[BRIEF NOTE] I might not be an expert, but ...

[rfmcdonald]

Isn't Juan Cole understating the extent of Kurdish opposition to the idea of living in an officially Arab nation-state? In the four decades before the 2003 invasion, Iraqi Kurds had been subjected to a fairly thorough process of Arabization by one explicitly Arab-nationalist regime or another, with mass deportations and mass murder the tools of choice for an official Baghdad that regarded a Kurdish presence in a purely Arab country as subversive. This, understandably, politicized Iraqi Kurds. It's more than a bit unreasonable to expect Iraqi Kurds to accept membership in a polity that again defined itself as explicitly Arab, unless, of course, you favour the independence of Iraqi Kurdistan. Somehow, I don't think that's what the Arab League is thinking.