Redstate

Lets take these arguments by their results. the first is that because Iraq is an artificial construct it can't work and it should be separated into more homogenous pieces. As a counter example may I present the Roman Empire. It was artificial and composed of naturally hostile groups. Would you argue that the dissolution of Rome into its more homogenous components was to anyones benefit ? There  is another nation that comes to mind that is composed of states that were amalgamated despite having wildly different economic,political, cultural differences, and long standing grudges. That nation would be the U.S.. Right now Scotland is seeking separation from england would you suggest this would be sensible ?

Partition might be easier and cheaper in the short term. It all depends on how bonkers the groups that will be hurt by it get. But look at the long term. The Sunnis will be a breeding ground for terrorism the like of which has never been seen. Turkey will never forgive us for inciting internal problems with their Kurds. The shia of course have a heck of alot more in common interest with Iran then they do with us. Iran will also have a much easier job infiltrating and influencing. Overall this is not a winning formula.

The last problem in this is it endorses and amplifies the biggest problem in the mideast. The nations are Insular and xenophobic. Partitioniing Iraq would say the way to fix arab problems is to cater to their insularity and xenophobia. If you combine this with the current strains of islamofascism and islamo imperialism you get a real mess.

I don't mean to attack here but the point in going to Iraq is to generate a new Arab model. If we endorse ethnic cleansing and ghetoization we will be generating a model that is not new and is rather frightening at best.

Bottom line is if Iraq is going to be a 21st century nation their people have to learn how to get along with other people. For Iraq to be a win for us they have to learn how to do this so they can lead the way for the other nations in the region.

The Czech republic/Slovakia split was probably the most peaceful split.  The India/Pakistan example shows that problems can remain after a nation is divided.

Certainly, if a split can be peacefully done, it would be worth considering.  But I see no evidence that the elected Iraqi officials are interested in carving their nation into two or three nations.  

Most of the violence we here about in Iraq comes from Baghdad and nearby areas, areas with have mixed populations.  You can't draw a map of Baghdad that places Sunnis on one side and Shia on the other.  And Baghdad represents a huge percentage of Iraq's population.  

Also, Czech/Slovakia didn't have oil resources to divvy up.  That's the main reason why the US shouldn't even breath the word partition when it comes to Iraq.

That this decision should be made by anyone other than the Iraqis.

It isn't our decision to make.  If a group of elected Iraqis sit down at a table and can get an overwhelming majority of Sunni representatives, Shia representatives and Kurdish representatives to support the same map of Iraq, complete with borders, that would be great.  

But you can't draw a map of Baghdad that successfully solves the mixed neighborhood issue.  Many Iraqis have a Shia mother and a Sunni father.  This isn't a situation where all the Shia live on one side of the tracks and all the Sunni live elsewhere.

I was observing that it is much easier for groups with a mostly compatible religous base and culture to unify.

they'll probably do that themselves.  Slaves always want to go back to their chains when freedom turns out to be more hard work.

An excerpt from President Abraham Lincoln's March 4, 1861 inaugural address:

Physically speaking, we cannot separate.  We cannot remove our respective sections from each other, nor build an impassable wall between them.  A husband and wife may be divorced, and go out of the presence and beyond the reach of each other; but the different parts of our country cannot do this.  They cannot but remain face to face, and intercourse, either amicable or hostile, must continue between them.  Is it possible, then, to make that intercourse more advantageous or more satisfactory after separation than before?  Can aliens make treaties eaiser than friends can make laws?  can treaties be more faithfully enforced between aliens than laws can among friends?

Your hammering the referrence to council of nicea is little more than blue smoke and your insistance that there was no harmonization is just false. If such an event were to occur after a partition you can bet that an Iraqi clergy on the same page as the Iranian clergy and able to agree the U.S. is the great satan would be a nightmare.

The counters you make to my assertions about the desired outcome in Iraq amount to little more than name calling. You have as yet to present any rationale or even a scenario under which partition is viable. Are you just attacking over the example that differences internal to a religion can be resolved ?

If the purpose of going into Iraq was to alienate allies in the region (Turkey best example) and generate three states that will curse the name of the united states untill the end of eternity yes partition makes sense. The only thing partition will do is allow us to evac before the general population realizes how badle they have been reamed. Saigon 1975 comes to mind.

The same way Bill Clintons dealings with North Korea reinforced the lesson that if you have nukes the U.S. will treat you gently partitioning Iraq will teach groups in the Middle east that if you aren't sitting on oil get out the I.E.D.s and suicide vests and then fight for every drop you can wring out.

When the going get hard, every one wants to cut and run

Lets at least let the Iraqs make this decision.

If it happens, so be it.

That means nothing.  

Partitioning has never worked.  What has been proven to work though, is a system of laws that guarantees individual rights, regardless of sect, race, religion, etc.  If everyone knows they have an equal chance to work hard and succeed, partioning serves no purpose, except to provide places for resentment and suspicion to breed.

First of all, whether or not the dissolution of the Roman Empire was desirable in the long term, the fact is that it happened; in no small part because of the fact that the artificial construct of the Empire became impossible to maintain in the long run. If you want to make the Gibbonesque argument that this augured ill, feel free. I rather like Gibbon so I am sympathetic to this line of historical analysis. But in the end, all of this is neither here nor there. Iraq is not an empire, but rather an artificial state created by Western powers in the Sykes-Picot Agreement. Its creation helped bring sectarian conflict to the fore. I wish to bring an end to said conflict and a way to do it is through a natural partition process that will allow the Iraqis to go on with their lives and with the reconstruction of their polity without the specter of sectarian violence consistently hanging over their heads. And as a counterexample to the breakup of the Roman Empire, I offer the breakup of the Soviet Empire and the breakup of other multi-ethnic states, referenced downstream in this comment thread. All of these breakups were managed peaceably--the Soviet breakup being a tremendous boon to democratic forces around the world--and can serve as a model for the partition of present-day Iraq.

I find it difficult to see how partition might help cause the Sunnis to become a breeding ground for terrorism. Currently, the Sunnis want us to remain in Iraq to protect them from the majority Shi'a. If we agree on a partition plan, the Sunnis can engage in self-determination without the Shi'a bothering them and will thus need American intervention less--which is what we are aiming for, if I understand the "as the Iraqis stand up, we will stand down" calls correctly. As for the Turks, an autonomous Kurdistan is already a reality and an independent one may very well lessen the demands on the Turks regarding the Kurdish issue. You cite Iran as being a threat in terms of influence regarding a Shi'ite state. By that standard, however, Iran is a threat in terms of influence towards Iraq as a whole, given the fact that Iraq is a majority Shi'a country. Does that not give you any pause? My plan would contain Iranian influence to a Shi'a state and as discussed in my post, there are a number of internal and external reasons why Iranian influence towards such a state are limited at best.

How partition plays to xenophobia is anyone's guess. Even if we assume that it does, a forced coexistence is currently playing to sectarian violence. Is that any better? Additionally, your seeming claim that partition is equivalent to ghettoization and ethnic cleansing represents, at best, an exceedingly poor reading of my post. At worst, it is the vile imputation of disgusting motives to my argument.

The original thesis stands. Partitioning iraq would result in a shia state that would have much in common with Iran and little that couldn't be resolved. Resolved, either by councill, synod, convention it is all the same. Even having a Shia State willing to be allied with Iran would be very bad. Your posts demonstrate a failure of comprehension at best.

As to youre other points. The Turks have stated that an independant Kurdistan will not happen. You can take this for what its worth.

The divided states will not resolve anything. What  we would be saying is fine your'e to stupid to get past your hatreds were putting you in your corners.  You might as well call itEthnic cleansing or the final solution for Iraq and be done with it. At the very least the sunni state would devolve into a dictatorship and terrorist free zone.

Why is a tolerant arab state neccesesary ? If you don't care about peace in the region its not. If you can be comfortable with 3 relatively weak and most likely unstable states than its not. If you don't mind seeing states that will be easy prey for their larger more unified neighbors its not.

You still haven't made any positive argument for why the partition is viable and certainly nothing on why its superior.

give them a year to make it work then Put Saddam back in power. That ought to light a fire under their butts.

to be doing just fine on their own. Bangladesh split away from Pakistan. The former Soviet Union fell apart into its ethnic components, and did so peacefully enough but with some bumps.

Hmmm.. Czech and Slovakia did the same thing. Can you find Yugoslavia on a map anywhere?

No, I suppose you can't. It split apart also, and except for Bosnia, the rest of the country is stable. Bosnia could have been made stable as well, but that would have required ethnic cleansing of the kind that shifted say, my Polish family, from territory claimed by the Soviets to territory stripped from the Germans.

Need I go on? There are even examples in Latin America such as the founding of Panama of areas splitting away, though there is usually no ethnic component.

Multi-ethnic countries fall apart all the time. See above list. The only question isn't whether or not Iraq will do the same (see current Lebanese mess as another example) but whether we will get in front of that with a plan to make it go smoothly or not.

The most obvious one is:

Where will the borders be?  

Each of the ethnic and religious factions will demand that the borders be drawn to their advantage.  None will be satisfied.  Certainly the Sunnis won't like it because they tend to live in areas that don't have any oil reserves.  

The Kurds, Shia and Sunnis will all say the same thing:

"These partitions are illegitimate because they were drawn by a foreign power, not by the residents."  

Partitioning a country is something that always sounds good in theory.  But as the American Civil War demonstrated, it works out to be a blood-soaked nightmare in practise.  Just as a separate Northern United States and Southern United States would have gone to war over control over the Mississippi River and the Western Territories, a divided Iraq would go to war over oil.  

It would also make protecting minority rights more difficult, since each country would have lopsided majorities governing it.  

One, two, three: Ethnic Cleansing.

Four, five, six: A war of each against the other two.

A bad idea whos time has, hopefully, not come.

It happens at the end of every conflict. Seen any Germans in the Sudetenland? After WWII, the Czechs made so that no future Reich could exploit their presence as a pretext for war.

My own family is actually from Lvov, which is now Ukrainian, but was a cradle of Polish civilization.

Bumps there will be, but if you re-align people and borders then the future is brighter than expecting people to bury centuries of hate and live together peacefully.

The decision is up to the Iraqis, but if they decide on that course I think we would be fools to try and make a bad marriage work.

I merely point out that your allusion to the Council of Nicaea makes precisely no sense in context. The divergences between East and West largely postdate the ecumenical councils, and at any rate, the point of Nicaea was not to unify the Church, but to deal with the Arian heresy (not the gnostics or any procedural differences between East and West).

The Iranian Shia, and the Iraq Shia have relatively small differences by comparison.

Interesting nonsequitur.

If we are to be successfull we have to suck the whole of Iraq into a state that successfully resolves the contradictions between the arab world and the modern world.

Doesn't follow.

They have to come up with ways for a tolerant arab state to work.

Ditto.

The social mechanisms need to be built so they can be emulated and improved by other states in the region.

And that's three.

How it is "cutting and running" or "sweeping the problem under the rug" to suggest that the current contours of Iraq are artificial and cannot be maintained is, of course, beyond me. But to be clear: Merely because a solution is more efficient, more effective and gets us to a desired place in a faster and more comprehensive manner does not make said solution "cutting and running."

This idea crosses the American political spectrum when it draws support from both Jimmy Carter and radio host Michael Savage!

The argument being made on the pro-partition side is that the current boundaries of Iraq were made by a bunch of Western diplomats.  

But who would be given the power and responsibility of drawing the new boundaries?  More Western diplomats?  

Now that millions of Iraqis have taken the trouble (including risking their lives) to vote in an election that selected an Iraqi national parliament, perhaps it would be a bad idea for the United States to say, "You elected Iraqis are irrelevent.  We smart Americans are going to cancel your elective offices by freshly minting new nations with your nation."  

And what would happen if each of the religious and ethnic factions found something objectionable in the new boundaries?  A full blown civil war perhaps?  

I think we need to let the Iraqi national parliament handle this "To partition or not to partition" issue.  A US proposed partition of Iraq could end up being the match that lights up an Iraqi civil war.  

Your hammering the referrence to council of nicea is little more than blue smoke and your insistance that there was no harmonization is just false.

The failures of your world history teachers are not my problem.

If such an event were to occur after a partition you can bet that an Iraqi clergy on the same page as the Iranian clergy and able to agree the U.S. is the great satan would be a nightmare.

I'm sure we'd have that problem with or without an ecumenical council called by a nonexistent emperor.

The counters you make to my assertions about the desired outcome in Iraq amount to little more than name calling.

I suspect you have no idea what those last two words mean.

You have as yet to present any rationale or even a scenario under which partition is viable. Are you just attacking over the example that differences internal to a religion can be resolved?

Initially, this started as a correction to your horrible grasp of Christian and world history. As you insisted on then wandering beyond the scope of that comment, I felt it incumbent merely to point out that your conclusions rely wholly on curious a priori assumptions, and do not themselves follow from your initial premises. Thus, why not have three states that "successfully resolve the contradictions between the arab world and the modern world"? Why is one state with tensions like mad on the ground the necessary way in which to accomplish this? I can see counterarguments aplenty -- how might the Turks feel about Kurdistan, what does this tell other Middle Eastern States about separating themselves from their religious and ethnic minorities, etc. -- but your conclusion is not inevitable. Why is a "tolerant" Arab State necessary? Why do the mechanisms, and not the results, matter, which is to say, why are those mechanisms developed in Iraq sine qua non, as opposed to other mechanisms?

And thereyago.

Driving out the secularists and sunni. As I said having the shia as a state free to align with or be assimilated by Iran is a bad idea.

Anyway I don't want to go into  ancient religous doctrinal differences but they were hardly ironed out prior to the councill. You mention Arians but forget the all the gnostics. Divergences between eastern orthodox and the western church persist to this day. The Iranian Shia, and the Iraq Shia have relatively small differences by comparison.

Back on topic.  If we are to be successfull we have to suck the whole of Iraq into a state that successfully resolves the contradictions between the arab world and the modern world. They have to come up with ways for a tolerant arab state to work. The social mechanisms need to be built so they can be emulated and improved by other states in the region.

The decision is up to the Iraqis, but if they decide on that course I think we would be fools to try and make a bad marriage work.

I agree with that.  But I think that neither the United States nor Great Britain should even whisper the word "partition."  Why?  Because if the partition idea is perceived (reality notwithstanding) as being an idea hatch in a foreign land, this will make the Iraqi conspiracy theorists go wild.  

Pejman, what makes you think that there can be a "peaceful...partition" given the fact that Shiites, Kurds and Sunnis live side by side?  Any partition would require population transfers (or, to put it less diplomatically, "ethnic cleansing").  

I'm also struck by the tag you use to sign off your comments ("At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not cease to be insipid." --Friedrich Nietzsche).  The fear that Kos and Michael Moore might gloat is not a sufficent reason to back a policy if you think it has failed.

What's at stake in Iraq is the credibility of the U.S. Government.  Saving face is worth a lot, but it's not worth an infinite amount.  It may be time to start considering cutting our losses.

Does the council of Nicea ring a bell ?

Yes. I don't think you actually know what happened there, though, unless you're proposing that one of those groups be excommunicated (presumably after they unify the Muslim world under a single emperor with a parallel drive for religious unity), and be prepared for follow anathemas and even the odd execution thereafter.

They drove the Arians out, affirmed the one-in-being and begotten-not-made components of Christology, declared the Arians and Arian theology anathema, and, in unsanctioned but nevertheless real events, a lot of unrepentant Arian bishops and priests met untimely demises.

The doctrinal differences between East and West were pretty well nonexistent at that point. The only disparate group to attend that Council was sent packing into the wilderness.

Bad analogy.

partition.

First and foremost the case of Iraq can be distinguished from Yugoslavia and India because no none in Iraq is clamoring for a breakup. It seems they have grasped, as many have not, that they are firmly in the the "hang together or hang separately" category.

Where a unitary Iraq is a regional powerhouse, self sufficient in food, an educated population, oil, critical geopolitical location, the rump states left in the wake of a partition are weak and vulnerable.

Let's dispel the notion that Iraqi Kurdistan is politically viable. It in not in the interest of Turkey, Syria, or Iran to allow this to happen. Turkey has intimated it will not happen. The Iraqi Kurds seem reconciled to the reality of a strong federal region as their best bet.

Once we are past that, it is just a question of who will snap up the two remaining statelets. Neither Iran nor Saudi Arabia have an interest in an independent Shi'a statelet for different reasons. The Iranians want another version of the Beka'a Valley. The Saudis are fearful of the the influence that statelet would have on their own Shi'a population... a population which curiously resides astride the northern Saudi oil fields.

The Sunni center doesn't seem very viable physically, but from a human capital perspective it has a lot to offer. Odds are the Jordanians, Syrians, and Saudis will all compete for it.

So from the perspective of 1) the Iraqis don't want it and 2) there is no evidence that anything good will come out of it pressing for partition, at this late date rather than back in 2003, seems self-defeating and producing nothing really good in the long run.

So there is no need to read too much in its employment. You will find it at the end of this comment as well. Don't take it personally.

As for the rest of your comment, the aforementioned peaceful partitions in the comments make me think that a partition can be pulled off successfully, as does the fact that a partition might prevent the very sectarian violence we are worried about. I am not advocating "cutting and running." Nor do I want to leave the reconstruction of Iraq undone. But I believe that partitioning Iraq into coherent entities in a manner that lessens the chances for long term sectarian violence is part and parcel of any successful reconstruction effort.

Is the perfect evidence that partitioning Iraq is a bad idea. Hundreds of thousands of people died when they split.

...history does seem to show that multi-nation states are generally held together by force. I wouldn't expect Iraq to be any different.

Your point about Turkey and Kurdistan is interesting. But in a corollary to the point I just made, I'd expect Turkey to take violent steps to prevent their own minority Kurds from doing the natural thing and trying to become a part of new Kurdistan. This is extremely touchy because Turkey is one of our few allies in the region, and this sensitivity may be part of why the Bush Administration remains committed to a federal Iraq.

To the points about waves of Sunni suicide bombers: if they start operating to the north and south of new Sunnistan, by definition they will be violating the borders of a pair of new sovereign states. And these states will have a tremendous amount of incentive to police their borders and fight back. Much more incentive, in fact, than they do today, because the enemy will be foreign rather than internal. I think the three-state solution will do much to reduce rather than potentiate the threat from Sunni terror.

What do you do about the fact that the new Sunni state will be economically impoverished? My answer (let them pound sand) is a kneejerk response to the terror they've been responsible for all these years. Perhaps a more acceptable answer would be a commitment to gift them a small amount of oil revenue annually for the next twenty-five years or so. I'm not in favor of giving them a permanent royalty because mineral wealth tends to corrupt states by disincentivizing them to develop real industry. (Not that I expect an Arab state to develop any industry. If they prefer to roam around on camels, that's fine too.)

Shi'istan's problem is deeper and potentially more dangerous. How do you keep them from aligning with the Iranian theocracy? (Short of ending the Iranian theocracy, which we should do anyway.) Many people here have addressed this. But I think new Shi'istan will require a lot of vigilance and support from the permanent US presence that I've advocated upthread. And in all candor, we shouldn't necessarily retain a doctrinaire commitment to popular democracy in this new state, given what we've seen in Palestine.

...and have proposed it myself in the past. The two most interesting objections are that Turkey will not take kindly to an autonomous Kurdistan on its southern border, and that the prospective Sunni state in what is now central Iraq will be the only one left without oil.

Those, and of course the fact that the Bush Administration is deeply invested in a federal Iraq. It's not known whether functioning Western-style democracy will take root in any of the three new post-Iraq states (my guesses are: Kurdistan: yes until the Turks invade it; Shi'istan: theocracy; Sunnistan: irrelevance). But it may not matter. What matters most is that the United States retain a permanent military, economic and political commitment to Mesopotamia, whether it consists of one state or three. We need a firm platform of friendly states in order to continue to influence the whole region.

And then got done scraping everyone off the walls from the waves of suicide bombers, what will this have accomplished.

One of the purposes of this war was to provide an example that arabs can have a 21st century state. How does it help to reform them as a 10th century state at worst and a 17th century state at best. The concept of ethnic cleansing is alive and well in that part of the world theres no reason for us to add to its credibility.

I am sure we will engender oodles of good will with turkey by setting up a Kurdish state on their border . While currently the Iranian and Iraqui Shia have differences these can be rresolved. Does the council of Nicea ring a bell ?

Everbody wants a resolution to this conflict. It has gone on longer than expected but this is just another form of cut and run. We would be sweeping the problem under the rug instead of actually resolving it.

That is likely the kneejerk reaction to your position. Particularly as it has been suggested by more than a few Democrats like Joe Biden. And, well, we can't have that, now.

I largely agree with your post, Pejman, and salute you for your willingness to stray from the current party orthodoxy. That said, I think it will never happen under the current administration as it has too much of its political stock tied up in the notion of a unified, democratic, Kurds, Shiites, and Sunnis all hold hands country.

And there are those who make the legitimate point that partioning off the country would essentially destroy one of the fundamental reasons we went into Iraq in the first place: to establish a free and unified Iraq that would serve as a beacon to other Arab states.

The problem arises - and yes, it has long since risen - when theory meets reality.  The theory is that all Iraqis would see themselve as Iraqis, and work together to forge a new Iraq. The reality is increasingly looking like all Iraqis see themselves first as Shia or Sunni or Kurd.

Theory. Reality. The rubber meets the road.

The original Iraq was cobbled together by the West, and disparate groups of people - Shiites and Sunnis - with centuries of hatred and blood feuds that have existed longer than the United States were forced together.

So, there's a lot to be said for partition. But it will never happen within the current political.  Moving towards a partition would be an explicit concession that the fundamental strategy did not work and was wrong.

And that simply will not happen.

Iraq's new government of national unity will not stop the deterioration. Iraqis have had three such governments in the last three years, each with Sunnis in key posts, without noticeable effect. The alternative path out of this terrible trap has five elements.

The first is to establish three largely autonomous regions with a viable central government in Baghdad. The Kurdish, Sunni and Shiite regions would each be responsible for their own domestic laws, administration and internal security. The central government would control border defense, foreign affairs and oil revenues. Baghdad would become a federal zone, while densely populated areas of mixed populations would receive both multisectarian and international police protection.

Decentralization is hardly as radical as it may seem: the Iraqi Constitution, in fact, already provides for a federal structure and a procedure for provinces to combine into regional governments.

Besides, things are already heading toward partition: increasingly, each community supports federalism, if only as a last resort. The Sunnis, who until recently believed they would retake power in Iraq, are beginning to recognize that they won't and don't want to live in a Shiite-controlled, highly centralized state with laws enforced by sectarian militias. The Shiites know they can dominate the government, but they can't defeat a Sunni insurrection. The Kurds will not give up their 15-year-old autonomy.

Some will say moving toward strong regionalism would ignite sectarian cleansing. But that's exactly what is going on already, in ever-bigger waves. Others will argue that it would lead to partition. But a breakup is already under way. As it was in Bosnia, a strong federal system is a viable means to prevent both perils in Iraq.

This can be found here.

Iraq was not created by natural forces, and there are no such forces to keep it together.  If they determine that convenience is a substitute, fine.  If they don't, fine.  If they can do it with legitimacy.

Joe Biden is an idiot anyway.