Gerald A. Honigman is a Florida educator who has done extensive
doctoral studies in Middle Eastern Affairs. He has created and
conducted counter-Arab propaganda programs for college youth, has
lectured on numerous campuses and other platforms, and has publicly
debated many Arab spokesmen. His articles and op-eds have been
published in dozens of newspapers, magazines, academic journals and
websites all around the world. •
Read more by
Gerald A. Honigman
•
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September 3, 2013
Hey, television fans, did you hear the news?
That popular game show from the 1950s and
reincarnated both in the ’70s and ’80s, Name That
Tune, is set for yet another rebirth. This time,
with slight change in title, it will be led by none
other than former Secretary of State Hank
Kissinger–Change That Tune.
I figured so much. I mean, who more than Henry–Uncle
Sam’s Nicolo Machiavelli and Otto von Bismarck
combined–would be more deserving of such an honor?
Back in 1498, Nicolo Machiavelli, became the main
voice of modern political thinking. On the surface,
Bismarck’s later realpolitik was characterized by
“an enticing realism, but at its ruthless center was
the idea that with a worthwhile end one could
justify
any means.
For policy of State, power and practicality were to
trump ethics and ideals.
Machiavelli, Bismarck, Kissinger–the three amigos.
Perhaps the convincing act which won Kissinger his
new role of game show host was his speech this past
June 19th in New York City hosted by the University
of Michigan’s Gerald R.
Ford School of Public Policy.
Speaking about the Syrian civil war, among other
things, he offered that the best solution was to see
the “artificial state” of Syria dismembered into its
distinctive sectarian parts. You can watch the
video here .
Dr. Kissinger is correct in his assessment–but what
a change of tune!
While now calling for, among other things, separate
Kurdish, Alawi, and other states in what would be
the former post-World War I, post-Ottoman Turkish
Empire’s pieced together “Syria,” back in the ’70s,
Henry managed to greatly augment–if not actually
help orchestrate–the Iraqi Arab bloodbath which
would subsequently take hundreds of thousands of
Kurdish lives over the next
decades. Like
others before it, America came to specialize in
using and abusing the Kurds for its own
“interests”–especially with the ascendancy of Henry
Machiavelli von Bismarck.
As Henry would do when
Israel was attacked during this Jewish High Holiday
season forty years ago on Yom Kippur and (among
other subsequent treacherous moves) he decided to
withhold crucial resupplies for many days so that
Israel would bleed more to make it more pliable at
the end of the fighting,www.ekurd.net
he ruthlessly manhandled the Kurds as well. While
Arabs, Turks, and Iranians had also been engaged in
such murderous activities prior to this, the
lingering Kurdish tragedy intensified after what the
late, great New York Times columnist, William
Safire, called Kissinger’s betrayal and
sellout of the Kurds.
Kissinger saw to it that the Kurds would not
separate and would remain at the mercy of their
assorted
tormentors and butchers.
The New-York Times’ younger, duplicitous,
self-anointed expert, Thomas L. Friedman, while
repeatedly badgering Israel for the creation of
Fatahland (and/or eventually Hamastan), had a
similar message. While discussing Iraq, on March 26,
2003 he wrote, “what part of ‘no’ don’t you
understand? You Kurds are not breaking away.”
Recall that after the dissolution of the Turk’s
centuries’ old empire, the Kurds were promised
independence (included in one of President Wilson’s
famed “14 Points,” for example), but were sacrificed
on the altar of British petroleum politics and Arab
nationalism after London received a favorable
decision on the oil-rich Mosul region from the
League of Nations in 1925.
After the oil of the contested–but age-old,
predominantly Kurdish–north was attached to the
Brits’ Mandate of Mesopotamia, London abandoned the
Kurds like the plague. While there were some
Turkmen, Arabs, victimized Assyrians, and some
others there as well, the Kurds constituted the
majority of the area. Furthermore, Turks already had
a half dozen other states and Arabs possessed even
many more; they were/are not stateless peoples.
Justice for the Assyrians still remains an issue,
however, and most of the region’s ancient Jewish
community fled to Israel.
Largely to appease Arab oil potentates elsewhere
(the same ones who today fund and supply Sunni
Islamists fighting Assad and his Shi’a offshoot
Alawis in Syria), the region’s non-Arab Kurds saw
their one best chance for independence in the new
age of nationalism aborted. The Arab League state of
Iraq was created on the entire land instead, with
the Brits actively involved in the Arab fight
against the Kurds.
At the same time that real and proposed partitions
of the smaller Mandate of Palestine occurred so that
both Jewish and Arab aspirations could be addressed
(Jordan, for example, created on some 80% of the
original 1920 whole area in 1922), there would be no
such justice for anyone else but Arabs in all of
Mesopotamia. My doctoral research on this very
subject, from over three decades ago, can still be
found on recommended reference lists in academies
such as Paris’s acclaimed Institut d’Etudes
Politiques (Sciences Po).
While Kissinger now rationalizes about the wisdom of
allowing an “artificial” state of Syria to break
apart due to mutually exclusive and hostile human
elements which had been earlier forced together,
this reality rings even more true for Iraq. The
latter is indeed the former Yugoslavia of the Middle
East, with mutually hostile ethnic and religious
groups largely forced together after the collapse of
empires for other major powers’ interests.
As with the death of Yugoslavia’s Marshal Tito, it
was only a matter of time–with Saddam taken out of
the picture–that Iraq would follow along this same
disintegrating path. Sunni Arabs; Shi’a Arabs;
Assyrians, Armenians, and assorted other Christians;
Kurds; Turkmens; now gone Jews (there since at least
the Babylonian captivity); etc.
If Syria’s antagonistic, diverse groups depended on
a similar despotic iron fist to keep them united,
then why have folks like Kissinger insisted on
shafting the Kurds on their bid for a small slice of
the political justice pie in Iraq–something they had
indeed been promised earlier? Perhaps Henry has had
a change of heart and soul here as well. I doubt it.
Sure, there are always reasons among the
Machiavellis for shafting others this way.
Regarding Kurds, there’s
the hostility of the Turks, Iranians, Arabs and
related petro-politics. For Henry, among other
things, there was also Moscow to consider.
But, at some point, good people must insist on
injecting ethics and some semblance of relative
justice into policies of State as well.
If Arabs are deserving of almost two dozen
states–acquired mostly by the conquest and forced
Arabization of other, non-Arab peoples lands (going
on to this very day), how can the rights of others
in the region be allowed to be manipulated solely by
folks such as Henry Machiavelli von Bismarck?
When will an American President direct the Arabists
in his State Department to step aside while he
openly supports the birth of an independent
Kurdistan–like President Truman did in 1948 with his
fight with the Foggy Folks and others over the
rebirth of Israel?
When will an American President show leadership once
again and openly supply a new Kurdish state with the
fire power to adequately protect itself–which
Washington readily does for the oil potentates of
the Arabian Peninsula and for other Arabs in Iraq,
Egypt, Jordan, and elsewhere?
When will Washington wake up, look at the tragic,
barbaric mess which largely typifies the so-called
“Arab world” and, not only stop blaming Jews for
that mess, but also support folks like some forty
million Kurds who are America’s natural allies in
the region?
At a time when America is on the run in that
important, volatile part of the world, the Kurds
would likely welcome a major American base in the
region. Furthermore, the oil of the Kurdish north is
not insignificant–and there are now major fossil
fuel surprises coming out of Israel as well.
This does not have to be an either/or scenario.
The same way non-Arab–but Islamist–Turks insist that
Arabs get their 22nd state (by grossly endangering
Israel, forcing it back to indefensible, ’49
armistice lines), Washington must make it clear that
Turkey’s own twenty million or so Kurds, whom Ankara
renamed “Mountain Turks” and outlawed their very
language and culture, are also entitled to something
much better.
Ditto for the Turks’ fellow Iranian hypocrites–even
if the two are now on opposite sides of the Syrian
fight.
The ayatollahs lecture about creating that 22nd Arab
state on the ashes of Israel while some eight
million Ahwazi Arabs are subjugated, assassinated,
jailed, and so forth in Iran itself.
For whatever reasons, Kissinger’s new Machiavellian
moment seems to allow for the creation–among other
things–of an autonomous, perhaps independent,
Kurdish region in Syria. Surely, however, he knows
how the Turks will react to that–along with the
region’s other key players–almost all hostile to
justice for the Kurds.
So, what version of the tune will Henry play if
logic prevails, the Kurds actually get their act
together, seize the moment, put aside personal
fiefdoms, and work together for the bigger picture?
What song will Henry Machiavelli von Bismarck sing
if the previously Arabized and non-Arabized five to
seven million folks in Syrian Kurdistan link up with
the Kurdish Regional Government in Iraq (ancient
home of the great warrior, ruler, and terror of the
West, Salah ad-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub)–the best hope
Washington has as a counterforce to the likely
emerging Shi’a Islamic Republic of Iraq, Iran’s
little brother, and the Sunni al-Qaida-type folks
blowing everyone else apart there as well?
Will there be another change that tune if Ankara
decides to invade Kurdistan for fear of the Kurdish
headache spreading to its own far more numerous
Mountain Turks?
Again, here’s where true leadership is
required–preferably both in the White House and at
State. One more time: this does not have to be an
either/or scenario.
Kurdistan can be for Kurds like Israel, Greece,
Armenia, and other lands are to their own members
formally in respective diasporas.
Those Kurds who prefer to live in a Kurdish state
will, at long last, have one to go to. A perfect
solution, it will not be–for many reasons. But what
“perfect solution” exists anywhere–especially in
that part of the world? What compromises, for
example, have Arabs ever made with anyone else in a
region which they declare to be simply “purely Arab
patrimony?”
Of course it would be even more fair if chunks of
Turkey and Iran were also added to this solution. I
see the latter as separate, federated parts of a
single united Kurdish state, Kurdistan–some long
overdue justice, but a nightmare, indeed, for the
Kurds’ assorted oppressors. But why?
What set rule says that
the region’s scores of millions of Kurds (and other
subjugated folks as well) are not entitled to what
Arabs,www.ekurd.net
Turks, and Iranians already have? And why must such
eventualities result in hostility? Kurds live there
already–indeed, pre-date most of the conquerors of
their lands by millennia–so why can they not have
the same independence that the world demands for yet
another Arab state?
President Obama won’t hear about Israel getting what
the final draft of UNSC Resolution 242 promised it
after the June ’67 war–more secure, real borders to
replace the absurd, ultra-vulnerable ’49 armistice
lines. The most he talks about are land swaps.
So, why, for example, is it not fair for Kurds to
gain some of the southeastern parts of Turkey where
they pre-date the invading Turks by millennia?
The reason is that the Turks drew their lines in the
sand after their main realm was greatly truncated as
a result of World War I. They vowed never to retreat
further–especially with the loss of the oil-rich
Mosul region mentioned above. And the Iranian
mullahs will continue to exterminate–literally–any
such dreams on the eastern side of this picture as
well. Kurds are among those hung in Iran almost
daily.
So, in light of these realities, we must work for
what is possible–not what is fair.
If they feel seriously threatened, the Turks, will
send their NATO (and Israeli)-equipped armed forces
to squash a nascent Kurdistan.
The Kurds must thus show, as much as possible, that
relative justice for their own people translates
into a net plus for the entire region.
Perhaps someday the Turks and their friendly
neighbor, Kurdistan, can develop relations and
mutual respect to the point where something even
better might become possible. There is already much
trade going on between the KRG in Iraq and Ankara.
I’d like to bring Arabs into this positive picture
as well, but while I can hope, the odds against this
scenario are not very good. It would involve, for
most Arabs, an entire change in mindset.
Of course, what Washington and others choose to do
or not to do could have a major impact regarding the
fate of this almost forty million truly stateless
people. Kurdistan’s neighbors will be watching very
closely.
During the era of Henry’s major betrayal in the
’70s, Washington and Israel were also supporting the
Kurds–as a thorn in their friend, the Shah of
Iran’s, enemies’ side, Saddam’s Iraqi Arabs. The
Israelis supported Mulla Mustafa Barzani’s Kurds at
other times as well–but then also did likewise with
the Kurds’ arch Turkish enemies. The Jews thus need
to do better too. Of all peoples, they should
understand the plight of subjugated, truly stateless
victims. There must be no Israeli Machiavelli von
Bismarcks.
What will be will be.
Now, as I’m sure you’ve already guessed, Kissinger’s
game show job was just a fiction created for this
analysis.
But Henry Machiavelli von Bismarck’s change that
tune approach to current events in the Middle East
is nevertheless all too real–and not to be trusted.
By Gerald A. Honigman for EKurd.net, September 3,
2013. First published by Ekurd.net. You may reach the author via email at:
honigman6 (at) msn.com.
Gerald A. Honigman is a Florida educator who has
done extensive doctoral studies in Middle Eastern
Affairs. He has created and conducted counter-Arab
propaganda programs for college youth, has lectured
on numerous campuses and other platforms, and has
publicly debated many Arab spokesmen. His articles
and op-eds have been published in dozens of
newspapers, magazines, academic journals and
websites all around the world. Visit his
website at
http://www.geraldahonigman.com/
Gerald A. Honigman, a longtime contributing writer
and columnist
for Ekurd.net. Honigman has published a major book,
"The
Quest For Justice In The Middle East--The
Arab-Israeli Conflict In Greater Perspective."
Copyright © 2013 Ekurd.net.
All rights reserved
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