Christopher Hitchens holidays in Iraqi Kurdistan:

'Yet Kurdistan continues to demonstrate how things could have been different, and it isn't a place from which the West can simply walk away."

I tremble for the Kurds. How will they survive if the US army up and leaves? On every expectation placed on Iraq before the toppling of Saddam - they made good. They created a democracy out of their shambles, with economic opportunities and decent institutions. They are grateful to the Americans for making it possible for them to regain their humanity, their dreams, their future.

What's to become of them if the rejectionist forces in the US have their way? Hitchens' generous descriptions will be sneered at, by hard-core leftists who don't even want to know about this one third of Iraq where democracy is now enjoyed and taken full advantage of - a neocon dream come true. How can they know about this success story and simultaneously demand troops' withdrawal? It must be disowned, then.