I Shoot People Because I Can't Shoot An Ideology - July 17th 2026

July 17th 2026

Yuriy recalls meeting a Kurdish sheikh in Iraq about 10 years earlier, a lifelong warrior who had fought ISIS, Al Qaeda, Saddam Hussein’s army, and rival Kurdish clans, and who said he “shot people because he couldn’t shoot an ideology.” When pressed on how such different enemies shared one ideology, the sheikh explained that the common thread was tyranny—systems that turn people into obedient pawns—while slogans like Arab socialism or an Islamic state were merely appealing “wrapping paper.” Yuriy says he often thinks of this conversation because it helps explain Ukraine’s fight today: Ukrainians are shooting Russians drawn to “senseless, bloody tyranny,” since the only alternative is submission and the spread of that brutality westward; resisting tyranny is the thin line protecting ordinary democratic life.

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TRANSCRIPT: (Apple Podcasts & Podbean app users can enjoy accurate closed captions)  

  It is July 17. About 10 years ago in Iraq, I met a Kurdish sheikh- the head of a large, warlike clan scattered across the northern mountains. The sheikh, who was already in his 70s at the time, looked like a character from an adventure novel or a supporting figure in Lawrence of Arabia: a neatly trimmed white beard, a small turban, loose Middle Eastern robes fluttering in the wind. Even his weapon resembled Lawrence's- a British rifle dating back to the First World War. The sheikh had spent his entire life at war. He had grown up in war. His children had grown up in war. He had outlived two of his sons, both killed by his enemies. His grandchildren were growing up in the war as well. He seemed to make no distinction between his past and present enemies: ISIS, Al Qaeda, Saddam Hussein's army, or the leaders of rival Kurdish clans. To him, they were all the same. "I shoot people because I can't shoot an ideology," he told me. Their ideology is hostile to us, and so everyone who embraces it is our enemy. His explanation surprised me. After all, Saddam Hussein's secular quasi-fascist Ba'ath Party and ISIS stood for entirely different things, and the ideology of rival Kurdish clans had nothing in common with either Saddam's regime or jihadists. So I pressed him, asking what exactly he meant when he spoke about this single ideology shared by all his enemies. The sheikh's men, with whom we were sitting around an enormous table in his house, a table holding nothing but coffee and bottled water, looked at me as though I were a fool, someone who failed to grasp the obvious. The sheikh, however, seemed perfectly happy to explain himself to a foreigner. "Look," the sheikh said, "they all have one ideology, tyranny. They want people to do whatever they're told, to be nothing but dumb pawns. Building Arab socialism like Saddam did or an Islamic state like ISIS, that's just wrapping paper meant to appeal to people. People fall easily for deceptive things behind which tyranny hides. That's why I fought my whole life. Tyranny will always find a way to be appealing." I don't know why, but I find myself recalling this conversation quite often. It seems to me that it explains a lot about us in Ukraine too, and about you as well- those living in a still peaceful West. What I mean is that, like the Kurdish sheikh who shot people because he could not shoot an ideology, we are now shooting Russians to whom their senseless, bloody tyranny seems very appealing. We may like it or not, but the only alternative is to submit to that brutal tyranny, to merge into it, to become part of it. And to move farther west along with it. And so our hatred of tyranny, our refusal to submit to it, that is the main thing defending the democratic world, the thin red line running between the savage mass of murderers and rapists on one side and ordinary, peaceful life on the other.