COUNTDOWN TO ANOTHER INEFFECTIVE INVASION?

"For many Turkish intellectuals, freedom of speech has become a struggle in North America as well as in our native country. What is happening to me now could happen to any scholar who dissents from the official state version of history."
~Taner Akcam.

Dogu Ergil has some information on possible upcoming Turkish operations in South Kurdistan, at Zaman:

After a meeting of retired Gen. Joseph Ralston, US special envoy on countering the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) -- a title that the Turkish press has transformed into “special envoy for counterterrorism” -- held on Jan. 29 with Massoud Barzani, the president of the Kurdistan regional government, and his vice president, Kosrat Rasul, Turkey has reportedly been given a green light from the US to attack PKK positions on the Kandil Mountain.

The same sources say that the military invasion will start in the beginning of April 2007. This was critical news that both the Turkish establishment and a part of the public have long been anticipating.

Will it bring relief as expected? Or will the operations get rid of the gangrene that is referred to as the “Kurdish problem”? That remains to be seen. However both the Americans and the Turkish establishment must be quite relieved to have convinced the Kurdish leaders of Iraq to give the green light to a Turkish military operation on Kandil, where the PKK contingency camps are and from which it conducts armed forays into Turkish soil.

Getting "rid of the gangrene that is referred to as the 'Kurdish problem'" will only happen when Turkey finally genocides the last Kurd from Turkish-occupied Kurdistan; however he does question the effectiveness of yet another Turkish invasion of South Kurdistan. He is correct that Qandil is far from the border with Turkish-occupied Kurdistan and that it's not likely that the TSK will engage in infantry operations in the mountains against PKK. This leaves only air operations as an option, something that is not likely to have much effect on the gerîlas but will certainly result in casualties in the civilian population, as happened during Turkish bombing of South Kurdistan during the so-called "safe haven" of Operation Northern Watch.

Ergil mentions the cooperation that Barzanî and Talabanî have given to the Ankara regime during its military operations in South Kurdistan against the Kurdish gerîlas. What he does not mention is that the Southern leadership's cooperation with the Ankara regime against Northern Kurds began long before the 1990s or even the founding of the PKK in 1978. That cooperation goes back at least to 1971.

Referencing a survey of the Turkish population, it appears that the majority of over 300,000 respondents do not want a military engagement. Given that the Ankara regime has never been successful in its 20-odd military pacifications of Northern Kurds, and given that military engagements will never solve what is essentially a political problem, it looks very much like the Ankara regime, with US backing, is setting itself up for failure yet again.

Ergil recognizes that "[t]he US infatuation with dealing with terrorism through military means has reinforced the traditional Turkish attitude and allows no other option than organizing cross-border operations as if the root cause of the problem lies in Iraq." The fact that one of Lockheed Martin's directors is the "PKK coordinator" for Turkey and it should be brilliantly clear exactly what it is that fuels the American "infatuation." It is none other than the worship of the Dollar, as discussed by former CIA Istanbul base deputy chief, Philip Giraldi, last week:

Companies that make armaments need war to be profitable. Constant war is even better, producing an unending flow of money. President George W. Bush's 2002 National Security Strategy is best of all – with its embrace of a vaguely defined preemptive war doctrine and the promise of a series of unilateral wars.

[ . . . ]

The military industrial complex also sustains and feeds off the Bush administration's so-called "global war on terror," or GWOT. Most experts on terrorism would agree that the GWOT is largely a fiction created to simplify a multifaceted problem and heighten fear so that the flow of taxpayer money will continue unabated. Fighting terrorism worldwide, even where it does not exist, isn't cheap, particularly as the increasing reliance on contractors is much more expensive per man-hour than using full-time government employees.

Giraldi estimates that the War on Terror, Inc. has cost the American taxpayer approximately $200 billion since 2001, a figure which does not include military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. He figures that if there are 5,000 "terrorists" worldwide, the American taxpayer forks over an amazing $40 million per "terrorist." To reiterate, that figure does not include Iraq and Afghanistan. Giraldi adds the following observation:

No other country attacks terrorism in such a disproportionate fashion, and many of America's allies have successfully combated it using police and intelligence resources. . . . That's using an elephant to squash a fly. Considering that the fly can move a lot faster than the elephant, no victory is likely to happen soon, apart from the odd "Mission Accomplished" banner here and there.

Having lived and worked in Turkey, Giraldi might appreciate the irony of his remarks if they were spoken with Turkey as the subject instead of the US. According to Ergil, some 40,000 Mehmetciks will be involved in TSK operations in South Kurdistan in order to fight less than 4,000 Kurdish gerîlas which Turkey claims are resident in the South. I recommend a good long read of both articles. Giraldi in particular names names of think-tanks, corporations, and individuals associated with this for-profit orgy instigated by the military-industrial complex--along with Eisenhower's prophetic quote from 1961.

Over at ZNet, Taner Akcam has a recent article in which he explains the situation surrounding his detention by Canadian customs officials in February and the harassment he's undergone from Turkish fascists located in the US. He goes into detail about the efforts of three Gray Wolf organizations against him--the Assembly of Turkish American Associations, Tall Armenian Tale, and Turkish Forum--especially regarding their efforts to paint him as a "terrorist" by posting manufactured and photoshopped propaganda against him on sites like Wikipedia. They even tried to pass Taner Akcam off as a PKK gerîla.

But what does anyone expect of the same type of scum who murdered Hrant Dink?

Theoretically, it's always an honor to be passed off as a gerîla, but it's not so bad to be labeled a "terrorist-communist" either, especially when the labeling is done by the likes of the fascists at ATAA, Tall Armenian Tale, and Turkish Forum, but I understand the practical problems that such a label causes Akcam when dealing with Americans--especially the idiots working at American customs. After all, if it's not on American Idol, Americans don't know anything about it.

A last item also from ZNet, comes from Professor Edward Herman. Compare his piece on mass-murderer Richard Holbrooke with something posted recently on Rastî, about Holbrooke's visit to Maxmur. Keep in mind that Lockheed Martin's Joseph Ralston recently lied in his testimony to Congress regarding Kurds in general and Maxmur in particular. We also have Danny Fried's big lies about Maxmur during the recent US/Turkish attacks against Kurds in Europe.

It's clear that the US policy toward the refugees at Maxmur is to adopt the Ankara regime's lies about the camp being inhabited by "terrorists" and never mind the facts of the situation. The intention of the US is to forcibly repatriate the 11,000 refugees to Turkey as "terrorists."

We all know what that means, don't we?