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Lest anyone think Trump's sacrifice of the Kurds is exceptional, here's a bit from Kissinger's Shadow: "In the early 1970s, Kissinger had plotted with the Shah of Iran to destabilize Baathist Iraq by supporting the Kurds, providing them with weapons (supplied by Israel so as 1/6
not to alert the State Department) to wage an insurgent war for independence in northern Iraq. Kissinger didn’t expect the Kurds to triumph. He often complained about the unworkable size of the United Nations and the last thing he wanted was yet another member state ... 2/6
...(Bangladesh was bad enough). He just needed the Kurdish insurgency to provide enough pressure on Baghdad to give him leverage. But now in Dec. 1975, believing he had worked out a lasting pro-American balance of power between Iran and Iraq, Kissinger withdrew US support.. 3/6
...from the Kurds. Baghdad moved quickly, launching an assault on the Kurds that killed thousands and implementing a program of ethnic cleansing. Arabs were moved into the region and hundreds of thousands of Kurds were rounded up and forcibly relocated. According to ...4/6
a congressional committee - the Pike Committee - that later investigated Kissinger’s policy, Kissinger and Iran “hoped that our clients”- the Kurds- “would not prevail.” Rather, they wanted that “the insurgents simply continue a level of hostilities sufficient to sap the...5/6
resources” of Iraq.The prose of committee reports is often bland, but the next 2 sentences convey a cutting mordancy:'This policy was not imparted to our clients, who were encouraged to continue fighting.Even in the context of covert action ours was a cynical enterprise.”6/6
