When Kurdistan Regional Government President Massoud Barzani went to the United States last month, he reportedly brought up the idea of “a special relationship” between the U.S. and the Iraqi Kurds. There has been a debate in Washington about this since some time, of course. From a moral perspective, they argue that one good turn deserves another, and as the reciprocal relationship advances it naturally becomes a “special relationship.” While Turkey (a long-time ally and member of NATO) blocked American plans for a northern front against Saddam, Iraqi Arab allies proved either powerless, precocious or fleeting (or all of these). The Iraqi Kurds, on the other hand, delivered the Americans their only solid, reliable and effective local Iraqi ally in 2003 and afterwards. As the Iranians exert ever increasing influence since the U.S. troop withdrawal of few months ago, and while Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki concentrates increasing amounts of power in his hands, the Kurds still offer the U.S. a chance to salvage some of their hard earned interests in the country.

One also finds a number of arguments about why such a special relationship is not actually in the Americans’ interests. Writing recently in Foreign Policy magazine on the issue, Denise Natali’s arguments are representative of the views of many on the other side of this debate: “The United States has little to gain by creating a privileged relationship with the KRG,” she writes. “Not only would it send the wrong message to Iraqi Arab populations and aggravate communal relations, but it would create another cushion for the KRG leadership and dissuade political accommodation with Baghdad.” The crux of this argument is two-fold: First, too good a relationship with the Kurds would make Arabs and others in the region resent the United States, and second, such American support would embolden the Kurds in their demands vis-a-vis Baghdad or even encourage them to pursue a bid for secession.

The first argument in particular seems endemic in Washington. “We don’t want to alienate the Arabs,” so the logic goes. The funny thing is, the Arab masses have been alienated for a long time – because of the relationship with Israel, interventions in Lebanon, the 1991 Gulf War, U.S. bases in the Gulf, Afghanistan, the Iraq war, the relationship with the Saudis, U.S. economic dominance, the latest story on al Jazeera, and who knows what else. Things are so bad that when U.S. government officials ask Middle Eastern leaders for cooperation or some kind of favour, they typically get a response along the lines of, “Yes, we would love to do this for you, but our people hate you. We can’t be seen as too close to the United States. We have our own domestic political considerations to keep in mind, you see.”

There are only two places in the Middle East where this doesn’t happen: Israel and Kurdistan. In Israel and Kurdistan, the masses mostly love America. Since the U.S. enjoys an enduring special relationship with Israel, the former seems easy enough to understand. In the Kurdish case, however, America and the European powers betrayed the Kurds on numerous occasions – right after World War One when they refused to countenance the establishment of a Kurdish state, in 1946 when they supported the Iranian regime’s crushing of the Republic of Kurdistan in Mahabad, when they stayed silent and continued supporting Turkey during its many decades of denial and suppression of Kurdish identity, and when they helped foment Kurdish rebellion in Iraq in 1970 and then betrayed the rebels in 1975. Despite all of this, one never saw American or European flags being burned in Kurdistan. It’s very difficult to imagine an American or European embassy or consulate ever being attacked by a mob in Kurdistan, whereas this happens often enough in other parts of the Middle East. In southern Iraq, the Arab Shiites were even greater beneficiaries of the overthrow of Saddam than the Kurds, yet anti-Americanism still runs rampant there. In other parts of the Middle East, it doesn’t seem to matter how much American aid gets delivered – ill feeling towards the U.S. government, if not Americans in general, remains pervasive. Nothing the U.S. government could realistically do would change this in foreseeable future.

Given all this, doesn’t it make sense to develop a “special relationship” with a government and people where American business, tourists, government officials and even military bases are welcomed rather than resented? Do reliable friends not prove more important to American interests in the long run than ones who despise you but still take your money?

Nor would a strong relationship with the Iraqi Kurds necessarily do anything at all do discourage needed reforms and ongoing democratization and transparency initiatives within the Kurdistan Regional Government. The U.S. can push for these things harder with friends it has influence with, if it chooses to. It has done so on numerous occasions elsewhere, especially in Latin America. The argument that America should use “tough love” on the Iraq Kurds in order to encourage better governance simply lacks any evidence at all. For every case where the U.S. has chosen not to push a friendly regime for democratization, such as in Saudi Arabia, there are examples of others such as Syria who likewise failed to democratize in the absence of U.S. support.

When it comes to Erbil-Baghdad relations, the Americans need not back the Kurds on any initiative they didn’t already promise to support several years ago. That means autonomy, federalism, and a means to adjust the borders of the Kurdistan to possibly include more Kurdish areas immediately to the south (as promised in Article 140 of the Iraqi Constitution). The Kurds made a lot of concessions for these promises, including withdrawing their peshmerga out of Kirkuk and Mosul in 2003, not pushing for complete independence, working hard to make the new Iraq stable and functional, relinquishing some of the parliamentary seats in Baghdad allocated from Kurdistan, agreeing to share all oil revenues proportionally throughout Iraq and supporting a new national unity government after the March 2010 elections. As long as the Americans do not renege on these promises, the Kurds will understand when Washington pushes them to take more vigilant steps to combat corruption and improve governance, or to cooperate more with Baghdad (by submitting receipts for their customs revenue and oil payments, or by compromising on elements of a hydrocarbon law, for instance). If anything, a closer U.S. relationship with the Kurds might help dissuade increasingly authoritarian leaders in Baghdad from completely monopolizing power there.

Finally, cementing a real alliance with Iraqi Kurds would not destroy relations with the United States’ fair weather friends in the Middle East either. Just as Turkey cozies up to regimes and groups the Americans loathe, or the Saudis support Salafi radicals across the region, or Iraqi Shiite leaders remain close to Iran, so America can have friends no matter what others feel about it. Leaders in Baghdad will continue to buy F-16s from Washington, and they will still endorse the American checks they received to buy them with.

With the right kind of American-Kurdish relationship, however, Baghdad just won’t fly those bombers northwards into Kurdistan ever again.