For some reason, people tend
to assume that the status quo has been around for a very, very long time—that
it enjoys the perk of longevity. To mess with it even in part is typically
assumed to “upset the apple cart.” The fear is excessive. A century after World
War I, the fact that many of the extant countries in the Middle East had been
artificially crafted by Britain and France paled under the presumption that
those countries had been around for much, much longer. Accordingly, the fact
that the Kurds voted overwhelmingly in 2017 to secede from Iraq was ignored or
dismissed not only by Iraq, but also by other countries in the region and the
United States. “Baghdad and most countries in the region had condemned the
vote, fearing it would fuel ethnic divisions, lead to the breakup of Iraq and
hobble the fight against the Islamic State.”[1] I submit that the fear was overblown and mistaken.
The full essay is at "Kurds Betrayed."
[1]
David Zucchino, “Iraqis Capture Key Kurdish City with Little Fight,” The New York Times, October 17, 2017.
