Take Russian interference in US election with a bit of perspective. And no doubt Russia, England, Germany, China, most other countries, too, have tried to have their way without overt war.

Senate Majority Leader Addison Mitchell McConnell is leading the charge to punish Russia for the crime of attempting a regime change in the United State by meddling in its recent election for president.

Addison is old enough to remember the United States involvement in changing regimes in many countries, especially since the end of WWII.  Wikipedia has the history detailed. See United States involvement nregime change.

A wikipedia summary is this:

United States involvement in regime change has entailed both overt and covert actions aimed at altering, replacing, or preserving foreign governments. In the latter half of the 19th century, the U.S. government undertook regime change actions mainly in Latin America and the southwest Pacific, and included the Mexican-American, Spanish-American and Philippine-American wars. At the onset of the 20th century the United States shaped or installed friendly governments in many countries including Panama, Honduras, Nicaragua, Mexico, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic.
In the aftermath of World War II, the U.S. government expanded the geographic scope of its regime change actions, as the country struggled with the Soviet Union for global leadership and influence within the context of the Cold War. Significant involvements included the 1950 Korean War, the 1953 Iranian coup d'état, the 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion targeting Cuba, the Vietnam War, and support for the Argentinian Dirty War, but included other operations throughout the world.

The cited article goes into great and interesting detail about all the US regime change activities, some still on-going.  Read especially about US and Britain's activity in Iran, for that activity has important present consequences for Syria and for US relations with Russia.

In the curious world of the US congress (and in all the world’s deliberative bodies), what We  do is good; what They do is bad.  And these deliberative bodies are supposed to prevent the Bomb from Destroying All Life on the Planet (except for some germs, who are the most successful life form of all).  Good luck to all of us.

Ask Kerry to deny Turkeys request to extradite Muhammed Fethullah Gülen

Today I asked Secretary Kerry to deny Turkey’s extradition request for Muhammed Fethullah Gülen on grounds including that Gülen cannot receive a fair atrial in Turkey.  See, e.g., the Times article, Turkey Widens Purge as Crackdown Continues.

The article contains thisastonishing paragraph:

In Brussels on Monday, Secretary of State John Kerry and the European Union’s top diplomat, Federica Mogherini, urged Turkey — a member of NATO and a candidate for membership in the European Union — to show restraint. 

“Obviously, NATO also has a requirement with respect to democracy, and NATO will indeed measure very carefully what is happening,” Mr. Kerry said.

Turkey is no longer a democracy.  Turkish Kurds deserve independence from Erdoğan’s dictatorship, and Syrian Kurds deserve protection from his bombardments.

Send a request to Kerry to deny the extradition here: The Office of Public Engagement.  Please do.

The government crackdown on anyone it dislikes, in current google images, reminds one of Ferguson:

Does thee US really want a Nixonian Trump, mirrored in a Trampish Erdoğan?  I do not!

Towward a united Kursistan

The Kurds were the only consistent friends of the US during the long Iraq War.  The US owes them something, and that something is oil-rich Kirkuk, which they now occupy.

The Iraqi constitution provides that Kirkuk should belong to whomever wins a plebiscite in that City, and Kurds would surely win.  So the Central Government has refused to hold the plebiscite and has held on to Kirkuk until now.

Many Kurds live in Turkey and Iran.  Many want  the independent nation of Kurdistan promised by the 1920 Treat of Sèvres, at the conclusion of WWI.  Britain and France broke the Treaty  and carved Kurdistan into subordinate three parts.

Kurds have as long  history, as long as any people on earth.  They remember.

Kerry, do the right thing.  Let Turkey and Iran, both with big Kurdish populations, become friends of our friends, the Kurds.

d

From the New York Times

Kerry Implores Kurdish Leader to Join a Government and Not Break Away

By MICHAEL R. GORDONJUNE 24, 2014

ERBIL, Iraq — Secretary of State John Kerry urged the president of Iraq’s Kurdish autonomous region on Tuesday not to seek his own state and instead help form a government in Baghdad.

“I am going to bring up the elephant in the room,” Mr. Kerry told the president, Masoud Barzani, who serves as the leader of the Iraqi Kurds, a minority who have long sought independence. “This moment requires statesmanship.”

Mr. Kerry’s statements, shared by a senior State Department official who attended the meeting, were prompted by recent comments by Mr. Barzani in an interview with CNN about what he called the need for Kurdish self-determination.

Mr. Barzani neither withdrew those comments nor said that he would take concrete steps to pursue self-determination during his meeting with Mr. Kerry, who traveled to Iraq on Monday as part of an emergency effort to help deal with a growing Sunni insurgency threatening to partition the country.

But Mr. Barzani made no secret of his disdain for Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, a Shiite. Mr. Barzani also bluntly expressed his sense that the gains by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the Sunni extremist group known as ISIS, had changed the political landscape.

Photo

Secretary of State John Kerry and Masoud Barzani, the president of Iraq’s Kurdish autonomous region, on Tuesday in Erbil, Iraq. 

Credit

Pool photo by Brendan Smialowski

“We are facing a new reality and a new Iraq,” Mr. Barzani said at the start of his meeting with Mr. Kerry.

Mr. Kerry’s trip to the Kurdish regional capital, Erbil, was his first as secretary of state. He met with Mr. Barzani after meetings in Baghdad on Monday with Mr. Maliki and rival Shiite and Sunni politicians. (The last secretary of state to visit Erbil was Condoleezza Rice, in 2006, at the height of the American-led Iraq occupation.)

After ISIS members took over the northern city of Mosul two weeks ago and began to move south, Kurdish security forces responded by seizing Kirkuk, a city in an oil-rich region that has long been divided between Arabs and Kurds.

The Kurds’ expansion has put them in a position to demand more autonomy in political talks over Iraq’s future. But it might also complicate the effort to cobble together a new Iraqi government, particularly one that does not include Mr. Maliki, long accused of autocratic tendencies by Iraqi politicians.

American officials have made clear privately that they would support the selection of a new prime minister if Mr. Maliki’s rivals would unite behind an alternative. But it is uncertain whether Sunni and Kurdish political parties can find enough common ground in forming a new government now that the Kurdish militia, known as the pesh merga, has taken control of Kirkuk.

“Ousting Maliki will require the cooperation of all the other blocs,” said Ramzy Mardini, an expert on Iraq and a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council, an independent research organization based in Washington.

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How Kurdistan might look under the Treaty of Sèvres:

Wikipedia