Been thinking about ethics today and how much easier it is to preach than it is to practice what you preach...

At the end of WW1, the Kurdish people were split into 4 pieces, one each in Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Syria. Understandably, the Kurdish people have wanted to reunite ever since.

The President has talked a lot about the joy and wonder of Democracy and freedom. As is often the case, he seems to have gotten part of it right but it isn't clear if he has thought it through or understands the consequences. The "countries" of the middle east are an arbitrary collection of borders drawn by the colonial powers less than 100 years ago and those borders often conflict with much older (and stronger) ethnic and religious ties. Preaching freedom and democracy in our country is good for pep-rallys but rather benign; preaching these ideas in the middle east could be volatile.

Since the first Gulf War, the Kurds in Iraq have had their own region with their own government. We protected them from Saddam and they gained over a decade of experience with self-rule. They also have oil.

When Bush/Cheney invaded Iraq, some experts that said the country would fracture into three separate regions. The White House has publicly disallowed this outcome as an option but can they make it so? What if the Kurds democratically vote for their own independence? Do you really have a democracy if a third party (the US) tells you what you can and cannot vote for?

Take an oppressed ethnic group, the desire for a country of their own, and the money to pay for it and you get a lot of trouble. Kurdish Iraq could be the stable center of a new Kurdish state but Syria, Turkey and Iran are not happy about giving up their land or about Kurdish rebels that find aid and comfort in Iraq.

What should we do about it? Can we preach freedom and democracy and not support a Kurdish state? How can we tell the Kurds that they cannot have their own country when we helped create and support the ethnic/religious homeland we call Israeli in the very same region? How can we enforce the idea of a unified Iraq without forcing the Kurds to stay in Iraq? Even without the ethical ramifications, this is quite a pickle.

We dont hear much about Kurdistan here but our invasion of Iraq (twice) puts us right in the middle of this issue. In the world of ideas, there are few that are felt more passionately or intensely than those of ethnic identity, independence and freedom. (Something we should well know from our own national experience.)

We are popular in Kurdish Iraq today because we have helped them so far but how long will that last as our goals increasingly diverge?