“Why the Kurds?” you ask.  Because, out of the entire deck making up the house of cards of global politics, the Kurds are the card that could send the whole thing crashing down.  Not the situation in Afghanistan; that’s a sticky wicket we won’t be batting out of soon.  Not the turbulence of retrenching rogue states like North Korea and the Russian Commonwealth; those bad boys can be bought off or it’ll come to blows way down the line.  Not even the global economic crisis - on that point, I assure you we’re heading south in the months to come, and the best we can hope for is a parachute.

But the Kurds could topple the whole mess even faster.  They are the weakest link.  And while everything else is sliding down, it is the Kurds who can pitch us over the edge in the months to come.

The reason why, is because the Kurds have long been the red-headed step child of the Gulf region.  Allies against Saddam by virtue of necessity, they went back to doctrine-based in-fighting as soon as the statue fell in Baghdad. They have since resisted any form of democratic control - from the Iraqi capitol or from the possibility of local parliaments. Now that elections have taken place, the Kurds stand to be as marginalized a party in politics as they were ethnically.

This leaves them ready, willing and able to do what they’re used to - take up arms and seize back their scrap of land from the Iraqi state, our ostensible ally.  Things could turn into a shooting war very soon.

So what? Well, it wouldn’t just be an internal conflict.  Iraq isn’t the only nation that the Kurds seek to draw into a firefight.  The Kurdish claim to space extends over two other states the USA definitely doesn’t want caught in this tug of war - one because it’s an ally; the other because it’s as close to a sworn enemy as America gets these days: Turkey and Iran.

Israel may be the US media sweetheart of the Middle East, but it’s Turkey that bends whenever the US asks an ally in the region to grab ankles. Though we couldn’t sign them up for full access rights when the Coalition of the Willing was preparing to tangle with Saddam, Turkey allows us everything from military bases to political crackdowns.  The few lines in the sand they draw and mean it involve their dealings with ethic minorities inside their borders - most significantly, these days, the Kurds who’re trading bullets and bombs with them over the southeast end of their country.

Iran is also locked in skirmishes with Kurds from time to time.  And Iran would be none too keen on having to grapple with the USA - or a US ally - in the Kurdish-run regions of its state.

The likelihood goes grim, and it goes like this: The Kurds resist the Iraqi capitol.  The Iraqis respond with military force.  In order to do so, they need to attack into Iran and Turkey.  Iran and Turkey mobilize in kind.

The result is a super-sized Charlie-Foxtrot in a state where the US was just beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel.  It means having to talk at the same table with Turkey and Iran.  It means a possibility of permanent instability in Iraq’s north.

So, no, it doesn’t mean you’ll be bankrupt.  It doesn’t mean global nuclear warfare.  But it does mean that yet another flashpoint could flare up in a big way, at a time when the US desperately needs a way out.

For the better part of the last month, I have been simply stunned by the change that the American electorate brought into being. I have been beyond commentary. I’ve just been admiring.

America, there is no overstating how profound the choice of Obama was. It means so much in terms of civil rights, meritocracy and decency in political discourse. But most significantly are two changes that will be taking place with such rapidity and intensity, we will soon hardly recognize our world.

One is the impact on America’s body politic – an impact that will, after generations of division, bring us together. This may sound simplistic, but you can see it happening already: Obama has, through his choices of advisors and vision for legislation, begun to dispel the notion of an opposition party. Now there are two parties, cooperating, and the fringe that clings bitterly to the politics of the past.

A recent NPR interview with a Republican strategist spoke directly to this phenomenon: The strategist talked about how Obama has co-opted many of the issues of the Right. Among them are reducing wasteful spending in government, defending gun rights, reducing abortions and taking a new, effective stance against terrorism and greater threats to American security. The strategist lamented this, given that these priorities of policy demands that Republicans either hold to their values and work with the administration, or take a more “conservative” stance socially in order to distinguish themselves.

We’ve seen it happening over the last month. Moderate conservatives such as those I’ve identified here on the blog are speaking with cautious favorability of the promise of Obama’s leadership. Meanwhile, staunch conservatives such as Norquist and Dobson are retrenching, trying to drum their flagging base into a more fervent condition with the old, campaign tropes of Obama being some manner of nebulous, foreign threat. The latter perception will not last long, and the former will find leaner numbers as people are clearly put off by the militant social conservatism of the far Right.

Perhaps the most corrosive element to the efforts of the Right to distinguish themselves as a firm opposition is the fact that Obama has seized upon some of the best talent of the middle. On the middle-right, we see figures like General Brent Scowcroft, Bush I’s NSA, and men like Paul Volker and General James Jones being brought in to be principal advisors to Obama. Secretary of Defense Gates being a holdover underscores this prevailing attitude of the Obama administration – that pragmatism and merit trumps political alignment.

So the statement is clearer now than ever: Obama wants the people of quality, the people with ideas, not political hacks. Even his appointment of various Clinton operatives suggests this – he wants the people, like Rahm Emmanuel, who can produce results.  Above all, 

Politics as we knew it in the spin-heavy, partisan, mercenary ways of the last twenty years is over.

Secondly, the major change will be in the globe. And unlike the post-partisan attitudes of the administration’s public veneer, this is a change that only the select that voted for Obama will be able to take credit for.

For yes, Obama’s politics will be one of unity, but it was the moment of his election – and that alone – that inspires the rest of the globe’s change.

That instant proved to the rest of the globe that America will no longer be taking a turn for the regressive. In the moment of electing Obama, a vast percentage of the electorate declared that America is still a nation of firsts in civil liberties.

We are now first in a man of color leading a major Western Empire. We stood for a first when it came to embracing a multi-cultural man. And we were first to confront the greatest ill of our past – slavery – by appointing a black man as our President.

This is no mean achievement: For the last eight years, the world has been waiting for us to seize the reins of progressiveness that we had led the charge with for the last century. Recognize, America, that in the era of World War II, we stood for grand values that inspired populations across the globe:

We stood for being prudent while still supporting the unfortunates in our society, as with the New Deal. We stood for placing the protection of the minority over the demagoguery of the majority, as with the civil rights movement. We led the globe in international organizations that helped the needy and could intervene if necessary in a crisis, as with the UN and NATO. And above all, we stood for the ideal that all men were created equal.

Now, electing the colored child of a single mother from the lower middle class, those that cast a vote for Obama have reminded the globe that we are still the champions of those values – those values that, above our prosperity and our custodianship, the world held dear.

We declared the era of state-sanctioned torture is over. The era of profligate corporate welfare at the expense of the masses is over. Isolationism and adherence to regressive international ideas, is over.

But this message was spoken only by those who voted for Obama – that is the honor that his supporters alone bear. For even though the opposition can support or curtail the events of the future, they cannot claim to be party to the awesome statement in favor of civil rights and global liberty that Obama represents.

They fought it; some hard, some casually and some tacitly, but all of them were opposition to it. They are numbered among those that fought the best of history – the judges who voted for segregation on the Supreme Court during Brown v. Board of Education; among the supporters of poor Goldwater who stood for separate facilities being allowed as States Rights; among those who passed Constitutional reforms against interracial marriage.

In light of this separation, I will be changing the title and mission of this blog. With an administration that I clearly favor in power, there is no playing the moderate. I chose my side in this election, and though I chose it because it was biparistan – even post-partisan – I will not pretend to not be aligned. I made my choice and chose to stand for liberty and progress.

I welcome those that stood against it, against the greatest values to ever inspire the globe, to work with me in this new time of unity.

I was ardent for change. I fought ardently against those who fought against it. I will be ardent to enact it the only way we can – together.

In nod to this happy incapacity, and in fun-loving spirit, I present the kind of weirdo video that gets spread around the Internets for your brief viewing enjoyment:

To paraphrase Nixon, “If the President’s dog does it, it’s not illegal.”

I suspect - and hope - Barney lives to be deceptively benign-looking another day.