On Monday, the people of Iraqi Kurdistan voted overwhelmingly for independence, despite pressure from friend and foe alike—with the exception of Israel—to refrain from holding the referendum at all. Dominic Green, rejecting the U.S. foreign-policy and military establishment’s position that Kurdish independence would fuel the region’s chaos, argues that support for the Kurds “is not just the right thing to do, it is also the sensible thing to do.”

Today, Iraqi Kurdistan is . . . a proven bulwark against Islamic State, and an obvious bulwark against the imperial ambitions of Iran. The rest of Iraq is a disaster. The failed state-building that followed the U.S.-led invasion of 2003 has bequeathed a corrupt Iranian satrapy and a leaking ulcer of Sunni fanaticism.

In a region defined by Islamism and repression, the Kurds of Iraq are moderate in religion and democratic in politics. In a region awash with anti-American and anti-Western loathing, the Kurds of Iraq are our loyal allies, and a strategic asset. . . .

The Kurds have already created their facts on the ground. Tellingly, the only endorsement of Kurdish independence came from the leader of another non-Arab [people] whose women are also more likely to be seen wearing camouflage pants than burkas: Benjamin Netanyahu.

The Jews and the Kurds have a long history of friendship: another reason why a Kurdish state aligns with American interests. Of course, Arab and Turkish leaders succumbed immediately to public paranoia about a “second Israel.” As if the development of a liberal, high-tech, egalitarian powerhouse capable of defending itself would be yet another disaster for the region.

While it is commendable that administrators of several universities finally called upon police to crack down on violent and disruptive anti-Israel protests, the actions they have taken may be insufficient. At Columbia, demonstrators reestablished their encampment on the main quad after it had been cleared by the police, and the university seems reluctant to use force again. The school also decided to hold classes remotely until the end of the semester. Such moves, whatever their merits, do nothing to fix the factors that allowed campuses to become hotbeds of pro-Hamas activism in the first place. The editors of National Review examine how things go to this point:

Since the 10/7 massacre, Columbia’s Jewish students have been forced to endure routine calls for their execution. It shouldn’t have taken the slaughter, rape, and brutalization of Israeli Jews to expose chants like “Globalize the intifada” and “Death to the Zionist state” as calls for violence, but the university refused to intervene on behalf of its besieged students. When an Israeli student was beaten with a stick outside Columbia’s library, it occasioned little soul-searching from faculty. Indeed, it served only as the impetus to establish an “Anti-Semitism Task Force,” which subsequently expressed “serious concerns” about the university’s commitment to enforcing its codes of conduct against anti-Semitic violators.

But little was done. Indeed, as late as last month the school served as host to speakers who praised the 10/7 attacks and even “hijacking airplanes” as “important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in.”

The school’s lackadaisical approach created a permission structure to menace and harass Jewish students, and that’s what happened. . . . Now is the time finally to do something about this kind of harassment and associated acts of trespass and disorder. Yale did the right thing when police cleared out an encampment [on Monday]. But Columbia remains a daily reminder of what happens when freaks and haters are allowed to impose their will on campus.