FIVE YEARS, WHAT A SURPRISE: Obama Administration Considers Arming Syrian Kurds Against ISIS.

Deciding whether to arm the Syrian Kurds is a difficult decision for Mr. Obama, who is caught in the middle trying to balance the territorial and political ambitions of Turkey and the Syrian Kurds, two warring American allies that Washington needs to combat the Islamic insurgency.

Directly providing weapons for the first time to the Syrian Kurds, whom American commanders view as their most effective ground partner against the Islamic State, would help build momentum for the assault on Raqqa. But arming them would also aggravate Mr. Obama’s already tense relations with Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The United States and Turkey sharply disagree over Syria’s Kurdish militias, which Turkey sees as its main enemy in Syria.

Independent Kurdistan should have been the price President Bush made Turkey pay for their intransigence in 2003. And Kurdistan would have been, as Ralph Peters noted, “the most pro-Western state between Bulgaria and Japan.”

It still could be.