[See also:  A very good, thorough ROK Drop post, and a dissent from Andy Jackson.]

Reporting from Kurdish Iraq, Michael Totten says the only booms are economic, and that the Kurds are leveraging peace and prosperity into de facto independence.  It’s a long, interesting, occasionally fretful post, and well worth reading.  Along the way, Totten notes how Kurds view the South Koreans’ “sacrifice” for a democracy in Iraq:

Iraqi Kurdistan is technically occupied by a foreign power, but this occupation surely ranks among one of the most absurd in human history. Dr. Ali Sindi, advisor to Prime Minister Nechervan Barzani, told me that South Korea is the official occupier of “Northern Iraq.” Korean soldiers are stationed just outside Erbil in a base near the airport. He laughed when he told me the Kurdish military, the Peshmerga (“those who face death”), surround the South Koreans to make sure they’re safe.

I suppose I should set a macro in my computer to say that we should appreciate the ROK soldiers who volunteered for what sounds like dreary duty.  And of course, one South Korean soldier was killed in Afghanistan recently.  But South Korea’s contribution in Iraq ought to be placed in the context of what other nations gave for South Korea’s freedom, how much it was willing to give for the freedom of other nations in their hour of need, and the high price South Korea demanded in return, so that it could extend the slavery of North Koreans. 

Alliances form around the convergence of interests, but it is the convergence of values that makes them endure even when interests diverge.  This, in a nutshell, is why the alliance between the United States and South Korea isn’t enduring.