Turkey And War In Iraq
The reason I believe this is because during 1991’s Gulf War, Bush the Elder failed to topple Saddam even with over a half-million troops on the ground. Moreover, Kurdish groups in northern Iraq proved then and continue to this day to be incapable of achieving any military aims. Following the war, the US insisted for some time on its designs to form a Kurdish state in northern Iraq, while paying lip service to Turkey by saying that it was against it. In the end, Washington’s efforts to found a Kurdish state floundered. Anyway, it had already withdrawn its CIA-trained peshmergas from the region.
Although the US proved unable to establish Kurdish state, it has been successful in sustaining a de facto one which has been holding the reins in northern Iraq for years now, while depending on US financial assistance. For God’s sake, what else do you need to call an entity ‘a state’ if you already have a flag, a parliament and a cabinet? Thanks to the ineptitude of the people of the region in developing a sense of cooperation and solidarity among themselves, the US has shifted its policy on the issue.
And now, as far as I can see, the US is determined to divide up Iraq, yet is having problems drumming up the necessary financial and psychological muster. In 1991, the US public wasn’t opposed to military operation to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi invasion, as they believed it was being done in the name of defending democracy and the democratic rights of the Kuwaiti people. But today the situation is completely different. If it was Saddam whom Bush the Younger fingered for the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center, and if Washington hadn’t wasted its money in the Afghan mountains trying to hunt down Osama bin Laden, both the US people and the nation’s allies would have more easily given their consent to a possible war in Iraq. Yet, the Bush administration is now having a hard time convincing its allies as well as its own people, and it cannot decide what to do.
It seems to me that an Iraq war would already be underway by now had Turkey bought the story of securing its right to have a say in the post-Saddam era and decided to join the offensive the moment it was approached. Now how can the US launch an operation from northern Iraq in order to minimize the cost of a possible war without Turkey’s active involvement? It wouldn’t do any better by bringing the CIA-trained peshmergas back into the region. Can Turkey head off a war in Iraq by opting out of the US designs?
