The Kurdish people, members of the largest stateless nation in the world, have dreamed of independence for 100 years. U.S. President Barack Obama could be the man who delivers them to freedom. The ruinous conflict between Iraq's Shiite and Sunni Arabs means that Iraq as we know it is finished.
The Kurds, historically the victims of Arab domination (the Sunni Arab dictator Saddam Hussein committed terrible acts of genocide against them), will eventually be free. Obama could put the U.S. on the right side of history — and the right side of justice — by expediting their liberation.
To do so, Obama would have to take the sort of risk he has implicitly promised not to take in global affairs. He would have to defy decades of received American foreign-policy wisdom about the way the Middle East should be organized. And he would have to resist the knee-jerk Westphalian urge to preserve the borders of nation-states for the sake of (often chimerical and sometimes amoral) stability.