All along, American policy has been, 'We don't establish a Kurdistan.'
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Long-term, we must figure out a way that the Kurdish territory within Iraq operates with a certain amount of autonomy so that they feel comfortable and safe going back.
The Kurds will not be allowed to have an independent country because Turkey wouldn't stand for it; they have their own Kurdish population.
I had first visited Kurdistan in 2003 before the invasion of Iraq, camping out in Erbil and Sulaimaniya while waiting for Saddam Hussein's fall.
There's a certain amount of sympathy here for the Bush administration's problem, which is they would like to get rid of Saddam Hussein and they would like to have the Kurds autonomous.
The U.S. cannot force Sunnis, Shias, and Kurds to make peace or to act for the common good. They have been in conflict for 1,400 years.
I first visited Kurdistan in 2003. I arrived in the town of Sulaimaniyah, courtesy of smugglers who drove me across the border from Iran. Sulaimaniyah was a small, charming provincial Kurdish town.
There is no ethnic cleansing in Bahrain, no mass genocide, no policy of killing innocent people.
The U.S. relationship with Bahrain is obviously more complicated than with Syria and Iran.
I have had it up to here with the prosecutions, the government's attitude, the judiciary, the media's stance and the majority of Turks who view the Kurdish people's justified cause through a nationalist lens.
The Kurds were the only people in Iraq who were completely unguarded in expressing their gratitude to the United States for setting them free.