Damn... Just had some twit try to tell me.... (re Kurds)

[opiate69]

I just had somebody try to tell me that "those Kurds didn't do anything to 'that crazy Saddam'" Unbelievable..

[WMliberal]

1. wow

so he won't even give them that they were gassed? or saddam doing his best to starve them? alienate them? I thought the freepers were fond of waving the bloody kurd, in lieu of a bloody shirt

[opiate69]

2. No, no, no..

he's saying they were gassed, and tortured in all sorts of other sundry ways, but that they didn't do anything at all to provoke Hussein... that he just flipped out and killed them because they were "different" from him. I seem to remember hearing about attempted coups, revolutions, tacit support for Iran during the war, etc...

[WMliberal]

4. i seem to remember the brits drawing imaginary lines

in the sand in 1918, after the Ottoman empire was broken up and the ink on the Sykes-Picot agreement was still drying.
Why the fuck do we even need to keep "iraq" in one piece? it's a made up piece of crap by ignorant racist whites from almost a century ago. break it into 3 smaller countires is what i say

[nickgutierrez]

7. Slightly off-topic: I was thinking about this very thing earlier today

(America: The Book helped, but only peripherally :D)

What would the middle east look like had it not been for the practice of arbitrary border-drawing by the Brits? I can only assume the borders would be drawn almost entirely by ethnicity, right?

[WMliberal]

10. and religion

or if some warlord gets uppity.

[sandnsea]

6. yes, the Kurds supported Iran

Fought against Saddam. Just like the Shi'ites, that we had to go free who we're now killing. :crazy:

[Barney Rocks]

3. ummm what do

you think that the Kurds did to SH? My impression was that SH wanted to eliminate them because of their ethnicity. Kind of like what we did to the American Indians. If they did anything to deserve it I am unaware of this and certainly would like to be enlightened.

[shraby]

5. I think the only way they could have a

viable government is to have a triumvirate with Kurds, Shia and Sunni.

[Barney Rocks]

8. I think that is a very

good idea. I hope the people putting the government in place have the good sense to try to bring all these groups to the table.

[rhite5]

9. Saddam had never been able to keep the Kurds under his control.

It is a different ethnic group which had not been really connected to the Baghdad area - except loosely under the Ottoman Empire.
If anything, they identified more with the Turks.

The Brits decided where the boundaries of Iraq should be about 90 years ago. But the boudaries were not natural ones.

And I believe during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s they probably were helping the Iranians.

[madfloridian]

11. Here is a poignant bit by Trillin in his new book

"Obliviously On He Sails" (meaning Bush)

The Kurds are in the Way Again

The Kurds are in the way again,
And so to our dismay again,
If we begin a fray again,
And so it appears we may again,
It seems we must betray again
The Kurds: They're in the way again.

Calvin Trillin
March 2003

[Terran]

12. I don't understand: what do you find "unbelievable"?

As far as I know, the Kurds just wanted (and still want) their own nation; yes, they probably supported Iran in the Iran-Iraq war. It sounds like you think Saddam was somehow justified in whatever he did to them. Am I getting this right? Do you know about something they did that justified the apparent mass murder that Saddam committed against them?

Could this possibly be a case of trying to minimize Saddam's actual crimes as a way of bashing Bush? Really not a good idea...