The US's Favorite Rogue Regime and Terrorist Sponsor

See Yahya Barzanji, " Iraq Kurdish leader vows to fight strike," Associated Press, 10/20/07.

In the days immediately following 9/11, George Bush set out what he called The Bush Doctrine, to unanimous applause around the world: any nation that knowingly provides support and safe haven to terrorist groups is guilty of their crimes. Knowingly providing support and safe haven to terrorist groups after they have attacked another nation is a cause for war, and obligates all nations to support the invasion of the country and the overthrow of the government that provided support and safe haven to those terrorists.

The People's Party of Kurdistan (abbreviated PKK in Kurdish) is listed even by the United States as a terrorist group. This formerly Soviet supported conspiracy has been engaged in a campaign of terrorist violence against Turkey for decades, including the murder of civilians, in an attempt to force Turkey to cede the eastern 1/3rd of their country to Turkey's Kurdish minority. In the days and weeks immediately following the US invasion of Iraq, pretty much the entire PKK picked up and moved across the border into Iraqi Kurdistan, lending their assistance to the two major Iraqi Kurdish political parties in their power grab in exchange for safe haven just inside Iraq's border with Turkey, and in exchange for assistance from Iraqi Kurdish border patrols in covering their covert entrance into and escape back out of Turkey, where they have continued their terror attacks.

It is therefore, by the Bush Doctrine, incumbent on all nations to invade Iraqi Kurdistan, overthrow the two Kurdish political parties that are ruling northern Iraq, and institute a new government that will crack down on such cross-border terrorist groups as the PKK.

Don't consider the Bush doctrine binding, or still binding? Consider this then, in addition or instead. Turkey is, and for a very long time has been, a full member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO. The first principle of the NATO treaty is, "An attack upon one is an attack upon all." If any nation attacks Turkey, like any other NATO member country, then it is the legal obligation of every member of NATO to respond militarily to that attack, by any means necessary to defend Turkey from that attack, up to and including the use of nuclear weapons. It is therefore incumbent on the US, England, France, and every other member of NATO to send military troops into Iraqi Kurdistan to defeat and kill the PKK, and if terrain and/or sufficient numbers make this impossible, then that obligation extends as far as legally requiring the nuclear powers in NATO to nuke northern Iraq.

Not going to happen, though. Our troops are, at best, going to stand by and ignore the fact that the Iraqi Kurdish army that we armed and trained will be murdering Turkish troops who are in pursuit of PKK terrorists. Don't bother blaming George Bush for this, either; what do you think the Democratic Congress's "pro-Armenian" resolution was about? Because Turkey wouldn't assist us in the conquest of Iraq, Turkey is no longer considered an ally of the US, NATO treaty or not. Because Iraqi Kurdistan sided with us against Saddam Hussein, Iraqi Kurdistan is our ally, no matter how many Turkish civilians (and their own civilians) they murder.

I'm not okay with that. Even if it weren't sick and wrong and deeply immoral, it's profoundly stupid. Are we trying to push Turkey into al Qaeda's hands? Because if we were, we'd be hard pressed to do a better job than we're doing now.