I truly don't remember the exchange. What I'd say now is that the invasion
and its aftermath seems not to have been thought through by anyone with the
intelligence of a pea. It should have been obvious that all manner of awful
consequences were possible, some of which we learn about daily. Perhaps the
least of them is that the United States and Britain are now revealed as
sanctioning and at least on occasion practicing torture. As to the Kurds,
this moment is just that, a moment; if there's ever a next election we can
expect to see their parliamentary representation significantly reduced by
Sunni participation in the vote, and with it the number of Kurdish
departmental portfolios. The sequelae of that, with the continuing
hostility of Iran and Turkey, won't be known until the US decides it's no
longer cost effective to use the Kurds as a private army and supply them
accordingly. Which is to say that at some point the Kurds will be orphans
again, unless it suits another power to enlist them as clients.
We're not particularly good at thinking ahead in the US.
Mark
At 01:03 PM 5/23/2005, you wrote:
>Doug:
>
>I haven't really been following these exchanges, but several of your points
>seem correct. For example:
>
><snip>
>First I wonder just who this 'left' comprises.
><snip>
>
>The internal opposition was, inevitably, difficult to read. Judging by the
>attitude of Iraqi exiles in my part of the world, the opposition was split.
>The (Shi'a) al-Khoei Foundation is a few minutes' walk from here. Sheikh
>Abdul Majid al-Khoei, who was the cleric hacked to death in Najaf, broadly
>supported the 'intervention'. There were many local Iraqis who did not. (I
>doubt if all of them were Sunni, either.) And there were several Iraqi
>commentators who predicted, ante bellum, precisely what has happened: a
>Sunni insurgency once Saddam was overthrown.
>
>I also don't recall anyone stressing 'the cost of the Iraq intervention as
>against the cost of domestic expenditure', as Hitchens appears to have
>claimed. Unless I've missed something (I may have done) that's a straw man.
>
>As to the Kurds, far from deciding to 'scab and blackleg on the Kurds',
>there were many who saw 'intervention' as very threatening to the Kurds.
>Mark, I seem to remember, suggested that very thing on this list. His
>thinking (I agreed with him) was typical of many who opposed the war even
>though, in the event, that has (so far) proved to be one of the less
>problematic parts of this business.
>
>CW
>__________________________________________
>
>'I might have known you'd choose the easy way'
>(Franz Kline's mother)
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