Kurdistan Iraq may or may not be a lot of things.
I mean, the involvement of the west in Iraq seemed straightforward at first.
They wanted to depose a dictator.
But a decade or so later, after Saddam was gone, it all just seemed a muddled mess.
This is the solace in all that.
See, northern Iraq is free and safe.
It is free and safe for it is controlled by the Kurdish people. In fact, the Kurds have always controlled this mountain region.
This is America’s reward.
It was what the young writer said next, as he shook my hand at the entrance to my hotel, that has never left me. He could tell I was swimming in a million facts and a thousand bits of conversation. He wanted to cut through it all. “What you must
know ” he said kindly, but with piercing seriousness, “is that Kurdistan is what America wanted Iraq to be. Kurdistan is America’s reward.”
-Stephen Mansfield, The Miracle of The Kurds