Turkey's military incursion into the Kurdish region of northern Iraq was predictable and an example of maladroit American maneuvering in the Middle East.

The NATO ally sent 10,000 troops, starting Feb. 21 and lasting a week, into Iraq in response to violence committed by armed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants in Turkey itself. The role of Turkey's Kurds, estimated at more than 20 percent of the population, is a sensitive question for the Turkish government.

Apart from the Kurds' quest for equal rights and treatment in Turkey, the European Union has also latched onto the issue, choosing to consider Turkish resolution of the Kurdish problem to be a pre-condition for its accession to the EU. The fact that the Turks were prepared nonetheless to send military forces into Iraq is an indication of how important they consider the matter to be.

With the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 U.S. protection of the Kurds, which dated from shortly after the end of the first Gulf War in 1991, became an alliance. The Kurds were smart enough to realize that the United States could become their ticket to an independent Kurdistan. On the U.S. side, it was simpler than that: the Kurds were pretty much the only ethnic element in Iraq ready to be seen cooperating with the Americans.

The problem with the U.S.-Kurdish alliance is that the Kurds' ambitions include incorporating Kurdish populations and territory in neighboring states of Turkey, Iran and Syria into an eventual Kurdistan.

Last Thursday Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates went to Turkey and told the Turks to keep their incursion into Iraq brief. Even though they withdrew their forces shortly afterward, their response to Mr. Gates was that they would stay as long as necessary. They also made no public pledge not to return.

The United States told Turkey to talk to the Iraqi government of Prime Minister Nouri Kamal al-Maliki. That's a joke: His U.S. occupation-dependent government in Baghdad has no control over what happens in the Kurdish areas of Iraq.

Turkey is also able to cite certain U.S. policy positions back to the government of President Bush. His administration has declared Turkey's target in Iraq, the PKK, a terrorist organization. Turkey can thus call its actions against the PKK part of the global war on terror. America's Kurdish allies in Iraq, of course, are in full sympathy with the PKK and will do nothing to restrain it and may even support it militarily.

The United States thus stands powerless, looking stupid, in the face of one U.S. ally, Turkey, fighting against another U.S. ally, the Kurds, in Iraq. This is yet another aspect of the long, foolish war that Mr. Bush and the Republicans' presumptive nominee, Sen. John McCain, apparently see no need to bring to a close.