Another NATO country has put boots on the ground in Iraq, only not in a way that gives CENTCOM the warm'n'fuzzies.
Of course, fair is fair; if we couldn't stop PKK guerillas from shooting up southern Turkey and then slinking back across the Iraqi border, we couldn't very well expect the Turks to just stand and take it on the chin and then let the perpetrators tag up safe at home base. Unfortunately this is taking place in the Kurdish part of Iraq, which was the unsuckiest part of the country.
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I talked to my wife about this possibility 18 months ago. She thinks I missed my calling and should have been an analyst.
Given the PKK attacks across the border and the fact that the Iraqi security forces have not prevented them Turkey could have invoked the NATO mutual defense clause and called for mutual support from NATO to supress the PKK in Iraq.
That would have left he US in a cleft stick.
Saying that the mutual defense clause was not applicable* and leaving our efforts to improve NATO support in Afghanistan in utter tatters with the US labelled as hypocrites.
If we did rise to the call for mutual aid we would have to go to war against our best support in the region.
Frankly Turkey has done a huge favor by not sucking us in.
Earl Harding
*The PKK have killed far more Turks over a longer period of time then Bin Laden has US citizens.
Another reason to leave Iraq, we can't protect it from our friends...
This is one big reason sensible people opposed the long term occupation of Iraq in the first place. Turkey is- er, WAS- our only natural and serious ally in the region. Already a "Western Democracy", too.
But nooooo.... We have to provide the PKK a safe harbour to kill Turks.
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