On the one hand, on the other hand in Iraq

On the one hand, Muqtada al-Sadr did extend his cease-fire by six months. That will save American lives, so it comes as a great relief, for the near future.

On the other hand, a foreign country has invaded Iraq. Which is, you know, another hand.

Turkish soldiers crossed into northern Iraq in their first major incursion in 11 years, stepping up an assault against Kurdish militants after two months of air strikes.

The troops moved in late yesterday, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told reporters in Ankara without saying how many soldiers were involved. Istanbul-based NTV television said that 10,000 Turkish soldiers pushed 10 kilometers (6 miles) into Iraq. CNN-Turk later said the attack involved a Turkish force of 3,000.

The US was informed of this, and is claiming that the Turks will take great care to only target PKK separatist rebels. Of course, our military isn't all that good at limiting collateral damage, I hasten to think how the Turks are at it.

This could end very badly.

There Is Still Power In What America Does

On Monday, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Recep Ergodan announced he was happy with the President's offers of support, through intelligence and military contacts, to finally help manage the situation at the border with PKK rebels. By the way, the Turks still want more done to stop the rebels, calling for Iraq and the United States to arrest the commanders. So this could still blow up big. But I want to look at something else right now.

Ergodan also had this to say.

Erdogan also criticized a U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee resolution passed last month that labeled the killing of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire during World War I as "genocide." Under heavy pressure from Bush, House Democrats retreated from sending the measure to the full House of Representatives for a vote.

"There is no such thing as genocide. Those who claim it must prove it," Erdogan said.

Yet a day later, Turkey amended their own law restricting freedom of expression and banning "perceived insults to Turkish identity," which has been used in the past to arrest and imprison anyone speaking in public about the genocide, such as authors Orhan Pamuk and Hrant Dink.

There is no question in my mind that the amending of this law is a direct result of Congress' pushing to recognize the fate of the Armenians. Despite eventually derailing, this was a noble effort that bore fruit and had positive consequences for human rights globally. There is still soft power available to America, for some reason the Bush Administration has not wiped it all out. Under a Democratic President we will need to wield it more judiciously and toward the principles of justice. I hope we're up to the task.

They've Already Won The Iran Debate

We're having a debate about Iran in this country, a debate between reason and utter insanity. It's clear that the Cheney Administration has found the next Hitler in the guy who controls the traffic signals in Tehran; and they will be relentless in fostering a climate of fear in the American pschye, designed to turn them into a quivering mass who will submit to their father-protectors. Whether or not this is the work of the mentally ill is besides the point. The point is this:

Every day we talk about Iran is one less day we're talking about Iraq.

This has been a classic distraction strategy from the very beginning. I mean, yes, we all know that the Administration is crazy enough to unilaterally strike Iran and bomb what they perceive to be an imminent nuclear threat. So sure, you have to counsel patience, you have to ask for direct talks, as Chuck Hagel did today, or you cede the debate to the neocons in the White House and their enablers in the Senate, and end up with a situation where the public is on board with an attack on Iran, beyond all reason. But all of that energy expended on rebutting the Iran claims doesn't go to ending this tragic occupation in Iraq, which, contrary to wingnut belief, has not magically turned the corner. Indeed, there has been no movement whatsoever on the political front, with the country due to lapse into a warlord state where local gangs fight for power at the local level. But none of these cases are being made, crowded out by the drumbeat to Iran.

Did you even know that the Democrats are considering dropping another $50 billion on Iraq before they go home for the recess? There's no way to organize around that when it barely registers a peep. I don't know if Bush wants to attack Iran or not. What I do know is that it is a great way for him to tie everyone up in knots around the question, so that he can say that Congress wasted its time trying to stop the occupation without repercussions. I think the strategy to fearmonger around Iran is less about scaring the Iranians and more about scaring the Democrats and the American people. Scaring them into silence.

Because the truth is that what we're witnessing is the collapse of Bush's foreign policy, although you wouldn't know it. Throughout the world, from an increasingly violent Pakistan, where every public official is a target, to a Turkey on the verge of an invasion of Kurdistan, to Somalia, which has become so restive that the prime minister has quit, to Afghanistan, where our airstrikes are angering the population and our poppy eradication tests are driving citizens into the arms of the Taliban, to Egypt, which has decided on the exact same program as Iran on nuclear energy, which could escalate proliferation in the Middle East by exacerbating Sunni-Shiite tensions (why is it OK for Egypt to get civilian nuclear energy and not Iran, you can hear people say).

None of this is being discussed in any serious fashion because everyone has gone code red on Iran. This is by design, because it's precisely the moment where the Bush foreign policy is at its lowest ebb.

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 [...]

After Sept. 11, when the Bush administration launched its global “war on terror,” the United States enjoyed some clear assets in fighting the al-Qaida terrorist network. In the Middle East, the United States had the support of secular Turkey, a NATO member. The long relationship of the powerful Pakistani military with that of the United States enabled Bush to turn the military dictator Musharraf against the Taliban, which Pakistan had earlier sponsored. Shiite Iran announced that it would provide help to the United States in its war on the hyper-Sunni Taliban regime. Baathist Syria and Iraq, secular Arab nationalist regimes, were potential bulwarks against Sunni radicalism in the Levant.

Like a drunken millionaire gambling away a fortune at a Las Vegas casino, the Bush administration squandered all the assets it began with by invading Iraq and unleashing chaos in the Gulf. The secular Baath Party in Iraq was replaced by Shiite fundamentalists, Sunni Salafi fundamentalists and Kurdish separatists. The pressure the Bush administration put on the Pakistani military government to combat Muslim militants in that country weakened the legitimacy of Musharraf, whom the Pakistani public increasingly viewed as an oppressive American puppet. Iraqi Kurdistan’s willingness to give safe haven to the PKK alienated Turkey from both the new Iraqi government and its American patrons. Search-and-destroy missions in Afghanistan have predictably turned increasing numbers of Pushtun villagers against the United States, NATO and Karzai. The thunder of the bomb in Karachi and the Turkish shells in Iraqi Kurdistan may well be the sound of Bush losing his “war on terror.”

And we're all talking about this potential war in Iran. It's a brilliant, brilliant maneuver.

I don't know what really can be done about this; it would be folly not to take Bush seriously about anything megalomaniacal. But let's be clear that saber-rattling on Iran serves multiple goals, not the least of which is wriggling out of the failed foreign policy choices that will define this Presidency far into the future.

SORT OF RELATED: I love how the US giving Turkey intelligence on the PKK guerrillas in Kurdistan is supposed to solve everything. News flash: we don't have good intel in Iraq. We rely on tips. If we had good intel we wouldn't see 100 bombing attacks a day. This isn't going to help anything.

Most Dangerous Trouble Spot In The World Update

Pakistan is still dangerous, but today I'm shifting the most dangerous trouble spot to: northern Kurdistan! Congratulations, Kurdistan.

Turkey has commenced bombing on what they term "rebel positions" just inside Turkey. Obviously, the concern is that these bombing runs will migrate over to Iraq, which would widen the war. According to this report that's already happening:

On Sunday, Turkish helicopter gunships penetrated into Iraqi territory and troops have shelled suspected Kurdish rebel positions across the border in Iraq, a government official said Wednesday.

U.S.-made Cobra and Super Cobra attack helicopters chased Kurdish rebels three miles into Iraqi territory on Sunday but returned to their bases in Turkey after a rebel ambush killed 12 soldiers near the border, the official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

He also said Turkish artillery units shelled rebel positions as recently as Tuesday night but did not say which areas were targeted.

The Iraqi government is vowing to help stop the PKK rebels from their incursions into Turkish territory, although realistically they have almost no ability to do so. Kurdistan is an independent country in everything but name. Plus there are still some faint strains of national identity that make Iraqis reluctant to target their own people.

Which makes this story all the more dangerous:

THE Bush Administration is considering air strikes, including cruise missiles, against the Kurdish rebel group PKK in northern Iraq.

The move would be an attempt to stave off a Turkish invasion of that country to fight the rebels [...]

"It's not 'Kumbaya' time any more - just talking about trilateral talks is not going to be enough," the official said.

"Something has to be done."

I want to know how it's going to look to Iraqi civilians to have Americans launching cruise missiles inside Kurdistan, which given the military and intelligence community's penchant for getting things wrong could easily hit population centers of civilians. How is that furthering the goal of bringing peace and stability to Iraq?

Maybe that would be the kind of incident that would have the Iraqis move to limit military involvement in their own country, at which point you would see a civil war between the Iraqi government and the American occupiers. The point is that continuing to use bombs as a stand-in for diplomacy will have severely negative consequences for the effort to extract ourselves honorably from this quagmire.

The Problem Of Tough-Guy-ism

Joe Sudbay at AmericaBlog really nails this one. Warhawks, led by the Vice President, constantly jabber that we cannot allow Iran a nuclear weapon or even the knowledge to create one, and how we need to show toughness rather than capitulation, which incidentally is the mentality that has led Cheney to embrace the failed policies of the Soviet Union in the Middle East, and recreate their disaster in Afghanistan.

But the point is, a nation cannot back down from aggression. Except if that nation is called Turkey and backing down would at least save one part of Iraq from descending into catastrophe.

Turkey’s military confirmed today that eight of its soldiers were still missing after an ambush by Kurdish militants a day earlier that left at least 12 Turkish soldiers dead and touched off a major escalation in Turkey-Iraq tensions.

Kurdish militants claimed they had captured the missing soldiers, intensifying fears that Turkey would retaliate immediately by sending troops across the border into Iraq. Turkey said it hoped that the soldiers were simply out of communication range, but it continued today to bolster its forces on the border, including both land and air units [...]

On Sunday, Mr. Erdogan said that he had initially delayed a decision about retaliating against the ambush, after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had personally intervened.

This is where the entire worldview of the right breaks down. The PKK is clearly a terrorist organization which has been engaging in cross-border attacks for some time. Turkey has every right to defend themselves from such attacks. But because it would destabilize Iraq, the same people who want to recklessly move into Iran must urge caution. It's nonsensical, and puts these tough-guy conservatives in the position of defending a terrorist organization (nothing new for them, the Mujahideen-e-Khalq, a State-Department-named terrorist organization, is who the neocons are backing in Iran) and counseling for calm and peaceful diplomacy. They claim not to be acting mindful of realpolitik, yet that's all they do.

It's FORTUNATE that Turkey will exhaust diplomatic options before striking back at the PKK, by the way. What's unfortunate is that you have so-called leaders running this country with no sense of their own intellectual bankruptcy.

UPDATE: I should add that it's also this failure of leadership and constant drumbeating for war which cause other countries to emulate the US and use US actions as justifications for their own. Eventually that's where we're going with this imminent Turkish border war. Tristero has a very smart piece about this.

The Next War in Iraq

We have enough trouble securing Baghdad and fighting violence throughout the country, but there's increasingly looking like there will be a shooting war in Kurdistan.

Turkey's top general said Thursday his army — which has been massing troops on the border with Iraq — was prepared to attack separatist Kurdish guerrillas in a cross-border offensive.

Gen. Yasar Buyukanit said the military was ready and awaiting government orders for an incursion, putting pressure on the government to support an offensive that risks straining ties with the United States and Europe and raising tensions with Iraqi Kurds.

"As soldiers, we are ready," Buyukanit said at an international security conference in Istanbul.

Indeed, seven Turkish soldiers were killed in a rebel attack yesterday. Turkey is calling the rebel attacks from the Kurdish guerrillas acts of terrorism (by the way, this is the danger of using "war on terror" as a shibboleth to justify any action). In fact, The US has called the PKK (Kurdish separatist group) a terrorist organization. But clearly, Turkish incursion across the border would be a terrible outcome. The only functioning economy in the whole country would be shut down. And if the US and the EU work to stop Turkey, they will get the "soft on terror" label thrown right back at them.

Although the Turkish government promised to back the military, it has not so far asked Parliament for permission to deploy troops, anticipating problems with Washington, Iraq and the European Union — all of which have urged Turkey to show restraint and find diplomatic ways to deal with the Kurdish rebellion.

Turkey frequently complains that the United States and Iraqi Kurds have done little to stop the separatist rebels.

On Thursday, Buyukanit denounced what he said was a lack of assistance from allies.

"Turkey does not receive the necessary support in its fight against terrorism," the general said. "There are countries which directly or indirectly support PKK terrorism." He did not identify those countries.

This would be a major blow to stability in the region, and it's another example of how Iraq is a Chinese box that is nearly impossible to escape.