The Turks ...

Or, How can Iraq get any more fucked up? Swopa looks at the game of chicken being played on Iraq's northern border:

Note the vicious circle of this logic: Turkey knows that invading Kurdistan would be foolish. But the only way it can achieve its goal of quashing the PKK is to convince the Kurds and Americans that it will invade if they don't do the job.

Except that the threat to invade isn't plausible enough to force the Kurds and Americans to act, since they know (and they know that Turkey knows) that invading Kurdistan would be foolish.

So for Turkey, the only alternative to getting stuffed... is to do the foolish thing and invade Kurdistan.

...

[blink, blink]

Just consider the change in dynamic there if Turkish troops begin to engage the PKK in a full-on effort. The only place that's relatively peaceful, the area our main supply lines run through, will be turned into another dangerous alley for our convoys. A good portion of our air transport missions are run out of Incirlik Air Base in Turkey. If our relations with Turkey suffer, do you think they would be so inclined to allow us to continue on such a scale, if at all?

As far as the Americans, or the Iraqis [snicker], acting to contain the PKK, I ask with what? Troops we don't have enough of to pacify 'Sunnistan' or 'Shiastan', let alone Kurdistan? Blackwater mercenaries who'll only make the situation worse by killing anything that moves? Or will we just ignore it and hope it goes away? But, as of yesterday, that last option has been taken from us. From an NYT article Swopa links to:

...

But the Sunday ambush on Turkish troops was carried out by a much larger force than the P.K.K. typically uses, the Western official said, and appeared aimed at drawing Turkey into [the] conflict.

“I think we’ve passed the threshold,” Mr. [Suat] Kinikli [a lawmaker from Mr. Erdogan’s party and a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee] said. “It looks like for two days or three days there will be a holding off and a waiting period. Unless the U.S. comes up with something magic in the next few days, which is highly unlikely, we’ll probably go in.”

...

Yeah, we all know the magic the Chimp can pull out of his ass.

You know, I love all the people who were all 'rah-rah, kill the ragheads' without any thought of the complications arising from our actions. Osama is still free, 6 years after he murdered 3000 people, oil prices are through the roof, the economy is a mess, and now the war threatens to escalate, dragging more in the region, and maybe Europe, into the conflict. Oh yeah, and we're still trying to goad Iran into a fight.

I'm not optimistic we'll be able to stuff this genie back in the bottle anytime soon.