One of my biggest blogging benefactors, the Commissar, wrote this in July:
Iraq is a mess. The current situation is not what we had counted on in 2003. Sunnis and Shia are killing each other on the streets of Baghdad, in what can only be termed “uncontrollable, retaliatory, neighborhood-wrecking, hundred dead a day, but-not-civil-war-yet, sectarian violence.†There is no political will for an increased American troop presence.
So, let’s stop trying to occupy that segment of the population most resistant to our presence - the Sunni. At the same time, let’s permit the de facto separation to happen, as shown on the map.
[Link added by me.] It seems that the Iraq Study Group, led by former SecState James Baker, is considering just that: giving most power and responsibility for security to each of three semi-autonomous regions — the Kurdish region in the north, the Sunni region in the west, and the Shiites in what’s left over:
His group has yet to reach a final conclusion, but there is a growing consensus that America can neither pour more soldiers into Iraq nor suffer mounting casualties without any sign of progress. It is thought to support embedding more high-quality American military advisers in the Iraqi security forces rather than maintaining high troop levels in the country indefinitely.
Frustrated by the failure of a recent so-called “battle of Baghdad†to stem violence in the capital, Zalmay Khalilzad, the US ambassador to Iraq, said last week that the unity government of Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister, had only two months left to get a grip. Rumours abound that the much-admired ambassador could depart by Christmas.
Khalilzad’s warning was reinforced by John Warner, Republican chairman of the Senate armed services committee, on his return from a visit to Baghdad. “In two to three months’ time, if this thing hasn’t come to fruition and this government (is not) able to function, I think it’s a responsibility of our government internally to determine: is there a change of course we should take?†Warner said.
There are a few problems I see with the idea — a lot of ethnic Kurds live in Turkey, and many entertain notions of separation; notions that will almost certainly be given greater life by the potential for a Kurdish nation. If the borders are drawn around regions where Sunnis predominate, the Sunnis will be surrounded by Shiites and Kurds on three sides, neither of which has any particular affection for them — and with a small fraction of the power they had under Saddam. One has to believe that any Shiite area — which, again drawing borders according to ethnicity of population, will be left with most of Iraq’s natural resources — would be tight with Iran.
The massive counterbalance to those problems is the problem that the two options that the Bush administration is presenting — to “stay the course” or to simply pack up and leave things as they are (also known as “cut and run”) — are unworkable. We’re now finding ourselves retaking ground that we’d already taken, playing “whack-a-mole” with insurgents and terrorists with no end in sight. We can’t do it indefinitely.
If we’re not going to commit the resources necessary — troops, equipment, and knowledge — to make Iraq stable enough for government to take root, we need to get our soldiers out of there. Splitting the region might give each group enough of what it wants at least to make that happen.
UPDATE: Fresh bonus Bush cynicism just across, via Drudge:
“I think the big question is whether we can come up with something before it’s too late,†one member of the commission said late last month, after the group met in Washington. “There’s a real sense that the clock is ticking, that Bush is desperate for a change, but no one in the White House can bring themselves to say so with this election coming. It’s a race between our political calendar and the Iraqis.â€
How about that for a warm fuzzy? “Boys, just hang on and try not to have too many of y’all get hurt or killed until we can beat this Foley thing and get re-elected!” If that’s the true reason — and not simple stubbornness and/or incompetence, which is what I suspect — it’s a cynical, immoral one.
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