Hey, we’re just talking one drumstick! We’ll even add some gravy to the deal!!
Redrawing the map is fun, but it rarely actually fixes the problem. People who don’t get along aren’t going to suddenly get along, and breaking off parts of dysfunctional states just creates somewhat different dysfunctional states with a shiny new border to fight bitterly over for decades.
I do some pretty intense research on South Sudan. Ethnic cleansing, 1.5 million people in camps or hiding. 50,000 children in danger of starvation. Hundreds of thousands of civilians killed. And it will get a lot worse before it gets better. And that’s the side that was supposed to benefit from the split. That’s what happens, in part, when amateur world builders in the US get caught up in romance of giving a sympathetic minority a homeland.
This isn’t a game. It’s not writing a novel. If this gets screwed up, the human consequences as devastating beyond words. Leave the advocacy to the experts, and to the people who will have to mop up the blood of it fails.
Non-Kurds living in or claiming the same territory would be a definite numerical minority.
Usually parties pick their mediators, not have the mediators thrust upon them. For example, do you believe that Russia is “mediating” in the dispute between Ukrainians and ethnic Russians in Ukraine?
Furthermore, do you know what the UN Charter says about threatening the territorial integrity of member states, and why do you think that provision does not apply to the U.S. throwing its weight around in the Middle East?
I know what Kurdistan is, thank you very much. I asked why Turkey has to give up its territory to solve the Iraq ethnic issue. What the OP is saying is, essentially, that in order to solve the Flemish-Walloon divide in Belgium, the Netherlands is going to have to give up its territory for a Flemish homeland, and France will have to cede some territory, too. That’s not necessarily reasonable: one can simply divide Belgium as it is today.
No carrot could conceivably convince the Turks. Just forget about this.
They’re less interested in that than they used to be. And it won’t happen anyway. And even if it could, Turkey’s not going to abandon territory for an EU membership.
I agree a 3-way partition is best:
1.Kurdistan
2.Sunniland
3.Shiiteland
The US obviously shouldn’t impose this, but is in the best position to make it happen.
P.S. without us, the UN is League of Nations, the sequel. Look what that got us.
You haven’t even strung 10 words together on why you think partition is the correct answer, to say nothing of what you think the problem is. I can’t take your prognostications about the League of Nations seriously if you can’t even support your views in even the vaguest manner.
Raven: Iraq has been a morass of warring factions ever since we toppled Saddam. The Kurds are the largest ethnic group on Earth without a nation to call their own. The Sunni and Shiites are fundamentally different people, separating them is best for all involved. Do you not believe US involvement in the League of Nations would have at the very least, made WWII less likely?
A fair number of people would ask us what the U.N. has given us.
Anyways, it sure looks like a partition like that is going to happen, American "mediation"or no, but there is basically no way Turkey is giving land away. The most we can hope is that they support and work with Kurdistan.
Carnal: For all its flaws, the UN has largely prevented WWIII.
No, they aren’t. You really have no clue what you are talking about.
[quote=“etv78, post:29, topic:695316”]
Raven: Iraq has been a morass of warring factions ever since we toppled Saddam. The Kurds are the largest ethnic group on Earth without a nation to call their own. The Sunni and Shiites are fundamentally different people, separating them is best for all involved.
[quote]
Right now, the Kurds control about 20% of the parliament’s votes in Baghdad, which is more than the Sunnis. The President of Iraq is also a Kurd, who is also calling for Maliki’s ouster. Under current circumstances, Fuad Masum is a great source of legitimacy in calling for a new government that’s free of Maliki’s incessant deference to Iran.
If the Kurdish regions are separated from Iraq, how does this make Iraq better? Allow the Shiites to completely dominate the minority Sunnis? This solves things how, exactly?
I don’t think it would have made much of a difference at all. US ratification of the League of Nations wouldn’t have had much of an effect on Hitler’s rise to power, so Roosevelt would still probably have had to deal with invasions of Poland and France. What do you think would have happened?
Try to put some effort in your responses, please.
Despite the fact that I’m the one that made the suggestion, I agree with you. There’s not much the Turks would see as a fair trade for the Kurdish territory. EU and Eurozone membership is probably the closest thing but it falls far short.
My next suggestion would have been renegotiating some of the treaties around the Bosporus and the Dardanelles to give the Turks more economic power over the trade going through there, but I doubt the extortionate tariffs required would do anything but make that trade dry up.
Are there really still people around who believe we have a need and responsibility do rearrange the whole world and fly in here and there and kill everybody who doesn’t do as we say? I thought since Bush was out of office we had moved on past that shyt.
Turkey and Kurdistan have actually established a pretty good trade partnership and seem to have become allies, something that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.
The Kurdish government has shown no desire to get any lands from Turkey and they’ve kept the PKK under control.
Why would either side want to rock the boat.
Frankly, I wish that the Israelis and Palestinians could take a lesson from them, and I say that as someone who’s a fan of all four groups and believes that the best friends are willing to be supportive when necessary and critical when necessary.
Dingo-I’ve resigned myself to the fact we are the last superpower, and as,such, yes it is our responsibility to have a world with as much democracy and as little bloodshed as possible.
And bear the white man’s burden?
Even: Given that the 1st World, minus Russia and the Ukraine, are at peace, then yes. At this moment, that is the default situation.
I really wish we could spread the duty out a little more, to include Europe, South America, and India. This “superpower” business is killingly expensive.
The horror is that China would really love the status, and has plans on how to use it.
The other horror is that militant extremism has gotten so well organized in this century. We thought we had ideological evil contained when communism collapsed, but now we have a nastier version.
You know, the old communists, at least, tried to pretend they were civilized. They had the class to hide their massacres, and to deny their genocides. They knew, at some level, that these things were wrong.
But the modern Taliban-style evil is proud of its evil, and publicly releases video of its massacres and genocides.
The world is not only not safe for democracy, it isn’t even safe for civilization. The spirit that drove Tamerlane to slaughter Asia lives on today.