Below is a look at America’s major wars and their length in months. Time periods are rounded up or down for ease of comparison. Current conflicts are italicized and are colored red. The longest wars are listed first in descending order by length. The start dates reflect when the United States entered the wars.

Vietnam War–August, 1964 to April, 1975= 129   months (American involvement began in the late    1950s, but major U.S. combat forces began taking part in large-unit combat in 1964.  August, 1964 is the month of the Gulf of Tonkin incident and the U.S. bombing of North Vietnamese targets.)       

American Revolution–April, 1775 to September, 1783= 100    months

Afghanistan–    October, 2001 to Present (as of March, 2008)= 78    months

Iraq War–March,    2003 to Present (as of March, 2008)= 60 months

U.S. Civil War–April, 1861 to April, 1865= 48    months

World War II–December, 1941 to September, 1945= 45    months

World War I–April, 1917 to November, 1918= 19    months

Korean War– June, 1950 to July, 1953= 37 months

War of 1812–June, 1812 to February, 1815= 32 months

U.S.-Mexican War– May, 1846 to February, 1848= 21    months

Spanish-American War–April, 1898 to August, 1898= 5    months

Gulf War–January, 1991 to March, 1991= 3 months

Source:  http://www.historyguy.com/american_wars_by_length_of_time.html

While the Turks are within their rights to strike at an enemy combatant force with whom they have been at war with since the 1980s, the U.S. is not the sovereign power in Iraq; officially, sovereign power rests with the Iraqi government in Baghdad, and reports indicate that the government, especially the Kurdish members of the government are quite angry at this attack and at U.S. complicity.

While the U.S. can claim that it is aiding a fellow NATO member defend itself, and that the PKK is considered a terrorist group, allowing the Turks to strike inside Iraq does open up the question of what the Bush Administration would do if Iran launched a similar cross-border strike against their own Kurdish rebels who also use northern Iraq as a base.

U.S. Helps Turkey Hit Rebel Kurds In Iraq: Intelligence Role Could Complicate Diplomacy–Washington Post, December 18, 2007

Turkey’s U.S.-Backed Strike in Iraq–Time, Dec. 17, 2007

1st Anglo-Iraq War: May 1920 to Feb. 1921

The Great Iraqi Revolution (known in Iraq as Ath Thawra al Iraqiyya al Kubra and by the British as the Arab Revolt of 1920-Rebellion by Iraqi Arabs against the rule of the British Mandate. The rebellion was suppressed by the British military. This can be considered the First Anglo-Iraqi War.

The immediate causes of this conflict arose out of the results of the British conquest of the Mesopotamian region from the Ottoman Turks during World War I. Following that war, the British established, with League of Nations approval, a colonial-style Mandate over the region now named “Iraq.” Many Iraqi nationalists, who believed independence would result from the ejection of the Turks, were severely disappointed with the establishment of the British Mandate. Other, related events and issues also inflamed Iraqi Arab opinion against the British. The Mandate government almost completely excluded Iraqis, as the British imported experienced civil servants from India (also ruled by Britain) to help administer the country. In northern Iraq, the British allowed thousands of Christian refugees escaping persecution in Turkey, to settle in mostly Muslim Iraq.

2nd Anglo-Iraq War: April 18, 1941 to May 30, 1941

The Anglo-Iraqi War of 1941, also known as the Rashid Ali Coup, was a relatively small, but very significant part of the Second World War. Since the ending of the British Mandate and the advent of full Iraqi independence in 1932, Britain retained a great deal of military influence in Iraq, despite lingering opposition from many Arab nationalists. One of these nationalists, Rashid Ali, seized power in Baghdad and refused British requests to allow British military forces to enter Iraq. Britain at this time was fighting German and Italian forces in North Africa and were preparing to invade Vichy French-held Syria. (The Vichy French were working with the Germans and British and Free French forces needed to secure the region). Believing promises of German support, Rashid Ali ordered his forces to attack British bases in western Iraq and to oppose the landing of British forces at the southern city of Basra. German support appeared in the form of a small number of Luftwaffe fighter planes, and the British forces quickly defeated the Iraqi military.

3rd Anglo-Iraq War: Aug. 2, 1990 to Feb. 1991

The Second Persian Gulf War (Also known as “Operation Desert Storm”)— On August 2, 1990, Iraqi forces invaded and quickly conquered the small, oil-rich emirate of Kuwait. Almost immediately, an international coalition of nations gathered a powerful military force under the authority of the United Nations and the leadership of the United States, first to defend the oil-rich kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and secondly, to force Iraq to withdraw from occupied Kuwait. From the beginning of the crisis, the United Kingdom, led by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, worked very closely with the U.S. in assuming a determined posture against Saddam Hussein’s territorial ambition. Click on the blue link above for more detail on the war.

4th Anglo-Iraq War: 1991 to March 19, 2003

The "No-Fly Zone War" pitted the air and naval forces of the United States and the United Kingdom against the air defenses of Iraq. This conflict was a direct result of the agreements which ended the fighting in the Second Persian Gulf War (Also known as “Operation Desert Storm”). Click on the blue "No-Fly Zone War" link above for more detail on the war.

5th Anglo-Iraq War: March 19, 2003 to Present

The Third Persian Gulf War , known as "Operation Telic" by the British, and "Operation Iraqi Freedom" by the U.S., ousted Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein from power and led to the occupation of Iraq by British and American forces. Click on the blue link above for more detail on the war.

Please cite this source when appropriate:

Lee, R. "The History Guy: Anglo-Iraq Wars

http://www.historyguy.com/anglo-iraq_wars.html

The Kurdish resistance forces fighting the Turkish government call themselves the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK), a group formed in the late 1970s which took up arms against the Ankara government in 1984.  The PKK has long enjoyed a safe haven in northern Iraq, which is home to the closest thing the Kurds have to an actual country.  The PKK recently killed a dozen Turkish soldiers in southeastern Turkey (aka Turkish Kurdistan), prompting the Turkish government to threaten an invasion of Iraqi Kurdistan in an attempt to root out the PKK bases there.  It should be noted that in recent weeks, Iran has been shelling the bases of its own Kurdish resistance movement, called Kurdish Party of Free Life in Kurdistan (PEJAK).  Those bases are also located in Iraqi Kurdistan.

The problem for the United States is that the Iraqi Kurds are America’s only real allies in Iraq, and they have set up a thriving enclave of freedom and relative prosperity for themselves in the post-Saddam era.  An era that is possible only due to the military and diplomatic protection offered by the United States.  Of course, if one looks at history, it is clear that the U.S actually owes the Kurds quite a bit for America’s past betrayals of the Iraqi Kurds. 

In the 1970s, the CIA, along with the Shah of Iran (pre-Islamic Republic, of course), supported the Kurds in their long struggle against Saddam’s tyranny; until it no longer remained in America’s or Iran’s best interest to support them. In 1975, Saddam and the Shah (two thoroughly undemocratic despots) struck a deal that settled some old border disputes between them, and the Shah and his CIA buddies quickly shut off the flow of arms to the Kurds, and denied them border bases from which to fight Baghdad.  Saddam then crushed the Kurds.  In the 1980s, Saddam was at war with the post-Shah Iran and the Kurds rose up once again in their struggle for freedom.  Saddam gassed them.  Since Iraq was temporarily America’s ally against Iran, not much was said in Washington about this act of genocide.  Then, in the ultimate act of hypocrisy, the first Bush Administration, which normally got things right in the foreign policy department, encouraged both the northern Kurds and the southern Shiites to rise up against Saddam, but then stood by while his elite and ruthless  Republican Guard, which largely escaped the thrashing by the Allies in Kuwait, crushed both revolts while America’s huge army in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia stood by and did nothing.

So, what does the history of Iraq’s brutality towards Iraqi Kurds and America’s continual betrayal have to do with Turkey’s movements along the border with Iraqi Kurdistan?  Consider that Turkey is a long-time American ally, as are the Iraqi Kurds.  A war between them will greatly damage America’s interests in the region, endanger American forces, and serve as a huge failure of American diplomacy in the region.  And, if the U.S. stands by and lets Turkey attack across the border, what justification will the Bush Administration have if Iran decides to do the same thing to punish PEJAK?

Now, those who are of a mind to think of conspiracies, it is possible that this scenario is exactly what President Bush (or more likely, Vice-President Cheney) have in mind to occur.  Regardless of the hypocrisy of allowing one attack (by the Turks), and then responding militarily to another attack (by Iran), such a cross-border incursion by Tehran, even in a "legal" hot-pursuit situation, could provide the casus belli that some in Washington seek in order to attack Iran and end the embryonic nuclear threat posed by the Islamic Fascists in Tehran.

The Kurds, who are the world’s largest ethnic group without a country to call their own, are once again caught in the cross-fire of Middle East politics, and the confused dynamics of American foreign policy.

Links of Interest:

Who are the PKK?–National Public Radio, Oct. 22, 2007

Kurdish Secessionism Looms Over the Middle East–Robert Lindsay: Independent Left Journalist From California,May 11, 2006

Iranians shell anti-Iranian Kurdish PEJAK guerrillas in Iraqi Kurdistan–Kurd Net, May 23, 2007 

What many do not realize, largely because the mainstream media ignores or downplays them, is that the United States (and its allies) have been very, very active militarily around the world since the terrorist attacks of September 11 in their efforts to combat radical Islamic militants.

One of the first publicly acknowledged military efforts (after Afghanistan), was the deployment of U.S. Special Forces troops to the Philippines to aid the government there against the Abu Sayyaf rebels in the largely Muslim southern islands.

Another area the U.S. intervened in was the ongoing struggle in Yemen, an Arab country to the south of Saudi Arabia.  There, some of the tribes in the countryside who traditionally cause trouble for the central government, began working with al-Qaida.  This resulted in the U.S. providing aid to the Yemeni government and occasionally popping fugitive al-Qaida terrorists with Hellfire missiles fired from Predator drone aircraft.

Those Predator drones, by the way, are based in tiny Djibouti, a former French colony across the Mandab Straits from Yemen.  American Special Forces, (and, one would assume, Central Intelligence Agency officers), are based as a quick-reaction force for the entire Horn of Africa region.  A more recent, and so far tactically successful intervention, was American aid for the Ethiopian invasion/intervention against Islamist forces in Somalia in December of 2006. U.S. Special Forces traveled with the Ethiopian Army, and the U.S. military launched air and missile attacks on suspected Somali Islamists and al-Qaida fugitives.

American Special Forces also have aided allied nations in improving their defenses, including the Republic of Georgia (formerly an oppressed region of the late, unlamented Soviet Union), who have their own issues as a neighbor of Russia and the rebellious Muslim Russian region of Chechnya.

During last summer’s war in the Mid-East between Israel and Hezbollah, the U.S. re-supplied the Israeli military with ammunition and other materiel to aid the Israelis in their fight against the Islamic militant army.

The U.S. has also given significant material aid to Lebanon in its recent fight against al-Qaida allies in northern Lebanon.

Al-Qaida of course, has not been idle, as bin Laden’s organization maintains insurgencies against U.S. allies in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Thailand, Algeria, Egypt, Libya (yes, the U.S. and Libya kissed and made up, largely because Kaddafy saw the ease with which American forces seized Baghdad), Ethiopia, and is active in undermining government authority in other nations. 

Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida declared war on America in 1996, and few Americans paid him any attention.  He attacked us in 1998, with the African Embassy bombings, and again in 2000, with an attack on the USS Cole.  The assault on 9/11/2001 finally snapped America out of its comfortable sense of security, and the United States launched its Global War on Terror.  Does anyone doubt that this is truly a "World War?"

We will come back to this theme in the future…