Joe Biden Betrays the Kurds
On June the 1st, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that he intended to use his military to once again move against the multi-ethnic Syrian Democratic Forces in northern Syria. The Syrian Democratic Forces are the armed wing of the Rojava government, a sort of autonomous region that broke from the main Syrian government in 2014. The Rojava region is not wholly unfriendly to the Syrian Arab Republic, but is also not quite part of it. It is also not a party to the “Syrian Rebels” who have largely been absorbed by the Turkish occupation of northern Syria or the al-Qaeda presence in Idlib province. Once again, the SDF have been in opposition to both the rebels and the Syrian government, but have been more likely to cooperate with the Syrian government in the past.
The SDF are probably most famous for being the ground forces who, supported by U.S. air cover, drove the Islamic State from its capital of ar-Raqqa in 2017. I say these forces are multi-ethnic because, though the biggest component is Kurdish, the SDF also has many Arabs, Assyrians, Turkmen, and Armenians within. It is a nice snapshot of the ethnic diversity of Northern Syria and Iraq. However, the SDF are largely referred to as “Syrian Kurds” in the news, and this has seemingly been used by their enemies. I refer to how the Kurdish association allows the conflation the Kurdish-led SDF with the Kurdish Marxist terrorist organization, the PKK.
The PKK (Kurdish Workers’ Party) are Kurdish rebels in Turkey who fight for an autonomous Kurdistan in southern Turkey. Since 2015, the PKK have purportedly killed hundreds of people in sniping, IED attacks, and rocket attacks. I want to make clear that I believe the state of Turkey has the right to defend itself against PKK terrorists. That said, the PKK, to their credit, did help with the liberation of Northern Iraq and Syria from the Islamic State. However, just to demonstrate how complicated the Kurdish situation is, the Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga disassociated from the PKK after rising tensions.
I have not seen President Joe Biden say anything in condemnation of the announced Turkish offensive against Syria’s Kurdish-led SDF. I intentionally waited for seven days after the announcement to give him the chance. I suppose I should not be surprised, it was Joe Biden who gave his approval of the first such encroachment in 2016. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the current attack might, “…undermine regional stability (and) provide malign actors with opportunities to exploit instability.” However, nobody would have let Donald Trump off the hook for letting somebody else speak his indignation, so there is no need to give Joe the benefit of the doubt here. Considering how desperately NATO needs Turkey’s approval right now, I would not expect much.
Then again, I remember how the Democrats could not have cared less about those allies of ours until it provided them an opportunity to criticize Donald Trump in 2019. In particular, I remember the remarks of then former-vice president Joe Biden saying that Donald Trump, “betrayed our word as a nation” and that Trump was following the whims of “a fellow strongman.” He even felt the offense was enough to warrant an impeachment of the America First President.
Why bring up only Biden’s hypocrisy? There have been plenty others. Photojournalist Jason Motlagh was quite incensed against Donald Trump’s betrayal of the Kurds in 2019, but has remained noticeably silent this time. Since Motlagh is often reporting from warzones, perhaps he is just too busy. I might be able to accept such an excuse from him. However, I know that David Ignatius of the Washington Post does not have that excuse, nor does the editorial board of the Times of San Diego. Regardless of the hypocrisy, the journalists mentioned have done perfectly respectable work in the past and perhaps should be cut some slack for not paying attention to the Mideast while there is a war going on in Europe.
How about Donald Trump’s political foes? Chuck Schumer had some pretty strong words about betraying the Kurds in 2019, how about now? The only statement I found from him on June 1st was celebrating Pride Month. The same could be said of Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, and even Lindsey Graham. To be fair to Lindsey, this criticism of Putin might be seen as a tacit condemnation of Turkey, but I doubt it. The round of criticism for these people’s silence is strangely tepid with only a few people doing such.
Mitch McConnell criticized Trump for “only [benefitting] Russia, Iran, and Assad.” However, I suppose abandoning the Kurds only benefits Russia when Trump does it. Then again, the SDF has expressed interest in getting closer to the Syrian government if the Turks attack, which was not something they did in 2019. I may not have been a fan of Donald Trump’s decision in 2019, but it seems to me that the ramifications could well be much more serious this time around. Of course we will not hear the thunders of condemnation of President Biden for his silent approval of Turkish encroachment; that would be in violation of the “America’s back!” narrative.
I will let the sitting President describe my opinion on this matter in his own words:
“[He] sold out the Syrian Democratic Forces -- the courageous Kurds and Arabs who fought with us to smash ISIS’s caliphate -- and he betrayed a key local ally in the fight against terrorism. But that’s not all -- he betrayed our brave troops, who sacrificed alongside them. He betrayed our word as a nation -- raising doubts among our allies around the world about America’s security commitments.”
Israel And Kashmir: A Replay From The Islamist Dissimulation Playbook
Jerusalem, in Israel, and Kashmir, in India, have a common tie that binds: Muslims and their political allies in the West are diligently working to erase the long-standing Jewish ties to Jerusalem and Hindu ties to Kashmir by claiming that the subsequent Muslim invasions of both those regions preempt all other claims to the land—and by portraying themselves as victims of Jewish and Hindu imperialism.
The Jewish Bible mentions Jerusalem 669 times and Zion 154 times. The Christian Bible mentions Jerusalem 154 times and Zion seven times. The Quran does not mention Jerusalem even once. But Islamists assert their claim over the Holy City, particularly over the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque. These two monuments stand atop the Temple Mount, the site of Judaism’s most sacred First Temple—built in 957 BC, almost 2,000 years before the Ummayads erected the Muslim shrines. Muslims and their allies have engaged in a systematic campaign since the 1920s to erase the Jewish connection to the site and its ancient Jewish religious significance. Not only that, every Israeli action against jihadists is painted as an act of oppression through narratives that invert reality, a Quran-sanctioned strategy of dissimulation called taqiyya.
Islamists have been using the same strategy against Kashmiri Hindus in India since the late 1980s. It has intensified in the past few years. The goal is to legitimize and mainstream a Muslim identity for Kashmir, which has nursed Hinduism from 1500-1200 BC when the Vedas or Hindu scriptures were written.
The onslaught, in which the left-liberal dominated Western media is complicit, is multipronged: refer to Kashmir as Muslim territory, as if its history began with the forced conversions of Hindus from the 14th century onwards; call Kashmir an “occupied territory” and India an oppressor; declare legislation and other actions strengthening India’s hold over Kashmir draconian; blow up random incidents of violence against Muslims and present them as large-scale conspiracies; and accuse Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi of planning the exclusion and eventual elimination of India’s 12% Muslim population.
Image: The ~2,200-year-old Hindu Shankaracharya Temple dedicated to Shiva in Kashmir, with the ~627-year-old Khanqah-e-Moula mosque attached to it by Didier Lamouche. CC BY-SA 4.0.
A calumnious fiction with a Nazi-inspired name—‘Modicaust’—has been created. Islamists hope the equation with Hitler will sully Modi’s image and cause his defeat, bringing in a government that will loosen India’s hold on Kashmir, which the Modi government has tightened. Pakistan, which can’t win a conventional war with India, has fed this narrative, cultivating Islamists in America and left-liberals in the Western media and academia.
The mindset favoring Islamists is evident even in reports about books. Last month, while reporting on Gitanjali Shree’s novel Tomb of Sand winning the Booker Prize in the New York Times, cultural reporter Alex Marshall referred to “India’s partition from Pakistan,” denying in a few strokes on the keyboard the region’s 3,500-year-old Indic culture. The NYT has since added a “correction” but, when an erudite cultural reporter commits such an “error,” there is reason to suspect willful distortion.
Marshall’s choice of words amplifies recent attempts by American Islamists and their sympathizers to raise false alarms about a looming genocide of Muslims in Kashmir and other parts of India, whose government they have repeatedly described as “Hindu majoritarian.” In fact, it’s the Hindus in Kashmir who suffered forced conversions and seven exoduses imposed by Muslim rulers over 600 years. From being a majority in Kashmir before Muslims arrived, Hindu Pandits now constitute hardly 3% of the population.
Since becoming prime minister in 2014, Modi has abrogated Article 370, which granted special status to the Indian state of Jammu & Kashmir. Under Article 370, it had a separate constitution, its own criminal laws, and a flag, and its residents enjoyed a host of benefits. He also abrogated Article 35A, which defined “permanent residents” of Kashmir and granted them privileges, including property ownership rights denied to other Indians in the state. Article 35A promoted Kashmiri insularity through a sexist rule that took away property rights from female “permanent residents” who married non-residents. In addition, Modi has acted against Kashmiri politicians and those in the media who amassed wealth over the troubled decades by playing sides craftily with terrorist groups, Pakistan’s ISI, and the Indian state, and on the seminar circuit.
In 2019, Modi outlawed triple talaq, a feature of shariah law that allows Muslim men to divorce their wives by merely pronouncing “talaq” three times. He is pushing a uniform civil code of personal laws with no special benefits for any religious group. His government has fast-tracked citizenship for persecuted Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, Buddhists, Jains, and Parsis from neighboring Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan through the Citizen Amendment Act (CAA). The CAA in no way restricts citizenship; any foreigner may apply through normal channels. But American Islamists and their cohorts have seized upon these reforms to project the disingenuous case of Muslim victimhood in India.
Among the organizations of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) promoting these false narratives are the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), the U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO), and the Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC). ISNA and CAIR were co-conspirators in the U.S.’s largest terror funding trial—the U.S. vs. Holy Land Foundation case—and were found guilty of providing material support to Hamas. The USCMO was involved in funding the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and the Taliban, and the IAMC has collaborated with CAIR to condemn the State Department’s omitting India from the list of “countries of particular concern.” Both organizations allege that “hate crimes” against minorities have made India a threat to democratic values and Muslims worldwide.
These organizations and their mouthpieces, which themselves espouse “civilizational jihad,” falsely accuse Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of promoting division. They allege there are calls to ostracize Muslims or target them for violence and describe India as unsafe for Muslims and Christians. A recent issue of ISNA’s magazine, Islamic Horizons, describes Modi as a reincarnation of Hitler and claims that Hindu nationalists see themselves as “Aryans.” An earlier issue contained articles accusing India of “othering” Muslims and subjecting them to “Orwellian loyalty oaths” and said the Modi regime is guilty of “rampant ethno-nationalism.” The magazine alleged that scholars invited to a conference on “Dismantling Global Hindutva,” organized by Islamists and radical Leftists, received more than “a million emails threatening death, rape and/or bombs.”
Articles also claim that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a social service organization in India that has demonstrated tolerance of Muslims, idolizes Hitler. They accuse the Hindu American Foundation (HAF) of taking its “Hindu supremacist” agenda to the U.S. public school system and using the American justice system to sue scholars who criticize Modi, his party, and the RSS. Despite evidence that Muslim leaders intent on fomenting trouble provoked recent riots in Delhi, the magazine described the events as “pogroms” against Muslims. It alleges that Muslim women are “put up for auction,” that Muslims are lynched frequently, that those who attack Muslims are “applauded as heroes,” and that some states have outlawed marriage between Muslim men and Hindu women. All untrue. The intention is clear: demonize Hindus and project Muslim victimhood.
As early as 1948, the year after India and Pakistan came into being, India had complained to the U.N. about Pakistan’s occupation of parts of Kashmir. But the U.N. remained indifferent. Now, when Islamists have complained that India is illegally occupying Kashmir, stripped it of its autonomy, and subjected it to blackouts and lockdowns, the U.N. Human Rights Organization, under the influence of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), cites Indian action against planned riots and terrorist activity in Kashmir as oppressive and undemocratic—even though the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which India has ratified, allows states to impose restrictions to protect public order.
India is the victim of bad international press on Kashmir. The Kashmiri identity is being falsely legitimized as purely Islamic and India is being portrayed as a Hindu oppressor. This parallels closely the way deep Jewish roots in Jerusalem are denied and Israel is painted as a Jewish oppressor. The Islamists have achieved this through their connections in academia, the media, and among radical leftist groups despite Pakistan’s known sponsorship of terror groups that commit ceaseless incursions into the region.
This inversion of history must not go unchallenged.
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