The Wages of Intervention

Kurds snub Condi – that's what we get for our billions and the sacrifices of our soldiers

by Justin Raimondo

".....Yet who can blame the Kurds? After all, we're supposed to be their "liberators," and yet here we are, not merely standing idly by while Turkish warplanes bomb their country, but actively encouraging Ankara's aggression. Oh, the bitter irony! Ah, but that's power politics for you – allies turn into enemies in an instant, and the rule of thumb is to simply ask, "What have you done for me lately?".....

The invasion and occupation of Iraq has unleashed forces over which we have absolutely no control, and perhaps the most potentially destructive, if not the most potent, is Kurdish nationalism – which, in the present context, means Kurdish expansionism. Nor are the Kurds without allies in the region: the Israelis have cultivated the Kurds, arming and training their peshmerga and making significant economic investments, as reported by Seymour Hersh. The idea is to use the Kurds as a source of intelligence and to pinprick the Iranians. U.S. intervention on the side of the Turks means that the Americans are directly confronting Israeli interests in Kurdistan – yet another sign of a developing rupture in the much-vaunted "special relationship."

The wages of intervention are paltry indeed: we get the dubious satisfaction, in our self-appointed role as world "leader," of arbitrating ancient feuds and fresh conflicts constantly erupting in every part of the globe – and when it comes to Mesopotamia, there is no paucity of historic vendettas. As U.S. troops are increasingly caught in the crossfire between Shi'ites and Sunnis, Kurds and Turks, the Israelis and nearly everyone else, at some point the American people are going to wake up and say: "Enough! We don't want a single U.S. soldier to die for a 'Greater Kurdistan' or a unitary Iraqi state – because it's none of our business, after all.""