Here's an excellent piece on the future of the Kurds — both Iraqi and Turkish — by Madeleine Elfenbein of the American Prospect, who, whether she means to or not, underscores one of the three reasons that made it imperative for the U.S. to remove Saddam Hussein from power. It's the one that both the antiwar and the prowar factions can agree on: namely, that the U.S. was complicit in Saddam's crimes against humanity:
[I]n a well-documented but now forgotten episode from Kissinger's storied years as secretary of state, the Shah of Iran persuaded the United States to support a rebellion of Iraqi Kurds with over a million dollars' worth of arms to destabilize his rival. The U.S. did so, only to abruptly withdraw its support when Iran and Iraq reached a détente. Iraq then launched a vicious campaign of retribution, and the Kurds' pleas for help went ignored. As an anonymous U.S. official told a Congressional committee investigating the incident, "covert action should not be confused with missionary work."The scenario repeated itself in 1991 when the first President Bush, at war with Iraq, issued a ringing statement calling on Iraqis to "take matters into their own hands" and rise up against Saddam Hussein. The nation's oppressed Shiites and Kurds promptly did so, only to fail once again without support from U.S. troops. The United States finally got around to creating "no-fly zones" in Iraq's north and south, meant to protect the Shiites and Kurds against aerial bombardment and chemical weapons, and established a "green line" demarcating the Kurdish region of Iraq under U.S. protection. The Iraqi Kurds were able to build a de facto state of their own, with a separate elected government, a standing army and even informal embassies in foreign capitals, including Turkey's.
Now here's an epithet my anonymous fans in the comment section might try on me one of these days: Kurdish Zionist. Why no homeland for one of the oldest and most venerable Muslim minorities in the Middle East? The Kurds have been stabbed in the back, front and sides by every major power all throughout the 20th century, and though they're by no means a greater "people" than any other (the PKK is a nasty outfit all right, and the KDP is guilty of inexcusable acts of state repression and censorship), their collective commitment to parliamentary democracy, academic freedom, and women's rights is an exemplar not just for the region but for the entire world. If Iraq does fall apart, then our every effort should be expended to preserve the integrity of an independent state of Kurdistan.
My favorite animadversion against the current administration and indeed the bulk of American society is also an irony that goes underreported by the mainstream media. It's this. Both the Kurdish president of Iraq and the Kurdish deputy prime minister of Iraq are opposed, on principle, to capital punishment. No U.S. president or vice president has ever been, so haven't we got at least as much to learn from our Mesopotamian allies as they do from us?