Meanwhile, after our government has pathetically yielded to Turkish threats over the genocide resolution, Washington has utterly failed to take seriously enough Turkey’s genuine security concerns about the PKK, which have just become more acute with the latest attacks inside Turkey.  A Turkish invasion now seems very likely, which will do vastly greater damage to efforts to stabilise Iraq and will endanger our forces in Iraq far more than anything that might have resulted from Ankara following through on its threats over the resolution. 

Washington has yielded to moral blackmail and simultaneously failed to avert potential strategic disaster.  Mr. Bush has effectively been protecting PKK terrorists while lending cover to a policy of genocide denial.  He has not managed to shore up U.S.-Turkish relations, which his administration has done so much to ruin over the years, and has managed to take the most dishonourable and dangerous positions available to him.  The mind boggles at how the administration’s toleration of both terrorism and genocide denial can be confused with wise and prudent statecraft.