What do you think that the Kurds are, Quakers? The Christians have the gravest possible doubts about them, to put it mildly.
We took out the only bulwark against Islamism, not only in the person of Saddam, who would of course have died at some point anyway, but far more seriously in the lunatic de-Baathification programme.
Are there really any Kurds, as such, at all? Unlike, say, the Palestinians, they do not all speak the same language, or have anything very much else in common.
The several Kurdish languages do not even comprise a single linguistic family. The only definition of a Kurdish language is "a language spoken by the Kurds", who are themselves defined almost, if almost, only as the speakers of those languages.
As for the view that multicultural counties never work, on that basis you would not want the Nineveh Plains in Kurdistan (or the Galilee in Israel, come to that), but in any case, what do you think that the United Kingdom is?
Or what do you think that Great Britain was a mere 71 years after its creation? Iraq was only 71 years old when we tore the thing asunder. Think of Great Britain in 1778, a very multicultural country indeed.
Since this is an attempt at an answer to what I said, I suppose I'd better respond.
ReplyDeleteFirstly, if we really are seriously comparing Iraq to historic Britain (is that serious?) then let's at least begin by accepting that Great Britain, unlike modern-day Iraq, wasn't created entirely by foreign colonial powers. Whereas Iraq is purely a colonial invention.
The Britain of 1778 was still a Christian country with a shared history going back before even the union of the crowns.
Unlike Iraq, a recent colonial creation bitterly split between Christian, Kurd, Yazidi, Turkmen, Marsh Arab, Sunni and Shia.
As for Britain once being "multicultural" you might have noticed that it is precisely because multicultural countries don't work that Great Britain was only forged through such things as the "Welsh note",(where children were lashed even in the 19th century, if caught speaking Welsh) not to mention the brutal suppression of Catholic and other subcultures and all the rest. And that we had to endure civil wars between Catholic and Protestant before a shared identity began to emerge. Such integration was difficult enough (and brutal enough) to achieve in Britain; it would obviously be impossible in Iraq.
Without returning to Saddam's method of gassing and starving any troublesome minorities.
Multicultural countries can only be held together through brute force.
As RH Tawney wrote in Equality "A community must have a common culture or... it is not a community at all". Even old Beveridge said that, without a common culture, there can be no solidarity.
As for your points about the Kurds...where do I begin?
Unlike "say, the Palestinians" the Kurds actually once had a real self-governing state (which was first called Kurdistan in 1150, as opposed to being invented by the British in 1920).
Unlike "say, the Palestinians" the Kurds did not invent an ethnic identity retrospectively. They rose up to demand independence as an ethnic nation as early as 1880.
Whereas, the term "Palestinian" once referred to Jewish inhabitants of the Mandate, and was only later altered to mean Arabs, for propaganda purposes (the leading Arab body during the Mandate called itself the "Arab Higher Committee" because Arabs didn't refer to themselves as Palestinians at the time).
The Palestinians have no language or culture that is distinct in any way at all from the neighbouring Arabs of Jordan (and indeed Mandate Palestine originally included what is now Jordan).
There is no "Palestinian" language or "Palestinian" culture, as distinct from other Arabs in the area.
The Kurds certainly do have a language and culture utterly distinct from the countries they have been absorbed into (to the extent that they're banned from speaking it, and banned from learning their own history in many of those countries, particularly Turkey).
Etc etc,.
The Kurds certainly do have a language
DeleteWhat is it, then?
Any shared history between England and Scotland, other than of war against each other, was only a century old at the time of the Union, a Union which was, in its way, forced by foreign powers.
You should give this up. You are hopelessly out of your depth.
Further to my last comment.
ReplyDeleteLet's put it this way.The Kurds have a far greater (and older) claim to be a real nation than the wholly invented "Palestinians" or than Iraq, which was invented by a colonial power about 70 years ago.
The Kurds called their own self- governing principalities "Kurdistan" as early as 1150 and were fighting for independence as an ethnic nation in 1880.
They appear in Marco Polo's accounts of his travels when he met the Kurds in...Mosul, of all places.
If you want to go all the way back to 1150...
DeleteBut Palestine is a lot older than that, beginning at exactly the same time as England. Due to curiously similar events, too.
Further to my last two comments.
ReplyDeleteMulticultural countries are not just a famous failure in Iraq, Sri Lanka, India ( before it split in two) or Yugoslavia.
Even tepid peaceful Belgium can't make multiculturalism work , and is bitterly divided between Fleming and Walloon.
They may well split soon.
They have been saying that for decades. It won't happen.
Delete