So have you been following any of that ominous news about Turkey and the Kurdish Workers Party? In case you haven't, I'll give you a brief rundown. And by brief, I really mean not at all brief.
There probably should be a country called Kurdistan, but there is not. The Kurdish people occupy the northern parts of Iraq and the eastern parts of Turkey. They've lived there a very long time and they're pretty much the only people living there. It's a natural ethnic division. Some of the Kurds in those regions identify themselves first along nationalist lines, as either Iraqis or Turks, but still others identify themselves first along ethnic lines. Some Kurds really want a Kurdistan, and some are willing to fight for the idea.
The Iraqi government doesn't have all that much control over their Kurdish region. The Turks mostly have control over theirs, but often keep that control in unsavory, "oppressing a minority" kinds of ways. Rabble rousers from almost-independent Kurdish Iraq are shooting things and blowing stuff up in not-even-close-to-independent Kurdish Turkey. As you can imagine, the Turks don't like this.
The really ugly thing is that no one's in a good position to do anything about it. Kurdish Iraq is semi-autonomous. The central government in Baghdad has little real control over the region. American occupation forces are a little busy trying to keep themselves from getting blown up on the road from the green zone to the airport. So the Turks are beginning to take military action.
And it's entirely reasonable that they do that. We invaded Afghanistan because the Taliban wouldn't/couldn't do anything about al Qaeda. Why can't the Turks do the same thing with the PKK in Iraq?
But it would be really nice if they didn't. Given the history of the region, the Turks are pretty unpopular in Arabia. Almost as unpopular as… uh, us. Full scale military action by Turkey in Iraq could be very bad for the future of Iraq and could have a halo effect on the whole region.
But, what can you do? This is kind of our fault. Maybe. Saddam Hussein was definitely a bad guy. It's good that he's gone. But our actions to correct some of his atrocities have helped set the stage for what we're seeing now.
One of the biggest arguments for both Gulf wars is that Saddam gassed his own people… the Kurds in northern Iraq. After the first gulf war, when (surprise!) we did not topple Hussein, the Kurds in the north and the Shiites in the south needed a little bit of extra protection. So we created the possibly illegal "no fly zones," where American airpower helped keep Saddam's influence and aggression in check.
In the years between Gulf wars, Kurdish Iraq slipped more and more out of Baghdad's control. And hey, guess what? They're still mostly out of Baghdad's control. Now, militants are going to be militants no matter what we did then, and no matter what we do now, but I can't help but wonder if the aftermath of Gulf War I didn't play a huge part in setting the stage for this problem today.
But I think I'm going to take a different view.
It's all Monica Lewinsky's fault.
Hussein was a pain in the ass from the moment he invaded Kuwait until the moment he died. He was a particular pain in the ass in the late 90s when UN weapons inspections failed. President Clinton decided something had to be done. But there was a problem. The Lewinsky scandal was unfolding. Basically it went "I did not have sexual relations with that woman. Now let's talk about dropping bombs on Iraq…"
Nobody wanted to hear that. Everyone said "No, no, no… you're not changing the subject that easily." There was no new round of airstrikes then. And what's to say that wouldn't have changed everything? There's no doubt that a new conflict with Iraq would have changed the political climate, and possibly had an impact on the 2000 election and who knows what else. It's one of those "a butterfly beats its wings in Beijing" kind of things. Who knows how far the ripples would have traveled? It's possible there would not have been a second Gulf War, or that it would have been delayed, or the course of the war would have been different.
Who knows? I'm just speculating. The only thing I know for certain is that we should all blame Monica Lewinsky. And Michael Douglas.
