U.S. geopolitical engagement with the Kurds began in earnest in the mid-1970s. The Americans and Israelis had brokered a deal with the Shah of Iran to permit the establishment of a large autonomous Kurdish enclave in Northern Iraq, which could help antagonize Saddam Hussein’s regime in Baghdad. (The Kurds had already rebelled against Iraq several times in the 1960s, conflicts that left tens of thousands dead and made refugees of hundreds of thousands more.)

But, as The New Yorker’s Dexter Filkins has noted, the Shah and Hussein struck a peace deal in 1975, and the new Kurdish stronghold was ultimately left unprotected. The Iraqi army immediately sent the Kurds to ground. This tragedy, Filkins wrote, left an indelible mark: The name of Henry Kissinger—who as Gerald Ford’s secretary of state and national security advisor oversaw the U.S.’s disengagement—“is known, and reviled, by nearly every Kurd.” The Kurds’ de facto leader later wrote an unnerving lament to Ford’s successor, President Jimmy Carter: “I could have prevented this calamity which befell my people,” he said, “had I not fully believed in the promise of America.”