The Kurds Have Oil The Palestinians Nothing . What Does That Tell Us?

As the cal for action by the UN to protect the Palestinians who have been under seize in Gaza some on the Left  Foot Forward have tried to divert attention to Iraq and the plight from minority groups including members of the Christian, Shia, Sufi and Yezidi communities in Iraq who are  fleeing  for their lives following advances by Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (now renamed Islamic State) fighters.

It is a view hard to dispute  and yet there are difference  Gaza is under siege from what is clearly a Nation (Israel) that s an ally of the West  and there is no talk of any form of action including sanctions  against Israel.

The situation in  Iraq is different . True the western powers hold responsibility for both crisis but the recent intervention in Iraq by the Bush-Blair alliance  clearly led to the crisis .

I tried to sum it up like this

"A Man goes into a bar which has a already rough representation and starts a fight with the locals which he wins . He then leaves and the locals start fighting among themselves particularly picking on the weakest pub goers. Then the original man re-enters claiming to be a Policeman.PC U.S President then claims to be astonished at the mess the Pub is in and announces he's going to protect the poor victims. Of course Americans don't understand Irony do they"?

The bleating of Politicians  over the plight of a people from a brutal armed militia would hold more water if the sheer hypocrisy wasn't so evident


And of course there's the sudden  discovery of the rights of the Kurds who have been denied their homeland when Britain redrew the map of  the middle east after the first world war.
From then on the claims of the Kurds for the creation of their own Independent Nation has been ignored. by the Western Powers 

And now the Kurds are the heroes  we get reports of 

In the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan, the battle-hardened Peshmerga fighters have struggled to defend themselves and hold back waves of IS fighters who are advancing rapidly across the plains towards them.

So why the sudden concern for the Kurds maybe this Reuters report lends a clue

"- Iraqi Kurdistan has delivered its third major cargo of crude oil out of a Turkish port and a fourth is sailing to Croatia, showing the autonomous region is finding more buyers despite legal pressure from Baghdad and setbacks in the United States.
The Kurdish Regional Government (KRG), whose peshmerga forces are being supported by U.S. airstrikes in their battle against the radical Sunni militants of Islamic State, has been in a long constitutional fight with Baghdad over independent oil sales.
But while some shipments have been tied up by diplomatic and legal pressure from Baghdad, an increasing number are now finding buyers. Around $350 million in oil sales have been completed or are under way from shipments sent via the KRG's new pipeline toTurkey, a Reuters analysis of satellite tracking data shows. The first vessel of pipeline crude sailed in May.
"The sales process is standardising and our order book is growing," a senior official in the Kurdistan Regional Government said when asked about the sales.
"While we are fighting a war with the Islamic State we're also facing an economic war from Baghdad."

Of course the greatest support for the Kurds would be for the Western Powers recognise the d creation of a Kurdish Nation  ,

But that will not happen they will not recognise Kurdistan and support will only go so far.

Clearly it  will be hard to oppose any western intervention against the "Islamic State " who are a brutal organisation .

But the legacy of the Bush-Blair intervention in both Iraq and Afghanistan will go on for decades .

Asked about the historical effect of the 1789 French Revolution, Chinese Premier Chou En-lai replied 

"it's soon to tell".

Eleven Years after the Bush-Blair invasion of Iraq cheered on by the likes of Ann Clwyd 

who served as Special Envoy on Human Rights in Iraq  and who kept talking about the green roots of democracy  growing in Iraq now now describes  the scale of the humanitarian crisis now unfolding in the country as only part of the problem

“People are already dying and the situation could very well get worse.”

She warned that terrorist group Isis was “only one part of a larger revolt that has been years in the making”.

Ms Clwyd said the Iraq Government had “reneged” on promises to build an inclusive administration and called on the international community to support a process to establish a unity government.

But I suspect she wil never admit her failure and responsibility for this crisis.

Clearly the Islamic State militia must be resisted but lets have no talk about defending people from those who bear a lot of responsibility for the crisis.

Update Jac has gone into this in more detail and far more eloquently than myself so i advise you to  follow this link. for a worthwhile eread.