When Turkeys Collude

Dear God, it pains me to do this, and I had to hold a revolver to my typing finger to force it to go along, but please go read this column.

The morass in Iraq and deepening difficulties in Afghanistan have not deterred the Bush administration from taking on a dangerous and questionable new secret operation. High-level U.S. officials are working with their Turkish counterparts on a joint military operation to suppress Kurdish guerrillas and capture their leaders. Through covert activity, their goal is to forestall Turkey from invading Iraq.

This is a huge diplomatic problem, this I know. Turkey is a long-time ally of the United States, even though they don't like us as much as they used to, thank you Bush. The Kurds are the only folks in that whole area who actually do like us a little for getting Saddam's boot off their neck.

There are Kurds in several countries over there. They want their own country, but the other countries, particularly Turkey, don't want them to. I can see both sides of this. Turkey is historically brutal to minorities it doesn't like and would just as soon be rid of. The Kurds want their own state so they can be independent and safe. The land area for this has to come from somewhere, and no nation on earth likes to lose territory.

What to do?

Using our already overstretched military in an active campaign inside Kurdistan against the PKK seems wrongheaded to me, but that's BushCheney for you, the pricks.

Perhaps a better way forward might be to help the Turks with border security while our diplomats, if we still have any, try to convince the Kurds to calm their guerrillas down for a while. We should not take an active role in suppressing a people who want to be independentt.

Oh, I forgot - Bush isn't very good at 'border security'. He's just good at killing people, thinks it's the answer to everything. If they won't shut up, off 'em 'til they do. If they're no good for big business, they're of no importance, just human trash. Kill 'em and be done with 'em. Bastard.

I think that killing the folks who have managed to engineer, through their own efforts, not ours, the only reasonable facsimile of stability in Iraq is just another example of Bush's boneheaded foreign policy blunders, damn his eyes. It's also a real good way to turn yet another bunch of folks against us.

My trigger finger is turning white, and my typing finger is shaking like a leaf, but this time I have to go along with Novak, even thank him for bringing this to light: this move is dangerous and wrong.