They Just Have The Wrong Enemy

Back in 1918, the Great Powers, victors over Germany, Austria, and the Ottoman Empire did a bit of practical work, redrawing the maps of Europe and the Mideast.  Supposedly high on the list of priorities for this exercise in practical cartography was the uniquely American proposition called, "self-determination of peoples."  This noble bit of High Mindedness was honored more or less with respect to the splitting up of the old Hapsburg domains, but was it observed only in the breech when it came to dismembering the Ottoman lands.

When the hyper-idealistic Woodrow Wilson confronted the real world of secret deals and the fruits of wartime exigencies, he discovered that his notions of self-determination had been preempted by an assortment of understandings both formal and otherwise between Great Britain and France.  One of these rather under the table deals dealt with the area called Palestine.  This area along with the coterminous Trans-Jordan had been divided according to two contradictory undertakings.  One, the Balfour Declaration, promised Jews a "national homeland."  The other, an agreement between two bureaucrats, Sykes and Picot, created two protectorates, one under British rule and the other under French.

This exercise in international can kicking is still with us today in the form of the seemingly endless conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.  (By the way a body of American experts on the region advised President Wilson to fight this one to the death as the result would be a century of bloodshed.  Rarely have experts been so right.)

Almost overlooked was the simultaneous division of Iraq and Syria into British (Iraq) and French (Syria along with its appendage, Lebanon) protectorates.  Embedded in both Iraq and Syria as well as in the rump state of Turkey and the country then called Persia was a people long separated from their neighbors by language, customs, and culture but not religion.  This nation now split among four states was the Kurds.

The Kurds were not at all happy with this division.  Nor should they have been.  According to the principle of self-determination, the Kurds merited their own state, the state of Kurdistan.  But, these unfortunate folk lacked any representative in Versailles.  Unlike the Arabs way down south, the Kurds had provided no service to the Allied cause.  Unlike the Arabs, the Kurds had no access to powerful British political figures.  Neither did they gain the attention of imperial minded bureaucrats.  As a result, they were casually and cruelly consigned to minority status within four states.

Almost immediately, the Kurds commenced a defensive insurgency in each and every of the four countries to which they had been so cavalierly assigned.  The insurgency has not ended to this day.  Like the conflict between Arab Palestinian and Israeli Jew, the conflict gives no hint of ending soon, or ever.

The Kurdish people are an ancient hill folk.  Like hill dwellers almost everywhere, they are excellent warriors.  It deserves mention that the great Muslim fighter who kicked Crusader butt with great effect, Saladin, was a Kurd.  While today's Kurdish fighters may not have either the military genius or bent to chivalry which marked the legendary Saladin, they are not slouches in the craft of guerrilla war as may be attested to by the marked lack of success enjoyed to date by Turks and Iranians alike.

Other than in Iraq where the Kurds have a semi-autonomous province under sole Kurdish control, it is accurate to say the Kurds live under occupation by a foreign force.  In Turkey, in Syria, and in Iran, the majority Kurdish areas are under direct military control.  Indeed, in at least two of these countries, the degree of military control equals or exceeds that exercised by Israel over the Palestinians of the West Bank and far outstrips that of Gaza.

The Kurds are denied equal treatment in all three states to a degree never reached in the West Bank or Gaza.  They are denied the use of their own language.  They are not allowed to conduct their own education.  They are not provided with the same level of governmental services including access to economic development as the majority populations in all three states.  In short, the Kurds in Turkey, Syria and Iran have been pushed to the margins, had their culture and language robustly attacked as a matter of policy, and are subject to an array of legal disabilities as well as informal discrimination.

From any perspective, the Kurds have suffered far more deprivation of status, rights, and opportunities at the hands of the governments and majority populations of Turkey, Syria, and Iran than the Palestinians ever were during the years since June 1967.  At the same time, the Kurds have a claim on statehood which equals or exceeds that made by the Palestinians.

In sharp contrast with the Palestinians, the Kurds have waged their multi-generation insurgency with remarkable humanity.  Unlike the Palestinians down to the present day, the Kurdish fighters sharply limit their attacks to military and constabulary targets.  The intentional attack of civilians is almost unheard of.  Compared to the Palestinian way of war, the Kurds take care to reduce collateral damage to a minimum.  In the usually dirty business of insurgent warfare, the Kurds are relative good guys.  The Palestinians are very much of the opposite hue.

These ground truths demand a question or two.  Where are the liberal groups in the West?  Where are the groups espousing boycotts, divestiture, or deligitimatization of Iran, Syria, and Turkey?  Where are the UN resolutions condemning the suppression of the legitimate rights of the Kurds by Ankara, Damascus, Tehran?  Where is the UN Human Rights Council with resolutions, special rapporteurs, and other displays of condemnation or concern?

In the last few years, advocates of Palestinian statehood have proliferated with a speed which boggles the imagination.  Campaigns of boycotts, divestiture, and sanctions have spilled forth in mighty torrents.  The UN and its lesser creatures have shown a tender concern for the Palestinians without precedent.  The High Minded and Lofty Thinking of the West have taken the Palestinians--rockets, suicide vests, and AK-47s  included--into a warm embrace.

All blame for whatever happens in the Mideast between Israel and the Palestinians is quickly, automatically, ascribed to the evil doing, racist, Zionist occupiers.  Even when a Jewish infant dies, throat slit as it slept near the dead parents and elder siblings, it is seen as the direct result of the Zionist occupier.

Meanwhile, the Turkish air force bombs civilians in Iraqi Kurdistan while Iranian artillery does the same without even the mildest whimper coming from the assorted advocates of self-determination around the world who are so quick to condemn the Zionist occupiers.  Even Syria is exempt from criticism as it denies the most basic rights to Kurds resident in its borders.

Why?

Why two "victims" (one, the Kurds, arguably more deserving of the term) with two such wildly disparate responses from the "international community," the human rights congeries, and politicians around the world?

The answer is as simple as it is ugly.  The Kurds are predominantly Muslim.  So also are the oppressive majority populations in each and every of the four states.  The Palestinians are mainly Muslim.  Their putative oppressors are Jewish.

And, now the really nasty part, antisemitism is as rife in the West as it is endemic to the Muslim states.  In the West, this ancient, evil mindset hides behind the currently respectable facade of being "anti-Zionist" or, even better, as a euphemism, "opposition to aspects of Israeli policy."

It is OK in the West to look at Muslim oppression of Muslims with total indifference.  In the Muslim majority states, the same is true to an even greater extent because to condemn the Muslim majority for oppressing a Muslim minority is to commit that great Islamic sin of fitna, of introducing fission in the great Islamic ummah.  The single towering fiction in Islam is that of holding the community of believers to be one huge, happy family.  So, no hand is raised, no voice either, to stop the oppression of Kurds by Muslim Turks, Muslim Iranians, or Muslim Arabs.

The fiction of Islamic unity is nothing compared to the larger concoction in the West.  The concealing of antisemitism behind the thin and torn scrim of "anti-Zionism" or "opposition to aspects of Israeli policy" is not simply hypocritical, it is a moral delict of the highest order.

Any way you cut it, the groups and individuals in the West who brandish the cudgels on behalf of the Palestinians while maintaining a discrete silence with respect to the Kurds are examples of moral decay without equal.  It is a very severe indictment of the High Minded in the West who by their careful selection of who deserves support show themselves to be both dishonest and antisemitic to the core.

The people and groups so staunchly supporting the Palestinians (including the UN, the UN Human Rights Council, the assorted NGOs, and the individuals who espouse sanctions, boycotts, and divestiture) will deserve respectful attention when and only when they exhibit the same level of concern for the Kurds as they do the Palestinians.  Unless and until these worthies are as willing to condemn and seek to delegitimatize the Turks, the Iranians, and the Syrians, they merit no hearing.

Rather, these groups and individuals should themselves be blackguarded as the antisemites they are.  Any less is to endorse their wicked position.

Those Darn Pesky Kurds

The Kurds are ethnically, linguistically, and culturally different from the Turks, the Arabs of Iraq, and the Persians. That is a reality. It is also a reality that the Kurds have been forced by the winds of the past to live under the domination of the aforementioned Turks, Arabs, and Persians.

This leads to a third reality. The Kurds are not at all happy about having no country to call their own. In one way or another, the Kurds have been expressing their displeasure with the status quo for generations.

The goal of the Kurds is simple. They are a nation, self-conscious, aware of the ties of history, culture, language, and geography. But as such they are incomplete. To be complete, the nation must have a state to call its own. In this dynamic the Kurds are not different from the Palestinians.

There is a fair measure of irony in considering that the Kurds are kept down, divided, oppressed, even, in the estimate of many Kurds, "occupied" by the Islamic states of Turkey, Iraq, and Iran. With an astigmatism endemic to Islamic regimes, no member of the Organization of the Islamic Conference seems at all perturbed by the willingness of Muslim majority countries to suppress their fellow Muslims.

Not surprisingly, Ankara which is ever ready of late to hurl rhetorical bombs at Israel over presumed Jewish wickedness in the Gaza Strip is not only silent on the plight of the Kurds, but quite willing to send troops and fighter-bombers over the border into Iraq with the intent of killing Kurds in large numbers. Over in Tehran, Orator-In-Chief Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is not only unusually quiet regarding the Kurds but has shown himself eager to send Iranian shells and troops into Iraqi Kurdistan with the goal of killing as many of those pesky people as possible.

In Baghdad, the current political stasis is in no way lessened by the role adopted by the Kurds who seek any and every advantage at the expense of the national government. In all probability, there are more than a few members of the new Iraqi government who wish they had the freedom to deal with the Kurds as bluntly and terminally as did Saddam Hussein.

The most aggressive of the several Kurdish insurgent groups, the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) is aimed at Turkey where nearly fifteen percent of the population is Kurd. PKK is of the view that a Kurdistan comprising the Kurdish majority portion of Turkey and the semi-autonomous province of Iraqi Kurdistan would be viable in all respects, political, economic, social, and cultural.

This is a correct apprehension. Iraqi Kurdistan on its own would be viable. The melding of the arbitrarily divided major portions of the Kurdish homeland would make an even more impressive new state. The envisioned entity would have both oil and water--the two fluids without which life in the 21st century is impossible. While "greater Kurdistan" would include sections of Syria and Iran, the exclusion of these would subtract nothing of importance from a hypothetical Kurdish state.

In an ideal world, a world where the Wilsonian principle of "self-determination of nations" had trenchancy, there would be no bar to the peaceful creation of a state to match the Kurdish nation as it is currently distributed between Turkey and Iraq. Given Mr Obama's obvious affection to Wilsonian notions of internationalism, it is passingly strange that he has not embraced self-determination for the Kurds. But, that musing cannot detain us.

The reef upon which the potential Kurdish ship of state must founder is the determination of Turkey, Iraq, and Iran to disallow any alteration in the comfortable current status quo. The Turks and PKK have been engaged in a slow motion shooting war since 1984. Neither belligerent has been either willing or able to seek a knock out blow. At the same time neither has been willing to call the war off, to seek some sort of negotiated compromise.

When not engaged in the planning and execution of provocations directed at Israel with the goal of establishing Ankara as the beacon of hope for the Palestinians, the Islamist leaning AKP in Turkey has been going after the PKK with a renewed frenzy of killing and dying. Prime Minister Erdogan with his usual over-the-top oratory has vowed to fight against PKK without hesitation and regardless of the number of "heinous" attacks the "terrorist" organization might mount.

From Erdogan's language one might think PKK had just hit Istanbul with a chemical attack or poured anthrax in the water mains of Ankara rather than simply hitting a border police station and killing a dozen or so Turkish cops. The PKK action was purportedly in response to the border incursion undertaken by Turkish troops and aircraft which cost the lives of a couple of dozen Kurds, some of whom might have been combatants.

This set of exchanges are typical of the war during all of its twenty-six years. The same is true of the Iranian artillery stonks across the border. Bloody "tit" followed by a sanguinary "tat."

For several years the Kurds of Iraq convinced themselves that the American invasion and its aftermath would serve as a game changer for the Kurds generally. In this the Kurds were doomed to be disappointed. While there were (and are) any number of good reasons based both in principle and in national interest for the US to take the lead in facilitating the "self-determination"of the Kurdish nation, the US was inhibited by visions of a destabilized Turkey.

This inhibition need apply no longer. Turkey has changed sides in all but formal announcement. In another of those ironies which makes the Muslim world so interesting to the observer, a reason for the realignment of Turkey with Iran and away from the US, EU, and NATO is the shared interest both countries have in suppressing the Kurds. But, in making its switch so quickly, so openly, and so completely, the Erdogan regime has eroded any US interest in keeping Turkey stable.

This new consideration particularly when taken in conjunction with the self-serving hypocrisy of the OIC as well as the Muslim majority states directly involved, open new possibilities for a US coordinated effort to support the Kurds in their ambitions and, in so doing, embarrass the governments of Turkey and Iran (and, it deserves mentioning, Syria as well) severely. It would also expose the OIC as the duplicitous body which it is.

There is a collateral which, on balance, is more good than bad. That collateral is the truncation of Iraq. To be viable any new Kurdish state must include Iraqi Kurdistan. That province quite literally is the odd man out in Arab majority Iraq. The fact that Iraqi Kurdistan has significant hydrocarbon reserves which the Kurds hate sharing with the Arabs in no way lessens the antipathy which has long typified relations between these two people who uncomfortably cohabit in common borders.

As Baghdad is loath to let the oil leave Iraq much as it might like to see the Kurds exit the area, any divorce between Arab majority and Kurd minority will not be as amicable as was, for example, that between Czech and Slovak. A divorce would require a "realignment" of US forces in Iraq to Kurdistan (perhaps under the ostensible need to protect the Turkmen minority in Kurdistan against ethnic cleansing.)

The Kurds have been in favor of a US presence in Kurdistan. Several times since 2003, the authorities in Kurdistan have extended an invitation to the US to reposition its troops there as a security against outside interference. While it might be difficult to take up the invitation, doing such would not be impossible. Certainly it would be less difficult than trying to support a central government beset by multiple insurgencies and lacking broad gauge legitimacy.

As a side benefit there is no doubt that the Kurdish government would be far more open to seeing US rather than Chinese oil companies develop the reserves in the region. This stance is at sharp contrast to the attitude in Baghdad. An open American presence in Kurdistan would definitely inhibit Iranian (or Turkish) military actions which is also in distinct contrast with the supine reaction of Baghdad to incursions and artillery attacks.

The Kurdish Question is not one amenable to solution by the UN or any other manifestation of the "international community." It is one, however, which can be answered by the US even over the objections of Russia and China.

The partitioning of Iraq would be only the first step in solving the dilemma presented by the Kurdish nation in its search for a state. Ultimately, the Turks would have to accomodate themselves to the reality that they cannot suppress the Kurds forever. The gestures of limited democracy and constrained economic development offered by Gul, Erdogan, and the rest of the AKP are too little, too late. And, their effect has been offset by the moving of ethnic Turks into districts which have been Kurdish since the time of Saladin.

The Turks are discovering that there is a force greater than that of political Islam. That force is nationalism. The Kurds become more committed to their nationalistic vision every time a Turkish bullet kills a Kurd. To put it bluntly, Erdogan and the AKP are on the wrong side of history this time.

There is one fatal problem in considering the new options open to the US. President Obama lacks both the vision and the wisdom needed. He is without the moral and intellectual courage necessary to seize the moment. He does not have the spine of George Washington Plunkett, the spine needed to, "see me opportunity and I took it."

It Couldn't Have Happened To A More Worthy Bunch.

The Jundallah (Soldiers of God) have been waging a very low intensity defensive insurgency in the southeast of Iran, the section claimed as part of the latent state of Baluchistan. From time to time the Jundallah bombers and trigger pullers have staged a mediagenic event. The last time around it was an attack on a Shia mosque which resulted in a fair number of civilian casualties.

This time the suicide bomber took on a far more worthy target. The man in "tribal costume" (to quote the LA Times) penetrated the gymnasium where five high ranking commanders of the much feared Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps were holding a "solidarity" meeting with a view to bringing the Baluchi Sunnis and the Persian Shia together in harmony. When the man pushed the clicker he took the five heavyweights and a number of others with him.

At nearly the same time a second bomber took out a vehicle containing another bunch of Revolutionary Guard thugs.

The televised images of the carnage at both sites reportedly rocked Iran. The event(s) must have rocked the Revolutionary Guard even more as it showed their vulnerability at the very time they have been riding very high in the saddle.

Not surprisingly the first reaction of the regime in Tehran was to blame the US and the UK for the twin bombings. Being completely unable (not to mention unwilling) to acknowledge that the Baluchi of Iran, not unlike their ethnic and religious fellows in Pakistan and Afghanistan, are pursuing the goal of an independent Baluchistan, the Iranian elite went instantly to the default position: The Great Satan did it.

There can be little if any doubt that the US government is quietly pleased with Iran's discomfiture--up to a point. While anything which weakens the regime's hold on power is to be welcomed, the timing of today's incidents is disquieting. Iran is scheduled to hold yet one more round of talks with the US and its partners in the P5+1 tomorrow. The potential exists for the Iranians to use the twin bombings as an excuse for further delay. As if they really need one.

A State Department spokesman did the expected. The US deplored and condemned the attack and denied any connection with the Soldiers of God. The Brits have probably done the same.

The geographical, political, and social realities produced both the insurgency and its latest expression of political will and military capacity. The lines on the map which split the Baluchi into three national jurisdictions were made without regard for the desires and self-identification of the local inhabitants. For a mort of years this did not matter. More recently, say in the past thirty or forty years, it has not only mattered greatly, it has inspired resistance to all three national governments.

The Baluchi are a readily identifiable nationality. They are ethnically and, to a large extent, linguistically distinguishable from the other peoples inhabiting each of the three states. The Baluchi are also religiously distinguishable in Iran from the majority Shia. The Baluchi in all three countries but particularly in Pakistan and Iran believe with good reason that they have been discriminated against by the governments.

The combination of political disaffiliation and a developing national consciousness gave rise to the pursuit of a state of their own: A unified Baluchistan under the sole control of the Baluchi. As established states are not known for their willingness to voluntarily disassemble, an insurgency of the defensive sort was inevitable.

The existence of hydrocarbon deposits as well as other extractable resources assures that an independent Baluchistan would be economically viable at least in the near- to mid-term. Unlike many independent nation-states of the "decolonised" world, a Baluchistan would have both an economic reason to exist and the means by which existence would be assured. In this way as in features of self-identification, tripartite division, and a resort to defensive insurgency, nascent Baluchistan is identical to another latent state, Kurdistan.

The geopolitical realities of the Baluchi like those surrounding the Kurds presents the US with a set of seemingly irresolvable problems. The ancient, more honored in the breech than in the observance American policy of "self-determination of nations" would seem to require Washington to support fully the aspirations of Baluchi and Kurds alike. At the same time the existence of American agreements with the governments of Turkey, Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan make support impossible.

Justice as much as such exists in the international arena is on the side of the Baluchis as it is with the Kurds. Both are identifiable nations, both have long standing aspirations for statehood, both have been mistreated, discriminated against, and generally ignored by the sundry national entities, and both have waged long insurgencies for the same reason the American colonials did. But, none of this matters.

As Turkey, Iraq, and Iran cannot continence the amputation of their Kurdish components, Pakistan and Iran cannot admit of losing their Baluchi majority provinces. Nor can the US or any other power give assistance either open or covert to the insurgents.

This means that no matter how much the US might like to contribute to the dismemberment of Iran, it cannot do so. The insurgencies of Kurd and Baluchi alike are not fungible. That means we cannot support an anti-Iran effort without simultaneously supporting the insurgencies directed at our "allies," Pakistan, Iraq, and Turkey.

There is no practical way to assure that any assistance granted to the Soldiers of God in Iran would not translate into aid to their counterparts in either Pakistan or Afghanistan. Our personnel turn a blind eye to movement of arms, drugs, or men across the Afghan-Iranian border only at the risk the same will ultimately flow to anti-Islamabad fighters in Pakistan.

The best, most determined efforts to control an insurgency will finally fail. We have learned that lesson before. There is no need to repeat it, particularly given the instability resident within both Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The pooch in Baluchistan or, to err on the side of accuracy, Sistan-Baluchistan Province, is one which the Tehran regime will and have been screwing--royally. The Persians are a bare majority in Iran. While the Kurds are only seven percent of the sixty-six million and the Baluchi a mere two percent, they are quite set upon their goal of national independence. It may be only a matter of time before the other ethnic and linguistic minorities take the road pioneered by the more factious Kurds and Baluchi.

The regime in Tehran cannot tolerate any dissent. The mullahs and their stooges have shown that repeatedly. The US government might hope that disaffiliation and dissent continue and grow as such might have positive policy implications, but there is nothing that Washington can do directly to foster or support separatist movements.

That is an unfortunate but very real ground truth. And it will remain the truth unless and until the US is willing to embrace the Wilsonian notion of "self-determination" even at the expense of critical countries such as Turkey, Iraq, and Pakistan.

The presence of this governing reality does not, however, preclude discrete applause for the Baluchi bombers of the Soldiers of God. It does not prevent saying of the dead and maimed members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, "It couldn't have happened to a more deserving bunch of guys."

Ingrates, The Lot Of Them?

The other day the Geek ran across a site called "Fuck the French." It had a graphic showing British troops leaving a landing craft across a Normandy beach. The text on the graphic read, "Ingrates the lot of them."

Considering the current state of play over the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) between the US and Iraq, one might be tempted to say the same of the Iraqi government and people. After all, it may be argued, ill-advised as the invasion of Iraq might have been, the US and its allies did something for Iraqis that they were either unwilling or unable to do for themselves during the long years of the economic blockade. We got rid of Saddam.

So we did. And, so what?

Four years and a couple of months ago, George W. Bush made innumerable, nauseatingly misleading speeches regarding how Iraq was now a "sovereign" nation-state. His celebration of American (oops! Bad Geek! You should have written "Coalition") magnanimity in restoring Iraq to the Iraqis was wrong on multiple levels.

It is impossible for a country to be considered "sovereign" when its "government" was forced to operate under terms and conditions dictated by the "liberators" of the country. It struck the Geek that, for example, neither France nor Italy were "sovereign" in the aftermath of the Allied military operations which liberated both. Not until each had seen the end of both the Allied Military Government operations and the restrictions imposed upon the the indigenous successor regimes were Italy and France sovereign in any meaningful sense of the word.

Then, of course, in 2004 there was a war in progress. It is difficult, not to say impossible, for a tenuous newly created "government" to act in a sovereign way with a war in progress. The same was true in South Vietnam during our war there. Coups, countercoups and elections came and went in sometimes bewildering succession. Throughout all changes in "sovereign" South Vietnamese governments, the tune was both called for and played by Washington through its military and diplomatic representatives in-country.

The US military and its civilian contractors were in effective occupation of much of Iraq not only in 2004 but down to the present. How can anyone maintain with a straight face that a government has "sovereignty" when an outside regime controls the most potent force in the territory? Apparently George W. Bush was either capable of such a level of self-delusion or he is such a master at deception that he had no difficulty making the assertion.

Finally, and most basically, there is the question of what constitutes "Iraq" and "Iraqi sovereignty?"

There are three nations cohabiting within a set of international borders. There are Kurds. There are Sunnis. There is the Shiite majority. No one has ever accused the three nations of loving, or even liking, or most minimally, trusting each other.

The Shiites have maintained that as they are the majority population, Iraqi sovereignty should be defined and controlled by them. The Sunnis, having been the governing minority through the years of British occupation and post-occupation independence, see themselves as being best fitted by experience--tradition--to define and exercise sovereignty.

The Kurds take the justifiable position that as they are ethnically and linguistically different from the Arabs, they must exercise sovereignty over their portion of Iraq--with or without the agreement of the Arabs. The Kurds territory is compact, reasonably well defined and economically viable. Not surprisingly, they see no real need for an entity called "Iraq" unless it is to the best advantage of the Kurds.

The Kurds have made their understanding of Kurdish sovereignty clear. Last week the Kurd leader Barzani offered "Kurdistan" to the Americans as a basing option should the Iraqi central regime fail to authorize the SOFA in a timely fashion.

Equally unshocking was the immediate rejection of the Kurd's position by the Iraqi president. Quite correctly he saw such a course as leading to the energetic disassembly of Iraq.

Now, not only has the Iraqi central government taken the unprecedented action of bicycling the proposed SOFA to Iran, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan, Syria and Turkey, the Sunni Vice-President has proposed a national referendum on the issue. This proposal, on its face, is preposterous. The SOFA must be in force by 1 January 09 or the US must halt all military operations. Given the Iraqi record in such matters, the possibility of holding a national vote between now and then is as likely Iran granting diplomatic recognition to Israel.

The Iraqi political/religious elite is more than slightly ticklish on the matter of sovereignty. The US should acknowledge that.

The best way to give full and authentic recognition to Iraq as a fully sovereign state is to pull our forces out as quickly and cleanly as possible after 1 January next year. We have achieved the minimum necessary strategic goal of not-losing. The Iraqis are in control of what (for the moment at least) is their territory. Wish 'em luck and get out.

Sure, the place may fall apart as the last American boot leaves Iraqi soil. That's a chance the Iraqis seem willing to take. There is nothing to be gained by either second guessing them or insisting that we stay under whatever terms and conditions it may please Baghdad to offer us.

Sure, the possibility of Iraq falling into chaos renders nugatory the more than four thousand Americans who have died died there since our adventure in regime change started. But, it didn't bother either the American public or its representatives in Congress (some of whom are still there) to write off fifteen times that number in the Vietnam War.

What the hell, we can always mutter, "Ingrates, the lot of them."