February 28, 2003

An army in northern Iraq  

Josh Marshall describes the Bush admin's cold hearted betrayal of the Iraqi Kurds.

[...] the deal we've just cut with the Turks belies much of the democratization argument. Now, for reasons I'll try to get into later, I'm something of a turkophile. But the administration's apparent decision to allow the Turkish army to range at will through Iraqi Kurdistan -- the one place in Iraq where something like democracy is taking root -- doesn't bode well for any grand democratic experiment.
I'm not sold on his argument - for one thing, I think the Kurds in Northern Iraq have a lot to fear from Saddam if there are no US military forces up there, so it might be worth making a few concessions. But I do have serious questions about whether Bush is serious about democracy in Iraq - much less the rest of the Middle East.

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