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Are the Kurds really Maoist-Marxist commies? If so, what is the benefit here, especially as we are probably going to take on more Maoists in N. Korea down the road? Don't we open ourselves to blackmail from the Kurds, as in, "You leave the N. Koreans alone, or no oil?" This sounds extremely short-sighted on our part. Maybe more negotiation, more finesse, and less pressure with Turkey might have been more productive.

Are the Kurds really Maoist-Marxist commies?

Well, that's complicated. Ostensibly, yes. In the past, they bought into the rhetoric and methods as a way of expressing their solidarity and consolidating their power. This has not been uncommon among peoples with little wealth and a long history of oppression.

But that is no block to our using them in northern Iraq. They hate Turkey's attempt to seize their land and they hate Saddam for gassing and killing them. A new more democratic Iraq with zones of local autonomy and enough wealth to sustain a democracy of sorts is very much in their interest. And we'll probably have an airbase or two in the area as a reminder. The last ten years of our protection of them in northern Iraq is the only good ten years they've had in the last thousand years so I think they'll listen to us. Especially with a few hundred thousand American troops around and an unfriendly Turkey and Iran on the borders nearest the Kurds in northern Iraq.

Like many other domestic Marxist groups, these Kurds are more Kurdish than communist. The point is to prevent a full-blown communist state which we will never tolerate.

Alliance with communists is hardly unprecedented. It is how we won WW II in alliance with the Soviets. You work with what you can get.