NER's Hugh Fitzgerald has a must read at Jihad Watch this morning:

Kurdistan, as a place and not as an idea, could, by its mere existence, if given a little boost (a boost, not boots on the ground -- they are different things), do a good deal of damage to the interests of both Syria and Iran. ...

The Iran-Iraq War tied two ruthless regimes up for eight years. From the Infidel point of view, it should have gone on forever. There is another chance. The Bush Administration, having still failed to grasp the scope of the problem and the nature of the problem posed by the Jihad and its various instruments (hardly limited to terrorism), is obstinate in its titanic -- in every sense -- efforts. It needs to be forced, through political pressure, to withdraw from Iraq, to end the misallocation of resources, the colossal sums being spent that could so much better be applied to energy projects. It needs to be forced to give to small-scale efforts, as in Kurdistan, a little "equalizer" (as the Colt .45 was once known) to the side that we wish to prevail, but only from afar.

Telemachy -- fighting from afar. And Telemachus was the son of Odysseus. Wily Odysseus. All this nonsense, this hallucinatory nonsense, about how "everyone loves freedom" and how we "are going to win the war on terror" through "our success in Iraq" which will take care of the "terrorists" forever (there is no "forever" that will end Jihad -- containment, and reduction in the size of the threat, is another matter) -- this has to stop. Events will cause it to stop, because in the next presidential election only someone who promises to remove our troops, right away, from Iraq, can conceivably win But the American government should not wait that long. The silence of the Democratic lambs, who are capable, apparently, of breaking that silence only in order to bleat all the wrong kinds of criticism of Bush, rather than the unanswerable, and therefore deadly, kind that is offered here -- needs to change.

It only takes one or two intelligent people. They must exist. Where are they? And the same is true of the Republicans, whose misplaced loyalty to a foolish and wasteful policy could do great damage to their own political survival.

A big failure all way round.

There already exists, as noted above, "The Art of Sinking in Poetry."

Practitioners of geopolitics should look at all the advantages an independent Kurdistan could bring -- not least as an inspiration to non-Muslim Arabs everywhere, who might begin to focus on Islam as the vehicle of Arab cultural and linguistic and political imperialism. They might begin to see Islam -- correctly, despite its universalist pretensions -- as the Arab national religion. This could begin to reduce its appeal to the 3/4 of the world's Muslims who are not Arab.

And that new geopolitics, of selectively sinking this or that threatening ship of state, or even wandering coastal barks, laden with explosives, that have made their way along the shores, or even into the waterways, of the Lands of the Infidels (as Muslims call them), is perhaps a harder art, a colder craft.

Let's call it "The Art of Sinking in Geopolitics."