A new Iraq crisis has emerged as Turkey followed through on its threats and crossed the border to attack Kurd guerrillas. This escalation - and the prospects of a greater conflict - is not surprising. Indeed, prior to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, one of the major arguments by opponents of the war was that it could lead to the effective establishment of a Kurdish state led by nationalist guerrillas that would then destabilized the region, including reigniting a Turko-Kurdish war. Like the warnings about prospects of sectarian conflict, a rise of terrorism and Islamist extremism, and the prospects of U.S. forces becoming bogged down in a bloody urban counter-insurgency war, the Bush administration -- with the support of a large bipartisan majority in Congress -- went ahead with the invasion anyway. As with the other tragic results from the U.S. invasion, a solution to the crisis in Kurdistan is not easy. Given the close U.S. relations with both the Turkish government and the Kurdish Regional Government, however, as well as U.S. culpability in creating the current crisis in the first place, greater American leadership is critical

Turkey-Iraq Tensions High as Troops Poised for Major Attack Across Border

Nearly daily raids on Kurd rebel positions inside Iraq

Turkish Troops Cross Iraq Border to Attack Kurd Rebels

Bush fails to dissuade key ally from invading only friendly part of Iraq

Fearing Turkey Attack, U.S. Presses Iraqi Kurdistan to Crackdown on Rebel Group

Turkish troops have already crossed border to kill PKK rebels

The Bush administration's compulsive urge to possess the power to detain without oversight and to wield torture as a tool of interrogation has led it, however unexpectedly, into what can only be called a confessional stance. It was via Guantanamo that they meant to announce the arrival of this power on planet Earth. They were proud of it. And that prison complex was to function as their bragging rights. Their message was clear enough: In this world of ours, democracy would indeed run rampant and a vote of one would, in every case, be considered a majority.

The urge to take pride in their "accomplishments," to assert their powers, and to claim to redefine what was legal could also be seen as the urge to confess (if matters took a wrong turn as, in the case of the Bush administration, they always have). And so, along with the pride, along with the kidnappings, the new-style imprisonment, the acts of torture (and, in some cases, murder), the pretzled documents began to pour out of the administration -- each a tortured extremity of bizarre legalisms (as with John Yoo's infamous "torture memo" of August 2002, which essentially managed to reposition torture as something that existed mainly in the mind of, and could only be defined by, the torturer himself).

Of course, plumbing the psychology of a single individual while in office -- of a President or a Vice President -- is a nearly impossible task. Plumbing the psychology of an administration? Who can do it? And yet, sometimes officials may essentially do it for you. Sometimes, it's just a matter of refocusing to see the documents, the statements, the acts for what they are. Such is the case with the torture memos that continue to emerge. Never has an administration -- and hardly has a torturing regime anywhere -- had so many of its secret documents aired while it was still in the act. Seldom has a ruling group made such an open case for its own crimes. They can't help themselves. They want to confess

Suicide operations, the signature weapon of the Iraqi insurgency, have evolved into a tactical method of warfare. These "moving and thinking bombs" are more effective, numerous, adaptable and sophisticated -- able to carry out both mass killings and targeted political assassinations -- and are harder to counter since women and children are being used to carry them. The Taliban has also successfully used these operations to undermine the Kabul government. Suicide bombings in Afghanistan have increased from one attack in 2001 to 118 in 2006, and half of all operations carried out by the Taliban in Afghanistan are now suicide operations.

But the high number of suicide bombings carried out by Muslims gives the wrong impression that it is unique to Islam. During the Lebanese civil war, some 70% of suicide attackers were Christians, and a significant number of suicide operations are carried out by insurgent groups such the Tamil Tigers, whose members are mainly Hindus and Marxists, as well as the Marxist Kurdistan Workers Party. In fact, only 43 percent of the 384 suicide attackers between 1980 and 2003 in Sri Lanka, Israel, Chechnya, Iraq and New York, were affiliated with any religious groups. Islamist insurgent groups have adopted their suicide operations from these secular groups. Islamic insurgencies faced the challenge of convincing their followers to violate traditional Islamic principles that ban suicide and the targeting of unarmed civilians. However, Islamist insurgents have managed to get around this by introducing new religious ideologies such as "defensive Jihad," "Istihlal" and "Takfirism" to justify suicide operations