Zeev's Turnips Talk Politics (ZTTP)

[SamIam]

thanks,

Saturday, October 27, 2007
A war that keeps on "giving"...

Now the Turks are bombing Iraq, particularly northern Iraq where the Kurds are located. The chaos spreads and very little in the way of democracy or even stability has appeared.

In December 2006, I had thought Cheney (Bush) might finally begin to remove troops when Saddam was killed. However, I fairly quickly realized my hopeful thought was dead wrong. One additional concern I raised in that post concerned the Turks and northern Iraq. I wrote in the same post:

"As for the Kurds in northern Iraq (the Iraqi Kurds are mostly Sunni Muslim, but define themselves more by ethnic heritage), if Kurdish leaders want our troops to temporarily stay in northern Iraq, perhaps that may be advisable. The US, however, could possibly end up betraying Kurdish sovereignty or autonomy once again, and might refuse to provide even a temporary US military presence in northern Iraq. Why? Because next-door-neighbor Turkey has its own Kurdish population along the Turkish-Iraq border. And Turkey has become increasingly concerned over the possibility of Kurdish sovereignty in northern Iraq spilling into a movement of Kurds in Turkey to revolt against Turkey--and combine with the Iraqi Kurds to establish something that may be called 'Kurdistan.'"

See also this article by Stephen Kinzer reviewing various written works on modern Turkey and the Kurds. The article is from the January 12, 2006 edition of The New York Review of Books.

I remain very angry that the US has not withdrawn its troops from Sunni and Shia controlled Iraq. I am also frustrated at the incompetent US leadership, which continues to prove it is incapable of engaging in any sensible diplomacy in that region.

(Edited)

posted by Mitchell J. Freedman
http://mitchellfreedman.blogspot.com/