as posted yesterday

Bush is deeply, truly, madly stupid. But so are many in the Administration. The generals who attack his policy in Iraq -- for all the wrong reasons. The generals who support his policy in Iraq -- for all the wrong reasons. The assorted tongue-tied Democrats who are time-servingly incapable of discussing, even hinting at discussing, Islam itself, and many of whom, apparently, cannot dare to criticize the war in Iraq properly, for demonstrating both an ignorance of the sources, instruments, and nature of Jihad, and for refusing to say what should be obvious but apparently is not -- that by the end of 2003 the Americans had no more reason to remain in Iraq, that "democracy" in the etiolated Bush-Rice sense of mere head-counting of course would be eagerly participated in by the Shi'a, for they after all stood to win and did win, and of course the Sunnis, whose persecution of, and contempt for, the Shi'a did not begin with Saddam Hussein, did not begin with the formation of modern Iraq, did not begin during the time of the Ottomans or Hulegu's invasion of Baghad in 1258, but goes back to the first century of Islam, about a thousand years before the United States was founded.

So all the criticisms are false criticisms, while the real ones remain unspoken. And all the good reasons for leaving Iraq, to encourage and not discourage, division and demoralization within the camp of Islam (save for supporting the Kurds, not for sentimental reasons, but only so that other Kurds in Syria and Iran may be inspired, that other non-Arab Muslims -- e.g. Berbers -- may be inspired, and that Kurdistan, the population of which is friendly toward the Americans (not least for the protection given the Kurds since 1991), has had immediate experience of Arab supremacism, Arab indifference to Arab murderers of non-Arabs.
Kurdistan would be dependent on the United States for diplomatic and other support, especially in making Turkey an offer it cannot refuse: that Kurdistan will not make any territorial demands on Turkey, so long as the Turks themselves do not try to invade. An Administration that is determined to show Turkey, which in many ways is not the Kemalist Turkey that once was seen as an ally, and during the Cold War, was useful in fighting what we took to be Communism, and what they took to be their old enemy Russia.