U.S. - Iraq Troop Agreement

The Iraqi Parliament, especially the bloc of members from the party Moqtada al Sadr controls, is resisting pressure from the United States and Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki to approve an agreement to authorize the presence of U.S. military forces in Iraq until 2011. According to news reports, objections at first centered on the mere presence of U.S. forces, then expanded to include concerns about potential seizure of Iraqi oil revenues to pay Saddam era debts. Public protesters against the agreement, numbering in the tens of thousands, burned an effigy of George Bush.

Concurrently, the media reports that the Kurds have received weapons shipments from abroad; presumably obtaining additional arms in case someone wishes to challenge the de facto Kurdish autonomy that now exists. The Kurds can also employee the weapons in the ongoing hostilities waged against Turkey to incorporate Turkish Kurds into a fully independent Kurdistan.

Taken together, the Parliamentary debates and arms purchases by Kurds bode ill for the continued existence of Iraq as a single nation. The United States cannot impose either democracy or national identity on people who prefer something else. In this, the ethical aligns with the practical: imposing a government and national identity on another people is at best demeaning and paternalistic and at worst dehumanizing.