 THE BUSH DOCTRINE IN THEORY & PRACTICE: KURDISTAN EDITION
We will starve terrorists of funding, turn them one against another, drive them from place to place, until there is no refuge or no rest. And we will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.
-President George W. Bush, Address to a Joint Session of Congress, 20 September 2001 In the lead-up to his invasion of Iraq, President Bush opined forcefully and frequently that the United States was justified in toppling the government of Saddam Hussein because it was a state sponsor of terrorism and posed a direct threat to the America and its allies.
Surprisingly, the Bush Administration is less than enthusiastic about the parliament of Turkey having reached the same conclusion about neighboring Iraqi Kurdistan.
The Turkish parliament yesterday voted to allow military strikes against Kurdish separatists in northern Iraq, despite stiff U.S. opposition and appeals from Baghdad for time to purge the rebels.
A government motion seeking a one-year authorization for one or more incursions into Iraq was approved with the support of 507 lawmakers in the 550-seat house, with 19 voting against.
The motion leaves it up to the government to determine the timing and scope of the operation and the number of troops to be sent.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has stressed that parliamentary approval would not mean immediate military action, signalling room for diplomacy.
Baghdad and Washington scrambled to dissuade Ankara from following through on military action.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said he was determined to act against the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party, which attacks Turkey from its bases in northern Iraq.
The PKK has waged a bloody campaign for Kurdish self-rule in southeast Turkey since 1984. The conflict has claimed more than 37,000 lives. Any fair-minded observer has to agree that, under this president's own doctrine of international relations, Turkey has a much stronger case for attacking Iraq than did the U.S in 2002-03.
In 2002, Washington argued that Iraq harbored terrorists and may have allowed the establishment of al-Qaeda training camps on its territory. That those camps were in the autonomous Kurdish zone and protected by U.N resolutions and American air power was wisely left unsaid.
Since the end of the first Gulf War nearly 17 years ago, the Kurdistan Worker's Party (or PKK) has escalated its terror attacks against Turkey and not infrequently engaged the militaries of both Turkey and Iran. Turkey responded with a low-level attempts at the ethnic cleansing of its southeastern frontier, which only served to invite more terorrism from the PKK.
Between the American wars in Iraq, the PKK fought rival factions in the autonomous zone. However, since the overthrow of Saddam, neither the Kurdish regional government, the Iraqi government in Baghdad, or the United States military - which has been charged with unrooting terror wherever it is found - has done much of anything about the PKK. To Turkish ears, the president's declaration that "you are either with us, or you are with the terorists" must ring hollow indeed.
Turkey has been a close American ally since the the end of the First World War and, as a member of NATO and under the Truman Doctrine, it enjoys an American security guarantee. There are currently 160,000 U.S forces in Iraq and the United States has done nothing to stop terror attacks against an ally by a group that the U.S itself has designated as a terrorist organization from a country it occupies. Indeed, Washington holds Iraqi Kurdistan up as an example for the rest of the region.
It then stands to reason that Ankara has every right to ask the United States with whom it stands, Turkey or the terrorists.
Of course, the fledgling government of Nouri al-Maliki would very much like to avoid a second foreign invasion of his country in less than five years and has pledged to Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan that such an exercise will be unnecessary.
Maliki told Erdogan on the telephone that Baghdad "is absolutely determined to end the activities and the presence" of the PKK in Iraq, the semi-official Anatolia news agency reported, quoting unnamed sources.
He asked for "a new opportunity" to resolve the issue through diplomatic means and proposed talks.
Erdogan welcomed the proposal but warned that Ankara cannot tolerate any "further waste of time." I think after 23 years, Turkey has been more than patient.
The obvious question is with what army will al-Maliki "end the activities and presence" of the PKK? The army under his control has yet to prove itself equal to the task of quelling the insurgency that has engulfed the territory under his direct command, and Maliki has little, if any, influence in Kurdistan. Indeed, one would be hard pressed to find anything as trivial as an Iraqi flag north of Kirkuk.
The United States currently has no forces at all in the north and even if it did, lacks the will or domestic political support to take on the PKK and face the possibility of a third major insurgency against its forces.
Therefore, there are few options other than Turkish unilateral action. Ironically, the White House is strssing diplomacy.
In Washington, President George W. Bush said the U.S. was "making it very clear to Turkey that we don't think it is in their interests" to send troops into Iraq. But Washington has lost leverage with Ankara because of a pending Congressional vote on a resolution branding the 1915-17 Ottoman massacres of Armenians as genocide.
Turkey strongly rejects the "genocide" tag and has threatened unspecified reprisals against its NATO ally. For George W. Bush to call for patience and diplomacy is certainly one of the more interesting phenomenons in recent history. That he decides what is and is not in the interest of other countries certainly is not. He is, when all is said and done, the decider.
Bush's evaluation of Turkish interests is certainly fascinating. Saddam Hussein presented no direct threat to the American homeland, all fantasies about "mushroom clouds in American cities" aside, and the terrorism he sponsored targeted few, if any, American citizens or interests. But terrorism was one of the two stated justifications for the March 19, 2003 invasion.
Yet "democratic" Iraq is currently providing both safe harbor and a base of operations to the PKK, which has attacked Turkish terroritory, interests and nationals repeatedly for years. Those were precisely the reasons the United States was justified in taking down the Taliban in Afghanistan.
It is important to remember that Turkey is not acting pre-emptively to some distant (and laughable) threat. It has been and continues to be attacked by a group that even the United States has declared a terrorist organization. And the Bush Administration is trying to slam the brakes down on that.
That begs an important question; "What is the War on Terror really about if not terror and going to war against it?" The United States was never attacked by Iraq, not even by proxy. One attack against the American homeland was launched from Afghanistan. Yet, this administration levelled two (albeit highly unpleasant) governments and engaged in a doomed exercise in nation building that it mocked just seven years ago.
Turkey, on the other hand, is in its third decade of attacks on its terrority by a group that everyone recognizes as terrorist. The Iranians know that the PKK is a terrorist group. But Turkey is supposed to wait around around for the United States and its puppet regime in Baghdad to do .... nothing. George W. Bush and Nouri al-Maliki have spent more time fighting Carl Levin than they have the Kurdistan Workers Party.
When one country invades another, it faces the risk of a native insurgency. That's the nature of war. The Turks have invaded no one. No, they find themselves invaded by a Kurdish foreign insurgency that believes it has found protection in the rhetoric of Washington. And for all intents and purposes, the PKK does have President Bush's protection.
It couldn't be more obvious that this president believes that his country alone has the right to respond to a threat - real and perceived - however and whenever it sees fit, yet reserves the right to restain other nations with clear and justified national security interests at stake. It is equally obvious that he is about learn a powerful lesson; that the world doesn't work that way.
Five years ago, President Bush was rather more liberal in using words like "terrorist" and "genocide" than he is today. He's now learning that those words have real long-term, and probably permanent, implications on America's relationship with Turkey.
The Kurds are the world's largest ethnic group without a nation of their own. Consisting of approximately 55 million souls, they are nearly twice the population of Canada. They have been oppressed, betrayed and slaughtered by every country in the region. Their tragic history, however, does not give them licence to engage in terrorism.
Ankara has the same right to self-defence that Washington does and they have a far more compelling case for conducting military operations in Iraq now than did the United States four and a half years ago. In fact, since America assumed responsibility fot Iraqi security by virtue of its occupation and disbanding of the Iraqi military, the Bush Administration has a special duty to prevent precisely what is happening now. It is now clear that it has been derilect in that duty.
That leaves it with nothing but bad options, and those options are getting worse by the day.
Mr. President, are you with the Turks or are you with the terrorists?
Editor's Note: I wrote this post in longhand at work yesterday. Of course, most of the arguments were also used in a far more humorous way by the Daily Show last night. I just can't win, can I?
Easy Listening Recommendation of the Day: Welcome To The Terrordome By: Public Enemy From: Fear of a Black Planet
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