Return to Kirkuk

As most of my readers realize, I generally am not a supporter of American intervention in the affairs of other nations. And in particular, I was not a big fan of the American invasion of Iraq.

But, I do take issue with people who paint the invasion of Iraq as a simple back and white affair.
I recently viewed the Frontline Documentary "Return to Kirkuk." This piece centered around the return of exiled Iraqi Karzan Sherabayani to his hometown of Kirkuk. What blew my mind was the exuberant praise that Kurds heaped upon George W Bush and the invasion of Iraq, some going as far as declaring that "statues of Bush should be placed in every city in Iraq." Groups of Kurds spoke of the horrors of ba'athist rule: massacres of civilians, chemical weapons attacks, torture, deportation and destruction.

Interestingly most did not place the blame of the waves of violence on Americans. They spoke of the nobility of American efforts to help the Iraqi people achieve democracy. Most laid the blame on the unwillingness of the Sunni Arab minority to relinquish their former monopoly on power and (to a lesser extent) the majoritarian tyranny exercised by the Shi'ite Arabs majority. This leads me to believe that the greatest error on GW Bush was his overestimation of the capacity of Arab Moslems to seize hold of the opportunity for democracy and prosperity that the occupied Germans and Japanese did before them.

http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/rough/2005/06/return_to_kirku_1.html