"The Other Iraq"
By dpayton Posted in Foreign Affairs — Comments (4) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Recently on the Public Radio program Open Source, Christopher Lydon did a show on Iraqi Kurdistan, or, as it's PR campaign calls it, "the other Iraq". You can listen to the show and read the show notes here on Radio Open Source. He interviewed Qubad Talabani, Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) Representative to the United States and son of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman, KRG Representative to the United Kingdom, and Peter Galbraith, former (and first) Ambassador to Croatia under Clinton, Senior Diplomatic Fellow at the Center for Arms Control, and Non-Proliferation Advisor to the KRG.
For some, it may be an eye-opening program. From the discussion of how Americans were indeed greeted as liberators, to the economic prosperity, to the lack of sectarian violence among the Sunni, Shia and Christian Kurds, this program should give pause to those saying we should get out of Iraq ASAP. In fact, both the Kurdish guests warned against a withdrawal too early. (Ambassador Galbraith, predictably, disagreed. More on that in a moment.)
The program was quite a departure from Lydon's show's usual fare. As is typical for public radio, the slate of guests is often slanted liberal, and many time 100% so. Lydon calls his show a "conversation", but it usually is a monologue from the Left. To have a program extolling the good things that have come from the war (even if the host can't bring himself to agree, insinuating that some of the responses sounded like "fantasy") is equal time that has been sorely missing from the media at large. Kudos to Lydon and the PRI folks for finally, if really belatedly, bringing the news.
The cognitive dissonance was deafening when Peter Galbraith did disagree at the end of the show with the idea of staying in Iraq. Here were the very people he's working to help asking for our continued help, and all he can do is shill for Hillary Clinton's presidential bid (by name) and say that, as she does, we need to get out of there because the Iraqi experiment has failed.
I'd ask him, and anyone else who said that the war in Iraq was and is a failure; what do you say to the Kurds? Were they and all other Iraqis not worth the effort to get rid of Hussein and his terror supporting and practicing regime? Just because some may not be handling freedom as well as we'd hoped, should we have left them all to the designs of the Ba'athists? If you blame the US for the violence in the south, are you prepared to credit the US for the peace and prosperity in the north?
Your analysis ignores two obvious points.
1) Back in 1991 GH Bush told Kurds and others to rise up and fight Saddam. The Kurds did so thinking the US would help out militarily in the hope of overthrowing Saddam. We didn't. As a result thousands of Kurds were kiled.
2)The current state of affairs inside the Kurd territory is better than in the rest of Iraq for sure. But whenever the Kurds discuss an independent state of Kurdistan, the US opposes them. It seems to me that if we really want to give the Iraqis freedom and democracy, we should allow Kurdistan to become an independent state if they so desire. Even if Turkey and Iran object. Only then would the Kurds have true independence.
1) And this changes the facts on the ground today in Iraqi Kurdistan...how, exactly?
2) If you listen to the program, you'll hear Qubad Talabani acknowledge that an independent state, while he considers it inevitable, is not an idea worth pressing at this point in time.
The anti-war folks prefer bumper stickers to life-saving action. They always will.
To paraphrase Mark Steyn, how fast would the Left recoil from one of their favorite causes if Pres. Bush woke up one day and said, "You know, let's free Tibet. I'm sending in the Marines."
"During my lifetime, all our problems have come from mainland Europe, and all the solutions from the English-speaking nations across the world." - Thatcher
Your analysis ignores two obvious points.
1) Back in 1991 GH Bush told Kurds and others to rise up and fight Saddam. The Kurds did so thinking the US would help out militarily in the hope of overthrowing Saddam. We didn't. As a result thousands of Kurds were kiled.
2)The current state of affairs inside the Kurds territory is better than in the rest of Baghdad for sure. But whenever the Kurds discuss an independent state of Kurdistan, the US opposes them. It seems to me that if we really want to give the Iraqis freedom and democracy, we should allow Kurdistan to become an independent state if they so desire. Even if it means Turkey and Iran would object.