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Hezbollah, PKK
and American Hypocrisy
By Gwynne Dyer
10/31/07 "Arab
News" -- - Fifteen
months ago, the armed wing of Lebanon’s Hezbollah party, listed
as a terrorist organization by the United States and most other
Western countries, attacked Israel’s northern border, capturing
two Israeli soldiers and killing eight more. Israel replied with
a month of massive air attacks all across Lebanon that destroyed
much of the country’s infrastructure, leveled a good deal of
south Beirut, and killed around a thousand Lebanese civilians.
Washington, London, Ottawa and some other Western capitals
insisted that this was a reasonable and proportionate response,
and shielded Israel from intense diplomatic pressure to stop the
attacks even when Israel launched a land invasion of southern
Lebanon in early August, 2006. The operation only ended when
Israeli casualties on the ground mounted rapidly and the Israeli
government pulled its troops back.
So what would be a reasonable and proportionate Turkish response
to the recent attacks by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK),
listed as a terrorist organization by the United States and most
other Western countries, from northern Iraq into southeastern
Turkey? More than forty Turkish civilians and soldiers have been
killed in these attacks over the past two weeks, and a further
eight Turkish soldiers were captured.
Well, it would be unreasonable for Turkey to bomb Iraq, where
the PKK’s bases are, for any more than one month. It would be
quite disproportionate for the Turkish Air Force to level more
than a small part of Baghdad — say, 15,000 homes. Ideally, it
should leave Baghdad alone and restrict itself to destroying
some Kurdish-populated city in northern Iraq near Turkey’s own
border. Moreover, when the Turks do invade Iraq on the ground,
they should restrict themselves to the northern border strip
where the PKK’s bases are.
What’s that? Washington is asking Turkey to show restraint and
not attack Iraq at all? Even after the Kurdish terrorists killed
or kidnapped all those Turkish people? Could it be that Turkish
lives are worth less than Israeli lives?
Never mind. At least the United States officially classes the
PKK as a terrorist organization and refuses to let its officials
have any contact with it. But what’s this? There is a parallel
terrorist organization called the Party for Free Life in
Kurdistan (PJAK), essentially a branch office of the PKK, also
based in northern Iraq, which carries out attacks into the
adjacent Kurdish-populated region of Iran, and the United States
does not condemn the PJAK? It even sends its officials to have
friendly chats with the PJAK terrorists? How odd!
The PJAK’s leader, Rahman Haj-Ahmadi, paid an unofficial visit
to Washington last summer. One of his close associates, Biryar
Gabar, claims to have “normal dialogue” with US officials,
according to a report last Tuesday in the New York Times — and
the American military spokesman in Baghdad, Cmdr. Scott Rye,
issued a carefully structured nondenial saying that “The
consensus is that US forces are not working with or advising the
PJAK.”
Biryar Gabar also said that PJAK fighters have killed at least
150 Iranian soldiers and officials in the past three months.
That’s a lot more people than the PKK have killed in Turkey in
the same time, and yet neither Washington nor any other Western
country has expressed sympathy for Iran. Could it be that
Iranian lives are worth even less than Turkish lives?
And here’s something even more peculiar. Iran, like Turkey, is
already shelling Kurdish villages on the Iraqi side of the
frontier that it suspects of sheltering or supplying the PKK/PJAK.
How come President George W. Bush and Vice President Richard
Cheney simply ignore these actions, when they have been working
hard for the past year to build a case for attacking Iran? As
Pat Buchanan noted on MSNBC’s “Hardball” last week: “Cheney and
Bush are laying down markers for themselves which they’re going
to have to meet. I don’t see how.”
The US military “assets” for an attack on Iran are all in place,
so it can’t be that. Maybe the delay means that Bush and Cheney
are having difficulty in persuading the military professionals
to go along with this hare-brained scheme. Most senior American
military officers see an attack on Iran as leading to inevitable
failure and humiliation for the United States, and the last
thing the White House wants is a rash of US generals resigning
in protest when it orders the attack.
On the other hand, Bush is still the commander-in-chief, and how
many American generals resigned when he committed the somewhat
lesser folly of invading Iraq? Only one, and he did it very
quietly.
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