Update, 10:46 PM… I am reminded by Steve Benen of many things, perhaps most significant is that the reality of the Turk-Kurd dynamic is just too much to blithely gloss over. I try to slide over it below (while acknowledging it) to make this whole piece more thematically tight, but that’s just ridiculous. Any new borders would have to include a Kurdish state. And any Kurdish state would incur the wrath of the Turks – but that’s still a scenario more managable than a Turkey-absorbed Kurdistan, so try this map instead. Eh, I’ll stick with state, local and national politics…

(Please note: I am not promoting this as the solution, merely…making conversation… those who read this site know that I am not a foreign policy guy.)

The trisection of Iraq into three states – one each dominated by Kurds, Shia and Sunnis – is a notion that never quite goes away, but is never quite seriously addressed either. Even it's high-profile proponents such as Senator Joe Biden hardly seem to mention it anymore. Iraq, which was carved into a state arbitrarily in the post-colonial era, never truly gained the sort of national identity that the secular baathists were trying to create, and it can certainly be argued that now is a less than ideal time to somehow make it work – especially since it's now being suggested that hardwiring these underlying divisions into the nascent, dysfunctional parliament may have only served to exacerbate the friction.

But it always does raise one question for me. If the geographic carving knife is on the rhetorical table, instead of making one problematic state building project into three, is it worth considering going the other direction? For example:

Problem:

Solution?

Again, I'm not proposing it, but it's an interesting point of conversation (including some very big associated problems)…

The big advantages are obvious; it becomes a Middle East management problem, rather than an American one. We’ve also traded in a crumbling, unstable non-state in the heart of the most volatile region in the world for more-or-less the old status quo, as far as stability goes – Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Jordan and Syria are stable and aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.

The biggest problem is also the most tantalizing one – that Iran and Syria would have to be full partners. In fact, Iran in particular would be given a great big bonus in the form of much of the Iraqi oilfields they’ve coveted for so long, in the process of absorbing the mostly shia south (including critical Shia holy sites). This would not only make Israel uncomfortable, but neighboring Saudi Arabia as well, which has been leery of the influence of non-Arab Iran in the Middle East. Syria also would see a boost in stature. In fact, states like Jordan and Syria might want no part of such an arrangement, inheriting as they would the least commercially viable portions of old Iraq, but the argument could be made that they are receiving the lion’s shares of refugees already, so the infrastructure burden is largely foisted on them regardless, and the pot could be sweeteened with additional foreign aid.

But it’s tantalizing because it forces friend and foe to the table in the interest of making a stable situation for all. The battleground becomes the common ground.

Then there’s the other big problem – the north. It would be highly problematic for Turkey to functionally govern across its southern mountains, and the Kurds would be none too happy – explosively so. Turkey has repressed its own Kurdish population for some time, and native Turkish Kurds have responded violently. Indeed, this is the flip side of the biggest problem with the “three states” scenario promoted by Biden, as the Turkish military would not abide an independent Kurdish state on their borders that they would see as a safe haven and a base of operations for Kurdish resistance fighters in Turkey.

But there may be a window of opportunity for a change in the dynamic. The secular candidate for Turkey’s top political spot just lost while running on a platform meant to rally popular support around the idea of the Kurds as a threat. That political failure could open new discussions with Kurds and – again with promises of foreign aid – there may be an opportunity to discuss such a Kurdish province in the context of new human rights understandings.

Yeah, yeah I know – all this: not bloody likely.

But since the whole place is going to hell in a handbasket since we stepped in and busted it up – and there doesn’t seem to be anything to be done about it – might as well throw every option on the table, eh?

Did The Rooster Call Up the Sun or Did Rove Get the Last Laugh?
The only certainty my grasshoppers is that the cherry blossoms of spring will become the turd blossoms of summer

Karl Rove also known as “Turd Blossom” in that colorful native patois spoken by the Texas Chicken hawks announced today that he is leaving the rapidly sinking Scow of State that is the Bush administration effective the end of August.

His reason for leaving, taken verbatim from the official Washington departing rats exit speech is of course, to spend more time with his family.

When asked by one of the fully interchangeable talking heads of the White House press horde if he was being forced out, TB replied, “that sounds like the rooster calling up the sun” which I believe is another expression in that curious Pecos dialect that these birds use among themselves. Only Molly Ivins could decipher and translate the curious Texas Pig Latin these guys speak in private. I miss Molly.

In the weeks ahead there will be endless testimonials to Rove as the master architect of two successive (if not successful) terms in the White House and hundreds of references to his intellect and political genius. Genius, when used to describe any aspect of the Bush administration, in any context, I feel, seriously dilutes the term.

Whether he is departing to spend more time barbecuing, dove hunting and billing and cooing with his Texas Rose while writing his memoirs or scurrying out of town under a cloud of suspicion, subpoenas and potential indictments is open to argument. Perhaps, with all the other foul public relations odors wafting around the White House these days they may have decided to set this particular sack of scent outside the door and some distance downwind before the congressional recess is over.

Either way, August is adieu for Turd Blossom, the administration, today, is publicly mourning his loss while beatifying his holy name and as I listen with half an ear the media “analysis” of his departure drones steadily on in the background, as it probably will for days unless Paris Hilton goes on another toot.

My personal favorite memory of Turd Blossom comes from reports of the White House Correspondents Dinner last April when he recoiled from Sheryl Crow. When she and Laurie David tried to ask him if he might consider taking a fresh look at global warming science in light of the reception of “An Inconvenient Truth,” Rove fled, he fled from Sheryl Crow, I will remember him that way scurrying across the room like Little Miss Muffet, in terror of Sheryl Crow.

Before he leaves town there will of course be a round of going away parties in his honor, and he’ll probably be invited to about half of them but I don’t think he will be absent from Washington long, he leaves behind his shield of executive privilege and I seem to remember that there are a few folks in the House and Senate who really want to talk with him.

In his goodbye photo op on the White House lawn this morning it struck me that Turd Blossom, the boy from the west, born in Denver and raised in Sparks, Nevada, has almost none of the drawl one might expect while the guy next to him, scion of eastern aristocrats, born in Connecticut, product of Skull and Bones, has cultivated a Texas two step drawl so dense you could whet your pocket knife on it.

Bush called Rove his friend, in fact, he said, “you could call him my dear friend.” Rove is if anything, the ultimate Bush loyalist, first as an assistant to GHW Bush after having being investigated as a minor player in the Watergate affair. When he was dispatched by Poppy to deliver car keys to Junior in November of 1973, Turd Blossom reportedly fell in love with the Shrub at first sight (politically speaking). “Huge amounts of charisma, swagger, cowboy boots, flight jacket, wonderful smile, just charisma – you know, wow” he recalled years later.

He’s had his chubby little fingers in everything in the administration for the last seven years without getting seriously burned and may have been the only person that Dick Cheney was wary of. There are many, myself included who would love to see him in handcuffs and that may yet happen but I’m not betting on it.

He’ll be around, there will be subpoenas to fight and a book to write, which I think that he should title “Reality is What You Say It Is” the ultimate Rovism, and I wish I could say:

Thank God and Greyhound he’s gone but I’m afraid that it’s not true, we’re stuck with his legacy, pictured below:

Bob Higgins
Worldwide Sawdust
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