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Why Kurdistan Needs to be Wary of the Bush
Administration in its Waning Days
24.10.2008
By Dr. Sabah Salih
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October 24, 2008
eKurd.net, Dr. Sabah Salih.
The tell-tale sings of a sneaky campaign by the Bush
administration to undermine the Kurdistan region are
now beginning to emerge, and you don’t have to look
at Iraq alone to find them.
The administration’s response to the crisis in
Georgia provides the best clues. With military
option unavailable, the Bush administration threw
its political clout squarely behind the aggressor,
acting as though the people against whom Georgia’s
erratic Mikhail Saakashvili waged an unprovoked war
didn’t even count.
The people of South Ossetia were treated (still are)
not as a people with the same natural aspirations
people have the world over—the desire not to be
subjected to an outsider’s rule without their
consent—but rather as a people with no rights at
all;www.ekurd.net
their government, their
parliament, their flag weren’t even acknowledged.
All the administration and its NATO cronies cared
about was Georgia’s so-called territorial integrity.
But territorial integrity is a political not a moral
term. In most cases, war in its name, though fairly
common, cannot be justified morally—because
territorial integrity, like its sister term
international law, is itself largely the product of
aggression, injustice, conquest, political
machinations, and regional and international
intrigue. Where’s morality in this? To be sure, the
term sounds disarmingly pleasing to the ear, but
that’s all the more reason to be suspicious about it
and start calling it what actually it is—territorial
robbery, for has the result been any different every
time a war has been fought in its name?
What does all this have to do with Iraq? The Bush
administration and its supporters in America’s think
tanks have been of late singing the praise of Iraq’s
so-called resurgent nationalism while attacking the
Kurds for daring to resist Turkish and Arab
aggression, in some cases even going as low as
trying to smear notable Kurds by name. But what does
this “resurgent nationalism” really mean? It means
going back to the way things were; it means the
comeback of the very mindset that gave the Kurds
Halabja;www.ekurd.net
it means putting
Kurdistan once again at the mercy of Baghdad and
Ankara; it means making the ideological preparation
for labeling Kurdistan “a breakaway region” so that,
as in South Ossetia’s case, war can be sold against
it as a great patriotic duty;www.ekurd.net
it means raising another
generation of Arabs believing the Kurds to be second
class; but above all, it means putting the Kurds on
the defensive as Baghdad little by little chips away
at their territory.
Baghdad is well aware that it has one major
advantage over Tbilisi.While Russia courageously
rushed to the aid of South Ossetia, not only
Kurdistan has no such friend but is also surrounded
by countries all too eager to see it brought to its
knees. That’s why Erbil needs to make it very clear
to Baghdad that it would be utterly foolish for it
to translate Kurdistan’s lack of friends into a
belief that Saakashvili’s example could be
successfully repeated in Kurdistan.
Dr. Sabah Salih is Professor of English at
Bloomsburg University, USA.
Copyright, ekurd.net, Sabah Salih, October 24, 2008
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