Juan Cole @ Salon.com: The Collapse Of Bush's Foreign Policy

[Hissyspit]

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/10/24/kurds/?source=whitelist

The collapse of Bush's foreign policy
From Turkey to Iraq to Pakistan, the mounting chaos proves the White House is just winging it.

By Juan Cole

Oct. 24, 2007 | The Bush administration once imagined that its presence in Afghanistan and Iraq would be anchored by friendly neighbors, Turkey to the west and Pakistan to the east. Last week, as the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan continued to deteriorate, the anchors themselves also came loose.

On Sunday, just days after the Turkish Parliament authorized an invasion of Iraqi Kurdistan, Kurdish guerrillas ambushed and killed 17 Turkish soldiers inside Turkey. In Karachi, Pakistan, a massive bomb nearly killed U.S.-backed Benazir Bhutto, who was supposed to help stabilize the country. The Bush administration's entire Middle East policy is coming undone -- if it even has a policy left, other than just sticking its fingers in the multiple, and multiplying, holes in the dike.

In Iraq, the Kurds of the north are the United States' most reliable allies. In addition to the 5.5 million Kurds in Iraq, however, persons speaking dialects of Kurdish constitute around 11 million of neighboring Turkey's 70 million citizens. There are another 4 million Kurds next door in Iran, and up to 2 million in Syria. All three of Iraq's northern neighbors fear that Kurdish nationalism, which has been fostered by the U.S. occupation of Iraq, could tear them apart. Opposition to that nationalism could provide a platform for an alliance of Syria, Turkey and Iran -- a nightmare for the Bush administration. Washington had hoped to isolate Syria, an ally of both Iran and of Hezbollah in Lebanon. That's not how it is turning out.

Even after Turkey declined to sign on to the Iraq war, then U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz praised it in April 2003 as a dependable ally and secularizing model for the Muslim world. Since then, however, Washington's relationship with Ankara has turned increasingly sour over U.S. favoritism toward the Kurds.

The Turkish Parliament late last week passed a resolution permitting the military to make incursions into Iraq in order to chase down guerrillas operating on both sides of the border. Syria's Bashar al-Assad piled on, appearing to support the Turkish move, though under pressure from Baghdad he denied he had urged an invasion. Iran also fears Kurdish terrorism and has shelled Kurdish villages in Iraq in reprisal for guerrilla attacks in Iranian Kurdistan. Perhaps as a quid pro quo for Syrian support against the Kurds, Turkey offered this weekend to broker an agreement between Syria and Lebanon. Bush's partiality to the Kurds has provided Damascus an opening for newly warm relations with Ankara.

On Sunday, guerrillas of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) ambushed a Turkish military convoy, killing 17 soldiers. The Turkish military counterattacked, killing 32 persons it said were guerrillas. In Istanbul on Sunday, a thousand demonstrators came out to denounce the PKK. In the two weeks prior to Sunday, the PKK had killed 28 Turkish soldiers. The mustachioed president of Turkey, Abdullah Gul, a member of the Islamist-leaning AK Party, vowed that his country would "pay any price" to protect itself. The new tensions have roiled the world petroleum markets, hurt the Turkish economy, and further destabilized an already violent Iraq.

- snip -

As usual, the Bush administration has reacted to these predictable problems in a purely ad hoc manner. There is no evidence that anyone in the administration has crafted a policy for dealing with tensions between Ankara and America's Kurdish allies. The U.S. State Department has designated the PKK a terrorist group, but the PKK is given safe harbor by the Kurdistan Regional Authority of northern Iraq. What will Bush do about having wound up as the de facto protector of a radical peasant guerrilla group that is attacking the troops of a NATO ally? If the United States acts against the PKK, it risks alienating the Iraqi Kurds, whose pro-American peshmerga fighters perform security duties and enlist as troops in the new Iraqi army. If Bush does not restrain the PKK, then he is playing Mullah Omar to its al-Qaida and "harboring" terrorists, which he trumpeted six years ago as grounds for war.

Meanwhile, to the east, another supposed bulwark against terror is wobbling. The Bush administration had lovingly brokered the deal whereby Bhutto was allowed to return to Pakistan by military dictator Pervez Musharraf. Musharraf lacks grassroots support and has been shaken by powerful challenges from the country's supreme court, by his brutal crackdown on Muslim militants at the Red Mosque last summer, and by his continued inability to subdue the tribal forces and al-Qaida remnants in Waziristan and other rugged provinces along the Afghan border.

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[Skittles]

1. well worth reading

*recommended*

[izzie]

2. I would have thought that this govt. would have eyed balled

what went on after WW1 when Europe countries went into the Middle East and just thought about this. Heck these guys are all well educated yet they seemed to just have over looked any one that did not think like they did. Just when has taking over any country been easy? What could Bush have been thinking when he started all this? It was like he was not with what the world was all about at all. I swear he is living in other century in his thinking. Heck I could see this and I did not go to Yale or one of our 'best' colleges. Bush and his gang went to some of the 'best' schools in the country so maybe that is the mind set. They felt they knew more than us lesser people so were sure they were right. It is just beyond me what these men were thinking and why Congress went with them. My Congress man did not vote for war and he did go to some of the 'best' colleges so I guess it is not just that but a set mind on 'I am right' and to hell with all you other people that has done this to us.

[Skittles]

3. bush stole the election, then surrounded himself with dinosaurs

the man lives not just in the past but in fantasy land

[izzie]

4. I like history so I read a lot and Bush is like the last Czar/ Kaiser.

It was like you could not get the Hapsburg's or Kaiser and Czar to get with what was going on in their world so we ended up with WW1. If Bush can not see it I sure can see that the world is moving on and it want to rule its own countries and not be ruled by some one else and it is all over the world. What has Bush be reading any how? Makes me laugh to think how the Kaiser and Czar loved to cut up brush as a hobby and so does Bush. I think we would be better off if we could keep these guys just doing those type things.

[Old and In the Way]

5. "What could Bush have been thinking when he started all this?"

He wasn't and he doesn't. The real question is what were Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfield thinking? They were thinking about $100 Trillion dollars worth of oil. George was the pliable, ego-driven neer-do-well who could be easily manipulated to provide window dressing for the Syndicate. Say your lines, George, and you can be the Commander Guy.

Republican foreign policy has nothing to do with diplomacy/Statesmanship...it has everything to do with $. They've made a killing, killing this country.

[Old and In the Way]

6. Does any sane person think George Bush can solve this multi-dimensional

Rubic's cube? We are truly living in interesting times.