Kurds Bombed by Everyone

I'm sure whatever religion you are, there is a special place in heaven for the Kurds.  Raja Abdulramim added description to the place of the Kurds in Syria in today's Wall Street Journal.  These were the forces who had US help taking the town of Hasakah.  Them US scrambled fighters to remind the Syrians (and by inference the Russians) that bombing ours soldiers (another word for "advisor" in this case) was not a good idea.  They were bombed by Syria while trying to get ISIS out of town.  You may well remember the bombing by the Russians on groups of the same ilk in the northern part of Syria.  They too were supposed to be bombing ISIS.  Did we miss something here?  I think we all know what is going on.  

Saddam Hussein killed the Kurds with gas to keep them from gaining any territory in Iraq.  The pictures made headlines at the time because gas does not discriminate.  Women and children were twisted into painful poses and covered with residue.  Now the Kurds are back in that area and more powerful than ever before.  They are good fighters and most in the Middle East know it.  They will fight with next to nothing in weapons or troops, frequently taking heavy casualities because of it.  The advantage to us is - they win.  Iraq may complain about them, but they don't want to get into a knife fight with any of them either.  The Russians have apparently convinced Syria that they are bad people who just happen to be fighting ISIS.  

The Turks blame all of them for what the PKK does, so they bomb the same people the US is working with, saying they are PKK.  In Syria, those little fighting groups do not have uniforms or national flags on their units, making it easier to characterize them all as one group.  It has the same feel to it as the arguments about being Muslim or being a Radical Islamic Terrorist.  The latter are only a small, out-of-control, minority population splinted into several groups.  But, it is hard to see a Muslim in a swimsuit that covers her whole body and not tie the two together - even if it is as insane as Turkey pretending all the Kurds are PKK.  

The Russians seem to value a regime that favors Russia over any of the other possible motives for fighting ISIS.  They want to keep those bases in Syria at all cost.  We saw what happened after the Russians bombed Syrian targets from bases in Iran.  The Iranians suddenly decided the Russians talk too much.  It was, by the Iranian view, a covert operation like the ones the Russians have in the Ukraine.  Apparently the Russians did not understand it that way.  What Iran is discovering is something they should have already known, the Russians are doing what is best for Russia, not the Middle East, not the EU, or the rest of the world.  Their glorious mission to protect Assad has a hollow, dark hole in the middle.