According to a story in The Times, Bush and Rice “have finally noticed that [Iraq] is being partitioned by civil war” and are open to the notion of formal partition (under the guise of “federalization,” mind you).
According to the article, venerable Bush-crony James Baker, co-chair of the Iraq Study Group (sounds like something that meets in the library after class, doesn’t it?) has already met with the Syrians and the Iranians–and the Turks?–and that within the ISG “there is a growing consensus that America can neither pour more soldiers into Iraq nor suffer mounting casualties without any sign of progress.
For a clue what this refers to see today’s Washington Post for an article on rising US casualties.
So anyway, the theory seems to be that if they snip the country into three, at least the Kurds and the Shia’a will be quiet long enough for the troops to be brought home.
Kind of turns that “cutting and running” phrase on its head.
MC – Col. Pat Lang has an http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2006/10/a_policy_and_st.html“ rel=”nofollow”>interesting post on this:
I’ve been watching – in silence – the war in Iraq, and how the country is slipping into darkness. Unfortunately, distruction is much easier than building so to seperate Iraq into Sunni, Shia and Kurds is more convinient.
This option is seriously debated in Washington nowadays. I don’t it will be done anytime soon but if the current situation continues, it will just become a reality.
I am pretty sure that Baker, on Charlie Rose, suggested an Iraq split in three would not work, if only because all its major cities were mixed and so how would you go about deciding borders and shifting around populations. The show is still being streamed, free, on charlierose.com, I believe (or just search for it on google video). I was only paying half attention and didn’t watch the entire thing, so I can’t be more exact.
(Great pun on cut n’ run, by the way)
Dan makes a good point. The partition suggestion seems to have so much traction because few seem to understand just how mixed parts of Iraq are. Kirkuk/Tamim, Diyala and Baghdad provinces are incredibly mixed. How would you dictate which statelet they would belong to. Remember India’s partition riots. That would probably happen here to. I think the only way it’s going to work is to keep the country together.