A House Divided

Karen at Peripetia discusses David “Bobo” Brooks strategy for Iraq in her post, No Use Crying Over Broken Eggs… Bobo’s plan is as simple and fantasy-based as the man himself – the country will become a federation of three states, everyone will share in the oil wealth, and the war will stop.

It sounds logical, and reasonable, and completely ignores the lack of good will that is required to make it work.

If a logical plan was all that was require to solve problems, the Israeli-Palestinian problem would have been resolved before the Korean War started.

The Kurds do not want to be part of Iraq, they want their own nation, and that will lead to the situation that Juan Cole sees addressed in a Toronto Star article, Dividing Iraq means ‘endless war’: Turkey.

The Turkish Foreign Minister, Abdullah Gul, makes it plain that Turkey will invade if raids from Iraqi Kurdistan don’t stop, and the Iraqi Kurds have no interest in stopping the PKK from their attacks into Turkey.

We can all stand around and say that this doesn’t make sense, but it makes sense to the Kurds, and they are willing to die for it. They went along with the Shrubbery’s plan to invade Iraq, despite being screwed over by Republican Presidents going back to Nixon. They can see victory, so they are not going to settle for less.

Even if we had followed doctrine and maintained security in Iraq after the invasion, I’m not certain we could have kept the Kurds in a nation called Iraq. Deals were made to get their assistance, and the Kurds are going to enforce the terms of those agreements, with blood if necessary.

A quick review of the effects of nationalism when the Soviet Bloc collapsed should have told anyone who was paying attention what was going to happen. Not even Czechoslovakia was able to remain as a single nation. Expecting to accomplish in Iraq what couldn’t be accomplished in Czechoslovakia, where there was no war, is unrealistic.