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Just how significant this nefarious connection with Turkey is became clear in the last few days, when it was announced that as many as 700 or more military families would be moved out of territories few Americans knew existed, takeoff bases for planes striking inside Syria.
That this many Americans existed there is amazing on its own. To maintain such massively expensive investments and facilities for our forces and their families clearly implies all sorts of operations beyond the aircraft and other military needs.
At the same time, it was made clear these are hardly the sum of our bases in that country, which has been exposed paying those who daily work to undermine our friends in that part of the world.
Israeli intelligence has also exposed Turkey’s internecine relations with ISIS that should have been suspected, as should similar realities on the parts of other countries in the region, if only because of the facts that these merciless ISIS functionaries could not have emerged so largely so quickly and maintained apparently well managed operations so strongly.
As I have asked several times in these pages: how is it places like Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other United Arab League countries keep on building those skyscrapers, financing their plush airlines and staging huge world class tennis tournaments apparently without fear of ISIS attacks? Why was it that when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton challenged the Saudis to stop sending money to terrorists got only sarcasm in return to the effect that “if money gets to terrorists, it gets to terrorists?” It takes little detective work to figure these folks not only felt safe from attack but did not and apparently and do not sense any restraints from the United States.
When the President of the United States recently declared “we are all Jews,” seemingly to condemn the rising levels of anti-Semitism on college campuses and elsewhere, lots of questions remained as to the sincerity of those remarks, if only because we know and have known of Turkey’s inexcusable involvement with Hamas, even as we pour what must be billions to sustain bases in that country.
But all of the foregoing seriously overlooks another critical reality: Turkey’s ongoing status with other questionable nations in the makeup of NATO, suggesting a powerful need to review the roster of this organization to which American taxpayers pay the major share, as we do with the United Nations which, as a group has hardly seen things our way and certainly not fairly with Israel.
It is, of course, not just taxpayer money and conduct that remain suspect. We have been consistently boasted about literally thousands of airstrikes said to be undermining ISIS, while that bunch continues to celebrate carnage it creates apparently by e-mail in virtually any place of its choice, as we have witnessed for months. Forgotten as well is the October 29, 2014, article by the Wall Street Journal’s Julian Barnes that led with the powerful comment:
“The Air Force says the U.S. bombing campaign against Islamic extremists is exacerbating its shortage of plane maintenance experts — a gap that is rekindling tensions with Congress about how to manage the nation’s combat aircraft.”
Given all this, a few demanding questions should be asked, at a minimum:
Why do the most powerful forces in the world seem to struggle with an operation like ISIS that was somehow cobbled together under our noses?
Why are those seeking to lead the nation not giving us some idea of how they might deal with what has been presented?
Why have media not been more forthcoming about activities of so-called allies like Turkey and others? Americans daily battling to calculate their future in a nonstop and vulgar political campaign would seem to be entitled to know as much about all this as our enemies do.
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Joe Honick is President of GMA International.
The ridiculously high prices Americans are paying at the supermarket might influence how—or if—they vote in November.
At a moment in history when there are so many conflicts among peoples here and abroad, let us put our differences aside and celebrate this wonderful season in a spirit of togetherness.
The news announcing the death of Henry Kissinger, the last of the prevaricating politicians and so-called statesmen who stole my future and that of thousands of other young Americans, got me thinking about Walter Cronkite.
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