In the mid-1990s, my boss in the United States Air Force was deployed to Turkey. The mission was to airdrop food to Iraqi Kurdish refugees who were being gunned down, bombed and gassed by Saddam Hussein’s regime.

Once Turkey got wind of this, its air force began to slaughter the grouped Kurdish civilians by strafing the food pallets. Upon hearing this, USAF pilots denied any further airdropping orders so as to prevent Turkey from gaining any opportunity to murder huddled Kurdish civilians. My boss’s unit tried to feed and protect the Kurds from Iraq and Turkey.

One decade later, in 2003 during the initial surge of Operation Iraqi Freedom, I sat side-by-side with our Iraqi Kurdish allies in a USAF C-130 aircraft as we departed Eastern Europe headed for the desert. Kurds were our first ally in the Iraq War and are now (or were) our strongest ally in the Middle East. We are now in the midst of the same grisly scenario. America should be trying to protect the Kurds, not feed them to the wolves.

Jeffrey James

Manoa

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