Kurdish radical democrats in Iraq and Syria have forced the US and Syrian governments to take positions at odds with their respective Western media portrayals.
In Iraq, more than 92% of the roughly 3 million people who went to the polls in Iraqi Kurdish-controlled areas opted for independence from Baghdad, according to official results announced Wednesday by the Kurdish electoral commission. While the US government ostensibly supports “color revolution” independence movements around the world in service of ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson instead labeled the vote ‘illegitimate’.
Meanwhile, Kurds in the northern Syrian autonomous region known as Rojava held initial elections in 3,700 communes, in anticipation of elections next year to form a new federal state consciously modeled after that of Switzerland. In response, Syria’s foreign minister referred to the autonomy of the region as ‘negotiable’, urging further dialogue on the matter.
If the American Empire now openly opposes votes for independence when those developments contradict its geopolitical ambitions, and when a so-called ‘rogue state’ steps up to carry the torch instead, for how much longer can the popular legitimacy of an imperial foreign policy be sustained?
