President Barack Obama has pledged to protect and arm Syrians and Iraqis facing terrorist attacks by the Islamic State (ISIS) but has so far failed to protect Kurds on the Turkish border of Syria, said Robert Zubrin, a senior fellow with the Center for Security Policy.
In a column for
National Review Online, Zubrin calls on the Obama administration to arm Kurds on the ground, many of whom were forced to flee their homes under attack by ISIS, so that they can be an effective fighting force against the jihadist group.
"As these lines are being written, some 400,000 Kurds in and around the town of Kobane in northern Syria, on the Turkish border, are being besieged and assaulted by massed legions of Islamic State killers armed with scores of tanks, armored personnel carriers, and heavy artillery," Zubrin wrote.
He noted that Kurdish defenders have only AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades to protect themselves, adding, "The Kurds are begging for arms."
Zubrin added that Turkey is complicit in the assault on the Kurds because it is allowing Islamist extremists to enter Syria to join ISIS. Meanwhile, the Turkish government is building up troops on the border which will likely move into the region after a Kurdish genocide.
"This is the same plan as Josef Stalin used when he allowed the Nazis to wipe out the Polish underground during the Warsaw rising of 1944, and only afterward sent in the Red Army to take control of what was left of the city," Zubrin wrote.
"For an American administration to collude in such a mass atrocity is infamous."
Zubrin contends that the Kurds are best placed to act as a ground force to counter ISIS if the Obama administration commits to supplying them with the weapons they need to take on the fight.
"The Kurds, who have demonstrated both their bravery and their willingness to be friends with America, are right there, and already engaged in the fight. If supplied with adequate arms and backed by serious U.S. tactical air support, they could roll up ISIS as rapidly as the similarly reinforced Northern Alliance did the Taliban in the fall of 2001," he said.
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