“The Iraqi government delivered a planeload of ammunition to Arbil, the capital of Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdish region, on Friday in an unprecedented act of military cooperation between Kurdish and Iraqi forces,” Reuters reports. “The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Iraqi security forces, under the command of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, a Shi’ite Arab, delivered the mostly small-arms ammunition in a C-130 cargo plane to resupply the Kurdish Peshmerga forces as they fight militants from the Islamic State.” Anyone want to guess where that ammo came from and who paid for it? Meanwhile, vox.com points out that “recent US air strikes against ISIS are in part to destroy US military equipment, such as the artillery ISIS has been using against Kurdish forces.” Oh, and Reuters tells us that . . .
The Obama administration is working with the Iraqi government to ensure that additional requests from the Kurdistan Regional Government, including mortars and AK-47s, are met “as quickly as possible.”
In short, the U.S. government hands out full-auto rifles and much bigger guns to God-knows-who, God-knows-where, losing track of some 200k weapons in Afghanistan. And they buy billions of rounds of ammo to feed the foreign firearms. All this at your expense while working to restrict your natural, civil and Constitutional right to keep and bear arms here at home. Just thought I’d point that out.
Wait, the federal government is screwing over us taxpayers? INCONCEIVABLE!
I do not think that word means what you think it means.
Which word? Screwing or inconceivable?
Actually, this helps explain where all that 7n6 we can’t buy actually is going. Along with piles of ammo the government was buying up so we couldn’t get it (and yes this is sarcasm too).
Robert the left sees no hypocrisy with this because they don’t believe in any natural rights let alone a natural, civil and Constitutional right to keep and bear arms
It’s ok, because they are flooding another country with arms, so they won’t be able to see them when they look out their windows at night. That makes it ok.
The obama administration has been selling weapons and munitions to many groups, some of which are listed by the DOJ as terrorist organizations. Wouldn’t that mean that everyone in the Government who took part in it be held indefinitely and without trial, as per the NDAA?
Well Barry Soetero does like Muslims more than you RF. I guess the lack of a accountability is the not very stunning part of the story. I like the Kurds too and hope they get their own country. Barry seems to be all show & no go.
It’s the right thing to do.
I’ve seen too many videos recently of men, women and children being butchered by ISIS animals.
How is arming the Kurds the wrong call here?
1. The U.S. helped create ISIS by virtue of creating the power vacuum in the region.
2. The Kurds are friendly to the U.S. and in danger of being wiped out.
Stop whining. These people will be butchered if we don’t provide the means for them to effectively resist.
We’ve been arming them, and other groups for years, and still they haven’t stopped these conflicts. When is enough enough? And why is no one else helping them out, why does it always come down to the US and when we step up operations other countries freak out?
Most of these foreign allies of ours get a free defense ride from the USA. I do not have a problem with helping out our foreign friends defense and arsenal provider; I just have problems being our foreign friends defense and paying almost all for any of their arsenals..
Exactly, and especially with respect to our wealthier allies. Western Europe, South Korea, and Japan can afford to pay a bit more for their own defense.
You haven’t been arming the Kurds for years, because Turkey is a NATO member and they don’t like it. And it’s a crying shame, because Kurds are one of the few remaining nations that really strongly feel themselves as a distinct nation but had no homeland until Iraqi Kurdistan. Also, of all the Iraqi regions post-Saddam, Kurdistan has been the most functioning one, with a strong, stable government enforcing law and order, no sectarian violence or religious persecution, and generally everything that befits a civilized state rather than a shithole in the middle of a decade-long civil war. If anyone deserves those arms, it’s the Kurds.
And if RF doesn’t know anything about this – going by the “God knows who, God knows where” remark – then why does he believe himself to be qualified to judge such matters of foreign policy?
I’d rather have the Kurds as allies than the Saudis any day of the week. Maybe we can cut a deal with the Kurds for Iraqi oil and finally tell the terrorism-exporting emirates to sod off.
“We’ve been arming them, and other groups for years, and still they haven’t stopped these conflicts. When is enough enough?”
Why would you think arming the Iraqi Kurds is supposed to stop any conflict? Arming the Iraqi Kurds is supposed to keep them, and others, alive.
When is enough, enough? When violence ceases to exist. So probable never.
I’ve got some 7.62 x 39 that I would gladly trade for some .22 lr, if the Kurds happen to have any laying around. Btw, the Kurds need more help than we’re giving them. For once, we have a people in the region who deserve our support and won’t turn around and use our weapons against us, and all we do is knock out a few ISIS trucks. Sickening.
True. They have mostly small arms and a number of older tanks. The ISIS raiders have modern US weapons, including heavy tanks, mortars, heavy machine guns, armored Humvees and artillery abandoned by the Iraqi “army.”
It’s most likely Russian or Ukrainian 7.62×39. I bet I paid less per round for that than I did for the stuff I bought for myself….
And BTW, they are not sending AK47s, They are not being made. They are like AKMs and variants. But who care about such details…..
If you want to be pedantic, there’s no such thing as an “AK-47”. The original was called simply AK (“7.62-mm avtomat Kalasnikova”), there was no 47 or 1947 anywhere in the name at all.
Giving the Kurds weapons to protect themselves is overdue, but I do see the inconsistencies of thought by the liberal left.
Restrict our access and ownership of various “assault weapons” meanwhile giving away, losing tract of, losing completely various huge caches of ammunition and weapons. Give the Kurds something they can use to defend themselves and not just rifles. Give them some things they really can use to mount a vigorous defense and perhaps to help establish a “safe area” for the Christians now retreating to the mountain peaks.
Meanwhile, on the homefront…quit restricting our unrestricting Second Amendment rights.
Indeed. I support the Iraqi minorities, but that doesn’t make the hypocrisy of the champagne liberals any less nauseating.
Seems like a small price to try and prevent the creation of a second Iran. Trying to compare this…prevention of imminent genocide…with something having to do with our struggle in the courts is an insult to those given the choice of being beheaded, forced to pay $10k to practice their faith or flee. There are times to push an agenda and doing it like this is not it…very poor taste imo.
Well there is that…
But also there is the school of thought that we shouldn’t be in there in any way, shape or form. Think about it this way, if the US had not entered into the ‘Great War’, would there have been a WWII? Did the victory we helped win create the circumstances that made a Nazi Germany possible? What future conflict are we sowing the seeds for now and at what cost?
It’s not an unreasonable argument to make in principle, but the mess that is there right now was largely created by US, and it all happened only a few years ago, directly affecting most of the people currently living there. They are certainly within their right to expect some righting of the wrongs. Bombing your own munitions that fell into Islamists’ hands, and arming some of the sanest (in terms of likelihood of committing genocide or other kinds of mass slaughter, oppress people over their religion etc) and most combat-effective forces in the region seems like a reasonable way to do just that.
“Did the victory we helped win create the circumstances that made a Nazi Germany possible? ”
I doubt it, as even at that time German nationalism, racism and anti-Semitism were tightly coupled and a German victory may well have fueled the ambitions of the ethnic nationalists to purge the “untermensch” from the empire.
Given the state of government efficiency, we’re probably sending a whole planeload of the wrong caliber
Yeah, sending 7.62×54, not 39. Oops!
7.62×54 would still be useful as there are still plenty of heavier weapons that they probably have that use it. It’s a probably a whole plane load of 7.62×45 instead.
Nah, probable some old Czech 7.62x45mm. With some 7.62X63mm (.30-06) and 7.62x33mm (.30 carbine) thrown in as a gesture of “goodwill”.
Better question: why can’t we purchase .22 L.R. ammunition ourselves in Canada and bring it back across the border? My understanding is that there is no shortage whatsoever up there.
Because the Canadian grabbers are in almost full control up there. They’d arrest you as soon as you go to the counter.
Yeah, there’s nobody on my doorstep shouting about beheading me (or worse) because I won’t convert to their religion, so they need the ammo more than I do. Also, I’m pretty sure Midway doesn’t deliver there. I think the Kurds and other Iraqi non-muslims need the ammo more than I do and I’m happy to help get it to them.
I’m sure there are a few hundred ways we could be doing it better, but I’m glad we’re doing it.
Actually, Kurds ARE actually Muslims. Nothing wrong with Islam in and of itself, the problem is when a group threaten to murder everyone who isn’t.
True, but that just accentuates the point. They’re taking joy in brutally exterminating people because they follow the “wrong” sect of the “right” religion. Not exactly what I’d call responsible members of the international community.
More like: http://firefly.wikia.com/wiki/Reavers
Most Kurds are Sunni Muslim, yes, but a significant minority are Yarsani and Yazidi (which are both offshoots of Islam, but Muslims don’t consider them valid, so to al-Qaeda, ISIS and the like they’re apostates), and smaller Christian and Zoroastrian minorities. Heck, there’s even a significant number of Kurdish Jews, apparently.
The important part is that Kurds as a whole consider themselves first and foremost a nation, not a community of believers in the same thing. To a Sunni Kurd, a Christian Kurd is first and foremost a fellow Kurd, and only then someone of a different faith. That’s why they keep getting into bitter conflicts with the local jihadis. And that’s why regions under their control tend to be some of the most religiously tolerant in the Middle East, and consequently the most stable. While Iraqi Arabs do not make a coherent nation at all, and even if you split them into Sunni and Shia, those parts are still, at best, infant nations, Kurds have done their nation-building for a very long time, and can properly manage a country of their own if given the opportunity. I actually wouldn’t be surprised if Iraqi Kurdistan – now de-facto independent – will resemble Israel more so than all the other shitholes in the region within a couple of decades. That’s assuming they can keep the mujis at bay…
“Whine whine whine Obama whine whine”
You just keep enjoying that Koolaid then.
Cheese will go better with that wine then Obama will.
Same ‘ol DC song and dance. BTW the new site design looks pretty damn good on my Galaxy S5.
I’ve heard plenty argue that if the Jews were better armed during ww2, the nazis would have been more reluctant to round them up. I think I may have even heard that here. Now why is there resistance of giving the Kurds arms to prevent a possible genocide?
Because we’ve already given them a fck ton of guns already
Iraq yes, Kurds, no. The Iraqi government under Maliki was discriminatory against any groups that were non Shi’ia, and kept the arms supplied by the US for the “Iraqi Army”, in part to avoid the Kurds declaring independence. The Kurds have pretty much obtained their own arms over the years from many sources.
It’s actually a bit more complicated than that. Some of the best Iraqi army units, while nominally shared, were actually staffed with Peshmerga fighters, and those units were the ones that were hit first in ISIS strikes. Iraqi 2nd Infantry, for example, was mostly Kurdish, and wiping them out in Mosul is what got ISIS all those M198s in the first place, including the ones they were using to shell the mountain and Kurdish positions – the ones which were destroyed by the air strikes.
But, yes. Peshmerga proper didn’t get that much, since US was trying to encourage a single unitary Iraq with a single army, and most support went to that.
Correct. Baghdad never gave any weapons to the Peshmerge forces – the official defense forces that protect Kurdistan Regio. If the US send all the weapons of the world to Kurds through Baghdad non of it will get to the Kurds because Maliki of Iraq has been discriminating, the US know it and still refuse to give Kurds weapons directly.
To correct one comment made by someone here that the Iraqi army forces stationed near Mosul and whose weapons fell to ISIS were Kurds, Wrong!! they were mostly Shias and that’s what got ISIS into the area in the first place because Mosul’s Sunni community was fed up with the Shia discriminatory policies. The Kurdish battalions of the Iraqi Army never abandoned their weapons and they fought alongside the Peshmerge forces to protect Kurdistan.
Really? Piss poor taste, Robert. I get the sentiment, but this wasn’t the hill to take a stand on.
Summed it right up
Really? Then I hope you enjoy your tax dollars going to supply guns to someone else whilst Obama and Co. do everything they can to restrict your gun ownership rights.
Quit being a douche. That’s a bulls#$t argument, dude.
Have you heard of fast and furious? The gun running program, not the movie)
He is right, and you are wrong
Hey Zachary – “He is right, you are wrong”. Just your opinion. The opinion of another douchebag.
I completely agree. I detest Obama as much (or more) then the next guy, but this was the right thing to do. Or, at least the start of the right thing. We should have been conducting targeted air strikes against ISIS/ISIL from the beginning.
What really bothers me, is the level of hypocrisy I’ve been seeing lately. Hey, I get it. Most of us can’t stand Obama, but it seems to me that some would attack him even if he came up with the cure for cancer tomorrow. Not saying you have to like the guy, but when he takes a step in vaguely the right direction, it’s pretty hypocritical to denounce it.
If you don’t think ISIS/ISIL is pure evil that needs to be eradicated by any means necessary, then you are asleep at the wheel. Also, quit whining about what other countries “should” do. Be proud that we are Americans, and we step up even when other countries are pussing out!
I’m pretty sure you’d prefer to have our tax money used to arm our allies than wait for this threat to get out of hand and threaten our borders.
Because if we don’t help, it eventually will.
Men, women and children are literally being butchered like cattle and all you can gripe about is some ammo our tax money may (or may have not give Iraq has plenty of oil revenue to purchase its own small arms ammunition) have been used to help fund a form of ballistic prevention for this genocide.
As KOB stated above, poor choice of situation to use to argue our 2A stance. Makes you guys look more anti military/government than you already come off.
Start prioritizing your arguments and looking at the bigger picture. There is a reason i find myself reading more TFB now days than this site, and this article is one of them.
I AM anti-government when they seek to restrict and control my god given rights, and please tell me what part of this article is false
It’s not about the accuracy of the sentiment (that’s all he is presenting, dissapointment in the hypocrisy of arming our allies while trying to restrict our rights to bare arms), it’s about attacking what is clearly a just and correct action on behalf of our government to prevent further incursion of IS and more genocide by their ideology.
If you can’t differentiate between the need to do this and still fight for our rights at home while being morally accepting of our need to our allies in these predicaments, I don’t know how to help you understand.
That’s the issue. A government that believes everyone else has the right to defend themselves except for it’s own population, and please tell me who the hell our allies are there other than the jews…who this administration REFUSES to aid.
Oli, what part of trying to prevent another (actually likely worse) country like Iran from forming, with the oil assets of Iraq, do you have a problem with?
Also, comparing our 2a fight in court with an actual genocidal fight is ludicrous.
We lose our 2A fight and there will be genocide. The Mujahideen we’re our allies right up until they became weekend pilots. If this sham of an administration had a shred of of a foreign policy there wouldn’t be an ISIS but to much finger pointing and golfing vacations have left this country weak and responsible for this shit.
“will be” vs. “is”.
Which genoicde should we stop…the one that is happening currently, or the one that is inevitable only in paranoid minds of internet he-men?
I’m jealous that you’re able to see everything in such black and white terms….if the world was so clear cut, it would be much easier to navigate.
Personally I’m on the ‘what took them so long’ side of this. ISIS is beheading children and planting their severed heads on pikes for the ‘sin’ of being born to Christian parents. I’d gladly donate a box of ammo personally to anyone actually willing to kill these guys. That said I think the best scenario for us is for this to broaden into a more widespread fight between Sunni and Shiite Muslims. The more they kill each other the weaker they will be. We need to relearn how to fight proxy wars.
Me, too. The ISIS barbarians captured the entire equipment of 5 Iraqi regular army divisions. That’s a lot of hardware which most likely includes 155mm divisional artillery pieces and armored vehicles. This is American made stuff—the best in the world—and it’s now in the hands of barbarians who think making videos of them slowly cutting off people’s heads and then mounting them on sticks is a political statement. The Kurds (who are sheltering Christians and others) are our only reliable friends in country and are about to be overrun. They don’t need or want us to fight their battles, but they do need the same kind and quality of weapons they face. It will be to our great shame if we don’t help them defend themselves.
On top of which, the Kurds are a secular democratic society that does not discriminate based on religion.
They are believed to have captured 52 M198 howitzers in total.
What’s the shelf life of air to ground munitions? How about we get rid of our soonest-to-expire stock and save some innocents at the same time? Utilizing our air superiority puts our service members at minimal risk and disrupts the enemy, allowing the Iraqis, Kurds, etc the upper hand. I don’t see what the issue is.
They seem to be using JDAM mostly, which (the Mark 80 series bombs itself, not the guidance systems) are pretty old stuff.
OBAMA flashback ….”We’re leaving behind a sovereign, stable, and self-reliant Iraq”.
Bad repercussions when you elect a leftist who never had a real job and was the first president who believed his own indoctrination that America has been a net negative to the world.
I have deep sorrow for the military members who came home badly injured or lost comrades in the fight. Up until 2013 they at least had some comfort that they had shut down the rape and body/wood chipper rooms. Unfortunately now our motherFing POS POTUS even took that away from them so he could primp himself in front of the HuffPo and Wapo readers.
Blaming this on Obama is stupid. It was inherent in the way Iraq was handled to begin with, and that was started under Bush, Obama merely carried it on. If the withdrawal happened 4 or 8 years later, the result would have been the same unless a radically different approach would be taken, but that would require a decade, if not more, of occupation, and billions of dollars spend in the local infrastructure. For some reason, though, while American taxpayers don’t mind spending billions on seeing stuff blow up in spectacular ways on TV, they scoff at the notion of spending the same amount to build things.
By Obama’s own words Iraq was stable with our moderate military presence. This stability has precedence and proven success (Japan, Korea, Germany). It was all laid out by Bush for the US to have a SOF agreement and continue with a stabilizing presence there. But then Obama thought he’d value kudo’s from HuffPo and Wapo over preserving the 10+ year investment there. It’s ALL his fault. It was ALL his call.
Obama is an idiot, but Bush is an even bigger idiot for creating this whole mess. The idea that Japan or Germany could be used as examples by which to handle Iraq is utterly laughable. It’s a different culture at a much lower level of social development, and you cannot transition it to a functioning democracy in 10 years. More like 30-40.
Obama’s blame comes from leaving Iraq because it was politically expedient, not because it was the responsible decision to make. Hope the bump in poll numbers was worth hundreds and thousands of people being buried alive, crucified, beheaded, etc.
Last year politicians were screaming that we needed to provide arms and money to the Syrian rebels, who turned out to be (a significant percent) the ISIS terrorists we see today. Maybe it would be/is better for our nation to leave the Assad’s, Kadhafi’s and Sadam’s in place in these Muslims countries. Hindsight 20/20, I wish we had never become involved in Iraq. Maybe we should now concentrate more military resources to securing our own borders, starting with the south, so we can control who is coming, in…
Maybe you should read a little bit about the history of Kurds. Then you’ll understand why the notion that some of them might turn out like ISIS is completely baseless.
Well said. that’s what we Kurds have been trying to get across to Americans for decades.
Christians are being butchered by these animals. I’m 60 years old and ready to go there and fight to get rid of these animals. And yes, they are animals. They are butchering very young girls (STRONG GRAPHIC WARNING – DO NOT CLICK ON THIS LINK UNLESS YOU ARE OVER 18 YEARS OF AGE):
https://theconservativetreehouse.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/christian-girl.jpg
This is what we are up against. These are not human beings, they are animals, and as such should be hunted down as the animals the are. There I’ve said it now let the flames begin.
Damn I shouldn’t have clicked that even with a quick sidewards glance.
After helping resolve the immediate mountain crisis, our only presence now should be 2,000 pounders, clusterbombs, and cruise missiles.
Plus, maybe a few MOABs.
Nope GBU-39’s and GBU-38’s thar what needs to be on the menu
Indeed, plus tell any whining Eurotrash countries that they can kiss our azz.
Thing is, Kurds are ready and willing to fight, and they actually have a decently well organized army – more so than your typical Arab military in the region. So there’s no need to have “boots on the ground” – there’s already plenty – but what they need to be truly efficient is logistics and intelligence. Give them guns (I’m sure US still has plenty of old stuff lying around that could be given out, like M16A1) and ammo, and tell them where the enemy is and where they’re going. Between that and occasional air support to suppress enemy heavy artillery and armor, they could kick ISIS out of Iraq in short order.
Robert, this is the wrong issue to whine about.
Finally, a Fudd shows up. Had to happen sooner or later . . .
I dont see the as whining, however the title might be a little more subject
Either way, the gov. is happy to give anyone weapons, as long as theyre not a U.S. Citizen of course.
However in this case, these people who just want to exist are being butchered like cattle, I would rather give tax dollars for them to have ammo than allow people on food stamps to buy liqour, but I feel like its more of a PR move than anything.
Please stop saying “butchered like cattle” Cattle are treated much more humanely.
I’m totally ok with sending the Kurds anything they need. They have been the steadiest faction in the area. Even the Turks are now supporting the Kurds after many years of distrust. I hope they get more than one plane load of needed munitions, because they will need it.
One set of rules for them, another totally different set for us. Keep in mind that this is the same government that ran weapons and munitions into Libya, Egypt, and Syria to support the very same rebels that formed ISIS. We’re literally playing both side of the table.
Maybe this is some of the billion or so rounds from the IRS or Social Security ammo orders???
Read your history of the region. We’ve double crossed the Kurds before and they will take our aid but rightly do not trust us.
Why do you care if they trust you? The important thing is that they are not going to fight against US.
Man, lotsa fudds came out of the woodwork on this post, yeah, im ok w/ sending the kurds some guns and ammo, maybe some special ops guys to oversee things. But thats it.
Helping the Kurds is the right thing, and RF and gang are right for pointing out the hypocrisy of disarming Americans at home.
A PLANELOAD?!!
ALL THEY GOT WAS ONE PLANELOAD!??
That was not military aid, it was a photo op! A publicity stunt! The Kurds are the only group in Iraq that could stand a chance of stopping ISIS and the US drops a couple of bombs and sends a planeload of ammo! That’s so Obama can boast that he “tried to help.”
From the time that the US walked away from the status-of-forces agreement negotiations in Iraq, it was clear that he did not want a democratic government there, but preferred a bloodthirsty genocidal despotic rule, which he’s getting. After the Kurds come to rely on the US for military aid, he’ll cut it off just when they need it most, like the Democratic-controlled Congress did to South Vietnam in 1975.
I have no problem with ANY of my tax dollars going to the Kurds in the form of anything. I’d gladly purchase ammo for them myself if given the opportunity.
I stopped reading when I saw “Vox.com says…”
If Putin is smart, he’ll load big Antonov transports with surplus 122mm’s and tons of 7.62×39 ammo and deliver it to the Kurds. Doesn’t look like anybody else plans to do it so it might as well be Russia. If Putin did this he’d win a cheap PR victory and the Kurds would at least have the equipment they need to fight with. If they don’t get re-equipped, they’re going to be slaughtered.
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