Nitpicking, but no he didn't (Massoud)--he was dead (offed right before 9/11). And while we were right to use the Northern Alliance to drive out the Taliban, some of them are causing problems with the new government.
LeoWindhorse, not to be to much of an apologist for the Turks--especially in light of their increasingly islamist leaning, but I thought the whole reason they "stabbed us in the back" with our invasion plans was because of fear of the Kurds being able to operate with their Turkish brethren to increase the uprising. And I doubt many Iraqi bad guys escaped through the north--at the very least, they'd have to pass through those very same Kurds even if the Turks were sympathetic to them (for some reason). After all, they could have gone west or east a lot easier.
While I like the idea of the Kurds getting their own state (it'd be most natural if we'd split Iraq into three separate entities after we toppled Saddam), I don't think a country should be criticized for acting in its own interest (I sure wish our government would act in ours--i.e. the borders, Iran, NK, Venezuela, Somalia, etc.).
Ummm...actually he did. He was fighting them before he was assassinated on 9/9...that's why he was assassinated. Because he was fighting them there was a Northern Alliance around when we needed them, already holding some ground. His lieutenants were also funded and otherwise helped by us against the Soviets. Also, I don't need to remind you his photo was transported in front of all the Northern Alliance armies...
As for the Northern Alliance causing new problems? Guess what, _they're_ the ones who defeated the Taliban on the ground, not Karzai. They should be given more recognition. Even so, you can't have your cake and eat it too. The US chose not to go in on the ground because it might have casualties, so now it can't quite dictate everything to the people who did go on the ground. It's not a perfect world. The Northern Alliance is better than the Soviets and better than the Taliban. And the Taliban, like I said, wouldn't have come to power if we had helped Afghanistan in the 90's instead of abandoning it.
As for the Kurds...the creation of a Kurdistan is really not the point of this thread. It's whether the BLA should be helped to destabilize the Iranian regime. This does not mean that the BLA would "take over Iran," an impossibility, or even that they would have their own state afterwards.
But since you bring it up, I'm not a fan of breaking up Iraq. How would that solve any problems? Would you abandon the Sunnis to make their own Hamas state, the Shia essentially to merge with Iran, the Kurds to be in basically perpetual conflict with the Turks? As for the Turks...yes, it's _their_ interest, not ours. It's their problem, in other words. Our interest was going in through the north, and yes, we should be blaming the Turks for following their own self-interest when it conflicted with ours and with the terms of the NATO alliance. The Turks shouldn't be in this alliance.