'Things fall apart.......mere anarchy is loos'd upon the world'............

The world is falling apart. Everywhere I look there is gloom and doom. I doubt anyone will take command of this broken world at least until localized terror goes viral. Then, as has so often been the case, necessity will deliver us a leader in whom we can have trust and confidence. In the meantime, we will have to live with whom we elected.

 

America is just beginning to learn about shades of grey. Our vision of good guys in white hats and bad guys in black hats prevailed throughout much of our history. It was quite popular during the GW Bush administration where he and Dick Cheney and the boys reveled in referring to al Qaida as the bad guys. Obama also uses this expression; perhaps to dumb down the world of international politics for the American masses.

 

The leaders of Iran and Syria are decidedly in the bad guy camp. Saudi Arabia somehow got converted to good guys along with Kuwait and most of the emirates. For the most part, the bad guys fall into the Shiite Muslim category while the good guys are largely Sunnis. Enter al Qaida and what has become its successor, ISIS who are fanatically Sunnis. Nevertheless, they are really bad guys.

 

Since our leaders have painted the Middle East in such stark colors, we the people now have to be educated as to why we are fighting alongside the Iranian bad guys against the ISIS worse guys. In like manner, we the people need to rapidly develop sympathetic feelings for Bashar al-Assad who yesterday was public enemy number one and today is the unfortunate victim of an evil ISIS.

 

With a largely compliant media as a wet nurse to the American public, the masses pretty much swallow whatever the administration and its all-knowing advisors tell us. That includes national leaders madly removing and replacing  black and white hats on Middle Eastern leaders as rapidly as the sun rises. Just now, we can't find enough white hats to deck out each and every Kurd including men and women members of the Peshmerga.

 

Peshmerga? Suddenly this word has gone viral with commentators and politicians throwing it around with the frequency of Smith or Jones. It must have found millions of Americans scrambling to their dictionary or computer to help divine its meaning. It has been declared that instead of using the word 'army' to describe Kurdish soldiers, one is now obliged to refer to them as the Kurdish Peshmerga, or simply Pershmerga. As of today, every literate person in the world knows one Kurdish word. And in the process of blessing, sanctifying and beautifying the Kurds, we Americans will surely expand our vocabulary to include at least two or three more.

 

My problem is that yesterday, the Kurds were a tribal conglomerate that was seriously disliked by countries with Kurd minorities. Nobody liked them. Especially the Turks to whom the Kurds were terrorists. Iran couldn't get rid of them fast enough and as for Iraq, we all know what Saddam did to ethnically cleanse them. Now, suddenly, they are being promoted in the USA as the saviors of the Middle East and the only people in the world having the capacity, courage and determination to deal with ISIS. All they lack are weapons and the French have been happy to oblige by sending them some. So are, or will, the US and the UK.  I fully expect the US will include a million or so white hats for their soldiers. After all, they are our proxy in the latest version of the Desert War.

 

Clearly, the reward for confronting ISIS will be a sovereign Kurdistan complete with its own government, flag, seat in the UN and national debt. This will displease Iraq who, by hook or by crook, will be forced to cede part of their country to make this all happen. I fully suspect that terms to this effect are already written into agreements between the US and the new Iraqi government in its endless hours of need.

 

Turkey is suddenly delighted with the Kurds or alternatively, someone is rewriting history. The story goes that a Kurdish homeland will take the pressure off Turkey who has long been struggling with the Kurds as the largest ethnic minority in Turkey. One cannot help but wonder whether all of these ethnic Kurds will mass migrate next door to what will soon become Kurdistan, or will they try and carve out a piece of Turkey and thereby enlarge Kurdistan by shrinking Turkey.

 

It is not immediately clear what Iran is thinking on this subject, but with so many Kurds living there, and given their fierce determination for nationhood, it would be reasonable to expect either mass migration or efforts to remove a largish chunk of Iran as an additional Kurdistani province. And this is all quite possible given the reputation of the Peshmarga, their newly acquired weaponry and all of them sporting white hats.

 

Stay tuned for the next chapter of musical hats in the Middle East brought to you by the Clinton/Bush/Obama people and their dedicated industrial/military associates.