress that’s being made in Iraq. If that’s right, and if they get what they want, how do you see the war that results from all of this progressing? Have you factored the Democrats’ likely response into Spengler’s dreams?

The best thing that can happen right now is either for the House to kill this resolution or for it to fail, and for Pelosi to take the hit for that. Passing it will go down as a serious mistake.

And that’s where the destabilization of Turkey comes in, kemosabe. You don’t get what you want without getting independence movements in all the Kurd territories, including Turkey. That’s why Turkey is contemplating moving into Iraqi Kurdistan even as we speak. You can’t hermetically seal off one Kurdish independence movement from the rest.

It’s too late to debate all that. We should have thought of that before we went into Iraq. The PKK, as Totten put it, doesn’t necessarily have the support of the rest of the Kurds. But the Kurdish issue should have been debated before we even went in. Too late now.

And how do we do that if we go around intentionally irritating them when they keep warning us not to. They’re allying themselves with Iran, right now, over this issue along with the PKK issue. That resolution is driving them away from us and toward Iran. How do we get from this point to “playing Turkey off of Iran?”

They can’t warn us not to do anything. They’re not powerful enough. What we need to do is show some backbone. We need to remind them how weak Iran is and the fact that they have much more to gain by leaving Kurdistan alone and perhaps ceding part of it to the Kurdish republic in an effort to divy up Iran. This would also give Turkey access to Caspian oil. Besides, the Azeris would much rather move closer to Europe than the Orient.

Nothing ever works out as cleanly as Spengler is making out — Oh, we’ll just swap this territory for that, etc. Spengler is being a fantasist.

Hardly. He’s being a pragmatist. Nothing ever works according to plan, but we do need to get rid of the Iranian mullahs and their nukes. Do you think another conventional war is going to do that?

For its part, the White House is not pressing Pelosi directly but is lobbying members of Congress individually. Perhaps the strategy there is to deal with members who aren’t as far to the left as Pelosi and aren’t as rigidly anti-Bush as she is either. Dealing directly with her would probably be counterproductive.

Trying to negotiate with Pelosi or work through her would help her maintain and improve her status. It does seem better to try to break off pieces of Pelosi’s faction; she seems likely to respond by trying to punish Democrats who disobey her, and to do it so vindictively that she makes angers her own people.

What we do need is an ethnic Kurdish separatist movement in Iran and greater Syria

And that’s where the destabilization of Turkey comes in, kemosabe. You don’t get what you want without getting independence movements in all the Kurd territories, including Turkey. That’s why Turkey is contemplating moving into Iraqi Kurdistan even as we speak. You can’t hermetically seal off one Kurdish independence movement from the rest.

So we could play Turkey off of Iran as well.

And how do we do that if we go around intentionally irritating them when they keep warning us not to. They’re allying themselves with Iran, right now, over this issue along with the PKK issue. That resolution is driving them away from us and toward Iran. How do we get from this point to “playing Turkey off of Iran?”

Nothing ever works out as cleanly as Spengler is making out — Oh, we’ll just swap this territory for that, etc. Spengler is being a fantasist.

Well, as I keep saying over and over again, supply lines. Our military needs a lot — a lot — of materiel to sustain itself, every single day. You can’t fly all of that in to the Baghdad airport or even from Israel; much of it has to come in by ship, and go overland into the combat zone. That’s what we’re doing now from Turkey, that awful ally that you want to intentionally destabilize by condemning the Ottoman genocide against the Armenians.

Ok. We’re partially talking past one another here.

We’re not destabilizing Turkey one iota with this resolution. Turkey knows full well that our government is a democracy and it’s not monolithic. It knows that Bush does not support the resolution, nor do the Republicans, likely. It would do what it’s doing anyway.

The logistic support of our troops is admittedly a problem, but we don’t need to throw any support behind the PKK. I was just using them to show that the Kurds can take care of themselves and that they’re likely not going to be wiped out if we don’t prevent them from defending themselves.

What we do need is an ethnic Kurdish separatist movement in Iran and greater Syria, which would likely take a lot of pressure off of us in Iraq, as Iran will have no choice but to react. You need Iran off balance, period. I don’t see another good way of doing that, and this is easy.

The logistic support of our troops is admittedly a problem, but not insurmountable. We still have the Sunni Gulf ports. They’d like a less powerful Iran just as much as we do.

The whole Spengler column turns on that statement, and he got it wrong. That’s enough to toss the whole thing out.

I deny that. This is the crux of his argument:

I am shocked, shocked to learn that the Democratic Party is engaged in politics. Col Peters, though, misses the big picture. With or without the Armenian resolution, conflict had to erupt with Turkey. Far more threatening to Turkey than the resolution on Armenian genocide was the 75-23 vote in the US Senate last month in favor of dividing Iraq into Sunni, Shi’ite, and Kurdish zones. Republicans as well as Democrats supported this resolution, and with good reason. I have advocated the breakup of the Mesopotamian monster named “Iraq” for years, and do not think this step can long be withheld.

This is another good point you ignored:

One should, of course, take Turkish interests into account. To restore its national dignity, Turkey should be encouraged to incorporate the Turkish-speaking (“Azeri”) minority of Iran, and so forth. Turkey ultimately may concede territory to an independent Kurdistan, but more than replace it by annexing portions of Western Iran. One cannot accord respect to failing nationalities; one can only let them fight it out. Breaking up Iraq will not foster stability. On the contrary, it will make the old instabilities a permanent feature of the regional landscape.

So we could play Turkey off of Iran as well.

I don’t agree. Why will our troops need to be evacuated if the Kurds in Iran and greater Syria attempt something?

Well, as I keep saying over and over again, supply lines. Our military needs a lot — a lot — of materiel to sustain itself, every single day. You can’t fly all of that in to the Baghdad airport or even from Israel; much of it has to come in by ship, and go overland into the combat zone. That’s what we’re doing now from Turkey, that awful ally that you want to intentionally destabilize by condemning the Ottoman genocide against the Armenians. We’re supplying the Iraq war from Turkey because a) it works and b) they let us. If they cut us off, sure, we have other allies in the area like Israel. But unfortunately, Israel isn’t next to Iraq and doesn’t really have great harbors to work with. We’re already using Kuwait and could push some more supplies in through there, but then we’re dependent on a single supply route, through Shia territory. How long will the Iranians let that go without attacking it? And don’t forget, Pelosi wants to deal with Iranian meddling only in Iraq. Who do you think she and the Democrats and most of the world will blame when things go south as a result of the destabilization of Turkey?

You don’t seem to be taking into account the effect that the destabilization of one of our strongest regional allies will have far outside Kurdistan, among all of our allies over there. One thing you can count on in the Middle East is the law of unintended consequences. There is no A causes B over there — it’s A causes B,C,D,E and F and most of those are negative even if B is positive and A was downright brilliant. The other thing you can count on is the brutality of the Turks and the Iranians. They won’t care about the rules of engagement that we limit ourselves to, and there won’t be an ACLU to hound them for every move they make. The Kurds will be slaughtered unless we defend them, and we can’t defend them without solid supply lines. The third thing you can count on is the fecklessness of the West, especially on the left. Put those known knowns together and what you’re proposing to touch off with this resolution has a very great chance of causing a huge number of problems far outside the zone that you know will be affected, and for years if not decades to come.

And that’s if you get the war that you say you want. If you get that war, you’ll probably get it and two or three others along with it.

I also want to put the Iranians on the defensive. Destabilizing Turkey doesn’t strike me as a wise way to go about doing that.

Tactics

The areas in which the group operates are generally mountainous rural areas and dense urban areas. The mountainous terrain offers an advantage to members of the PKK by allowing them to hide in a network of caves and making military air operations, especially helicopter use, hazardous for the Turkish Armed Forces. While in urban areas, PKK members are often able to blend in with the local population.

Sounds like another group we know of, doesn’t it?

The PKK: since 1978 and still going.

The Turks have a breathtaking sense of right and wrong because, of course, their Muslims. The Ottomans have no business in Anatolia whatsoever. They belong in central Asia. If they didn’t want a problem with the Kurds, Ataturk should have thought of that before he used them against the Armenians.

I stopped reading Spengler’s column right there. No one in the US government is claiming that the genocide wasn’t a genocide. No one. The US itself acknowledged it in 1981, at the very top of the government in a statement by President Reagan. If Spengler can’t get that fact right and work around it to make his point, I’m not going to take him seriously on the other things he has to say in it

Bryan on October 16, 2007 at 3:56 PM

Hey Bryan! I’ve been eavesdropping on your conversation with PRCalDude. While I agree with your position on this House resolution, I think you are misunderstanding Spengler’s statement in that article. He doesn’t say in that line that he doesn’t believe a genocide took place. In fact he states the opposite. Granted, I only looked at the quote and haven’t read the article yet, but he doesn’t appear to deny a genocide took place.

However, if the Middle East is going to open up into a full-blown war which is very possible with all of the outside interference going on over there (I fear this is what’s going to happen regardless of what we do) we may as well put ourselves into a position where we will be able to wage war and minimize US casualties. If this means letting them do most of the killing to each other, then this is what we should do.

It may be unpopular abroad, but if you haven’t noticed, we aren’t exactly winning any brownie points with our so-called “Allies”.

Americans come first!

As for whether the Kurds deserve ethnic cleansing, obviously not. But that’s what they’re going to get out of a Turk-Iranian alliance such as the one that’s developing right now.

The only way this could happen is if we hamstring the Kurds and prevent them from defending themselves.