Kurdistan - Tips

Kurdistan - Tips

Hello Gary, I would say your observations are good and correct. When people get married in Iraq, they shoot guns, this caused a lot of deaths at first, because the USA would run over to see, and it was like interupting a funeral, they was not happy, with a gun in their hands. Winning the war? What war, this is just a huge crazy police action and Mafia Clerics or Mullahs are trying to get to the oil money. The goal in the war was to stop or delay a nuclear war, whereby some stupid dictator in the Islamic world attacks Israel, then Israel nukes them. All this nation builidng crap is not needed, the main goal was done when we captured Sadaam. On the other hand Gary, please know, Arbil is not the same as Mosul or the Arab sections. Kurdistan is a separate country, they even had different money than the Baghdad part when I was there. The line is drawn a Mosul, after Mosul and south, there is a different culture. The world loves the USA and not a big worry. What maybe you cannot and I think sometimes are incable of understanding is the duplicity of emotions in a person from poorer countries. The values of justice and good are so much a part of you, it is hard to see, they do not even have these values. In an Arabic and Kurdistan, they respect power, suck up to power, and will more or less agree and say anything in a real and authentic way. Yet, is a better power comes along, they will shift their loyalties without a problem to the next person of power or money. This type of thinking I was trying to explain to you about the man in Peru you like so well, I asked my friend Mary, who is married to a Peru man, who has lived in Peru for 15 years. Who can you loan 100 US dollars to and know they will return it. She says,
- Andy, you know you cannot loan or give money to Peru people, they will never pay you back. - This does not mean you cannot buy shoes or something from a Peru person and the will do it, it means, there is a limit, some strange types of cultural quirks we do not understand. Like, a German, they just cannot accept that person from the USA can or could be smarter than them. Totally illogical and baffling to incorporate into a business contract. Kurdistan is a separate country. We did win the war, what we failed to do, was to punish the people of Iraq until they stopped. We did not beat them to death as we did Germany or Japan. A war is about proving you are powerful and beat them, until they all have family missing an Arab believes they are winning. You can see the USA public believes we failed, and you can see great good happening in Kurdistan. The problem is now the media, they will twist anything to make it sound like the big guy is bad and the poor iraqi suicide bomber had not choice. I have pretty much decided the normal public is incapable of understanding the big picture of the world. Descarte, Marx, Freud, and many others comment on the publc, the masses or the rabble. In a way, the USA government was designed with the electoral system to keep the rabble from accidentally making very stupid decisions. They knew a complete democracy was stupid and foolish. What George Bush did wrong, was not be brutal enough to see, he needed to kill and excute every single Islamic leader in Iraq, not Kurdistan, it is not the central of Iraq. The USA has in many ways lost the idea of war, it is to kill the other side, and get complete and utter victory, they want Iraq to run Iraq, this is stupid, we needed to run Iraq and kill the bad guys, this is war, not diplomacy. The will to kill is not in the mind of a person who always thinks the ideas of justice, fair play and right and wrong are in the minds of all people on the planet. Sorry to say, this is only in the USA, not in Europe, some in Europe, a German will act like you are equal, but to observe their actions is different. The USA has lost the idea of how to deal with very bad people, we are soft target. Everyone sucks up to us, because they know, we will just reach for our wallets. Andy

Some interesting data for you: 1. The Kurdish Regional Government is planning a memorial in memory of the sacrifices of the coalition forces (impossible since there was no coalition, the Iraqis all hate us, and the war is lost, don’t you think?) 2. I have never seen so much construction (International airport, governmental buildings, apartments, (an American company built over 1000 in one project) expensive homes or so much construction equipment (assume Shanghai has a lot, but haven’t been there) 3. Schools and governmental agencies are open and functioning. 4. We encountered a high receptivity to doing business with American firms and widespread English language use (as many of the Kurdish business leadership have, at one time or another, spent periods outside the country). 5. I also noted that the flights into and out of Erbil were full, with many mothers and children, in what looked to me like visits to family and grandparents. I don’t think this would have been occurring if they thought safety was an issue. 6. I heard that much of the faculty from Baghdad University is relocating to one of the Kurdish Universities. Thus, I would expect them to have the strongest University in Iraq, and maybe the Middle East, in the near future. 7. I heard that there have been no major security events in the Kurdish area in at least 2 years, but did not know how to confirm this. 8. I was told that the Kurds not only did not want the US to leave but that they would prefer a permanent base for our troops there. I guess we shouldn’t want any troops or air power based in a friendly region in the middle of the Middle East?? 9. The market places were crowded and full of goods including many shops full of expensive items such as gold jewelry. On the negative side: 1. We heard 5 shots while we were there for 5 days, though they may have been celebratory, rather than aimed, for all I know. 2. There are a lot of armed security people and checkpoints Still, rather than Harry Reid’s conclusion that we have lost the war, it looks to me like we have won, at least in this area. Let me know what you think. Thank you,
Andy HoboTraveler.com
http://www.hobotraveler.com/blogger.html 2007-04-26

Kurdistan - Tips