Safire: Turkey’s support will hasten Iraq’s recovery

[Barrett808]

Funny that Safire doesn't mention that $8.5 billion package of loan guarantees.

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Well, at least the plan was noble. Turkey Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan wanted to reassert that secular Muslim nation’s historic position as America’s stalwart strategic ally. At the moment the coalition most needed a boost, leaders of the powerful Turkish Army were ready to provide a division of peacekeeping troops to Iraq.

On Tuesday, the Turkish Parliament approved — by a whopping 2-1 majority — the government’s proposal to take an active part in stabilizing Iraq. Unfortunately, Iraq’s interim leaders told U.S. officials Wednesday they don’t want peacekeepers from Turkey or other neighboring countries, but are willing to soften their opposition to avoid a confrontation with the U.S.-led coalition.

Prior to Wednesday’s statement from Iraq, Turkey’s government was not insisting on a new U.N. resolution stripping control from the U.S. and Britain before lending a hand. That would’ve affected other countries now hanging back, as well as the U.N. resolution itself.

Credit our State Department’s counterterrorism chief, Cofer Black, with some deft diplomacy in Ankara. The big obstacle, from the Turks’ point of view, was the PKK, a renegade Kurdish force that for decades has been trying to bite off a piece of Turkey in a separatist guerrilla war that cost 35,000 lives. (Even today, some of these terrorist Kurds make up much of Ansar al-Islam, the al-Qaida affiliate fighting us in Iraq.)

From the point of view of the peaceful Kurds — who, protected from Saddam Hussein by allied air forces based in Turkey, built a democracy in the past decade — the big obstacle was not just the longtime Turkish oppression of its Kurdish minority, but the habit of Turkish troops of staying in parts of Iraqi Kurdistan just in case the PKK terrorists should regroup.

(more)

http://www.dailybreeze.com/content/opinion/nmsafire09.html

[GainesT1958]

1. Dadgummit--THERE'S an idea!

Let's send Bill Safire to Northern Iraq--Kurdistan--and take a division of reservists state-side as a trade. And let's make sure the Kurds there all get to read his latest column, too! :eyes:

B-)

[Pallas180]

2. And the Moon is made of green cheese. the chimp has made a deal to let

10,000 Turkish troops into Iraq. The Iraqi's have hated the Turks for 80
years + centuries since the Turks have attempted again and again to conquer
Iraq (which they did do in the Ottoman Empire period).

Wonderful. Not only will the pro-Saddam forces fight and kill Americans, but the
rest of the Iraquis are and will be so angry that any chance of their being pro-American
is finished with the entry of the American backed Turks.

Brilliant move, Chimp, Rumsfeld, and Rice.

[DemCam]

3. Unless they riot and

overthrow their government rather than become tools of the US government.