Letter from Kurdistan

The skyline at Erbil, Kurdistan


As regular members of Joshua's Army know, my solution for a true victory in Iraq involved us teaming up with our only real allies there...the Kurds.

If we were really interested in a stable, relatively democratic nation in the region that would actually be an ally in the war on Jihad, that was the way to go. A strong independent Kurdistan would have provided our troops with a secure base in the region within easy striking distance of Iran and Syria and doubled our combat strength on the ground without a single additional US soldier by utilizing the best fighting force in the region next to our guys - the Kurdish Pesh Merga.

Needless to say, our `eternal friends' the Saudis were against it, so it didn't happen, and the Kurds were forced to hedge their bets and bribe Iraq's Shiites with a share of their oil revenues, in violation of the federation agreement the Kurds signed on to.

Here Christopher Hitchens' piece, `Holiday in Iraq: Letter from Kurdistan' gives us a glimpse of what might have been.