Thursday, March 06, 2008

Turkey Bombs Iraq, where's Washington?   [Michael Ledeen]

In my younger days at AEI, back when the Clintons ruled Washington, the United States ran away from a confrontation with Saddam Hussein when he sent his tanks into the "no fly zone" and attacked Kurds we had been supporting. We held a press conference with some Kurdish representatives, and I said that "it seems to be a fixed element of American foreign policy that we must betray the Kurds at least once every ten years."

So here we are again. I thought we were supposed to be the guarantors of Iraqi sovereign integrity. Yet we mumble into our beer and do nothing when the Turkish army invades Iraq, attacks Kurdish positions and carries out all manner of military operations there. Now the Turks are bombing Iraqi Kurdistan, and we do nothing. Our mumbling policy strikes me as an outrage. If we really believe that the PKK—the targets of the Turkish incursions and bombing—are bad actors, then we should go after them ourselves, but I cannot imagine any good reason to tolerate (or, as some would have it, tacitly encourage) this sort of act of war from Ankara.

Lots of my friends keep telling me that Turkey is our ally, and we mustn't confront the current Turkish government, because that would only make things worse (by which they mean, that government would only become more Islamist). To which I say: that's not my kind of ally; as always, our failure to act vigorously only encourages the crazies, and you can be sure things will get worse; and we should support the Kurdish cause, because they are oppressed by the tyrants in Tehran and Damascus (as they were by Saddam), and indeed many Turkish operations in Iraq have been conducted in cahoots with the mullahs.

Iraqi Kurdistan is doing comparatively well, and I know, pace Michael Rubin, that they're a corrupt lot and leave plenty to be desired. But I think we, not the Turkish Army, should ensure that the PKK sits in its preserves and wages political, not armed war against the Turks. And I think our leaders should spend more time talking to the very impressive leaders of Iranian, Turkish and Syrian Kurdish political parties, all of whom denounce PKK terrorism. And yes, I think we should tell the Turks that the next tank that crosses the Iraqi border will find itself under attack by American forces, and tell the PKK that we will move against them the next time they attack a Turk.

The current situation is an invitation to open warfare between groups we should want on our side. It's a poor excuse for statecraft.

03/06 05:25 PMShare