It has become conventional wisdom in American policy circles that Iraq’s Kurds may be among the most pro-American people in the Middle East. And while that may not be true for the Kurdistan Regional Government which tends to play a double-game in which it depicts itself as everyone’s best friend — America’s, Iran’s, Israel’s, and Turkey’s — the Kurdish public does tend to be pro-American.

How sad it is that (completely separate from the betrayal of other allies in support of its pivot toward Iran) the United States appears on the verge of altering the attitude of the masses. As President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry continue largely to ignore Iraq, deferring sole responsibility for the portfolio to lower-ranking officials who seem intent on repeating mistakes of history at the expense of the Kurdish public’s democratic ambitions.

The problem appears tied to Special Envoy Brett McGurk, a 42-year-old lawyer, whom the president has placed in charge of the fight against the Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL, Daesh) following the retirement of Gen. John Allen. He has effectively endorsed the extra-constitutional extension of President Masoud Barzani’s term on the logic that political stability is needed in order to press the fight successfully against ISIS. This is a mistake for a number of reasons:

• Leadership change in the Iraqi government, from Nouri al-Maliki to Haider al-Abadi, arguably augmented the fight against the group. If change works for Baghdad, why not Erbil?
• The Islamic State arose, captured Sinjar, committed atrocities against the Yezidi, and pushed within a couple dozen kilometers of the Kurdish capital of Erbil all under the watch of the current Kurdish leadership which has not changed in almost a quarter century. Indeed, Yezidis blame Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani for his adamant refusal to send more peshmerga reinforcements to Mount Sinjar or weaponry before the ISIS attack about which the Yezidis had repeatedly warned. Even now, Barzani has warehoused many of the arms donated by the United States or the international community to strengthen his political militia and has not provided them to the front. The Kurdish government has further sold off for its own profit many of the weapons provided by the German Defense Ministry. Stability is not always an asset when it perpetuates corruption and incompetence.
• To undercut the constitutional transfer of the presidency to the (also pro-American) speaker of parliament in an interim fashion until a new president can be chosen is reminiscent of the emergency laws which have long blighted the Middle East. Every dictatorship has based its legitimacy on these laws that suspend constitutions, eviscerate parliaments, and have done far more to entrench destabilizing dictatorships (like the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria) than they have to defeat extremism or promote real stability.
• In theory, the peshmerga are unified, and so it should not matter who the Kurdish president is. If McGurk’s strategy is a tacit acknowledgment that the peshmerga are political militias and will not fight if the United States doesn’t recognize Barzani as their leader, then that is reason not to put all the eggs in Barzani’s basket.

In recent months, the U.S. State Department has failed to issue visas to many Kurdish politicians and parliamentarians in an apparent effort to please Barzani. It is this decision, apparently taken at McGurk’s level as a way to appease Barzani, which now threatens to turn the Kurdish public against the United States. The problem is the rumor, as the Obama administration winds down, that U.S. policy is shaped more by a desire by officials to ride the Barzani golden parachute in their retirement than to defeat ISIS. To quash this rumor which admittedly may not be fair to McGurk but which is a perception born first by the Kurdish inability to believe why any U.S. official would otherwise throw Kurdish democracy and law under the bus and second by the action of previous American officials like Zalmay Khalilzad and Gen. James Jones who have conducted business with Barzani in their retirements, it is essential first that the United States grant visas to any elected Iraqi Kurdish official not accused of involvement in terrorism and second that McGurk address a growing negative perception by publicly forswearing any interest in business in Kurdistan following his presumptive retirement from public service in January 2017. To do otherwise might simply be to lose the Kurds based on a failed calculation which treats their democratic aspirations with disdain.