Turn the channel. Except
for the final score, the war in Iraq is over.
We played hard and did many good things. But we had
a lousy game plan and really bad coaches. We lost.
After three years, the grand illusions the Bush
administration foolishly took us to war for -- to
free Iraq, to defeat the terrorists in their own
backyard, to seed democracy in the Middle East,
whatever -- are less attainable than ever.
The bloody sectarian and ethnic violence of the last
few weeks may or may not signal the start of the
oft-predicted civil war between the Kurds, Sunnis
and Shiites. But some experts say the violent
unraveling of Iraq -- plus the inability or
unwillingness of its new leaders to create a working
central government -- are signs that the nation of
Iraq is breaking apart. |
Bill
Steigerwald
Photo:Sitnews.us |
|
That's the last thing the Bush administration wants.
It's still stubbornly wedded to its original,
unrealistic idea of re-creating a strong national
government in Baghdad that can keep the three
factions happy and from cutting each others' throats
every other holy day.
But Peter Galbraith, a former ambassador to Croatia,
and Ivan Eland, a senior fellow at the libertarian
Independent Institute, have a better idea: They both
think the best way to "rebuild" a better post-Saddam
Iraq always was, and still is, to partition it.
Galbraith, betraying his Democrat genes, calls his
plan "a managed breakup." But he and Eland both
advocate decentralizing government power in Iraq, an
artificial country whose borders and Sunni-dominated
power structure were created after World War I by
British diplomats.
The more you know about Iraq's history, people and
geography, and the more you talk to Galbraith and
Eland, the more sense partition makes.
Iraq is similar to the former Yugoslavia and the
former Soviet Union, which Galbraith says were both
"killed by democracy." Partitioning Iraq -- i.e.,
allowing its major ethnic and religious groups to
set up and rule their own turf -- would create many
messy political, economic and security problems. Who
gets how much oil revenue is the big one.
The U.S.-leaning Kurds up north and the Iran-leaning
Shia down south favor a breakup, Eland says. The
Sunnis (Saddam's home tribe, centered around
Baghdad) are against it. But if the Sunni get a cut
of the oil wealth, Eland suspects they'll play
along. Meanwhile, what all three groups fear
equally, he says, is a central government with a
strong military that can be seized by a future
Saddam and used to oppress them.
A breakup of Iraq is inevitable, Galbraith and Eland
both agree, so why fight it? As Galbraith says, "If
we seek to maintain an unitary Iraq, we will commit
ourselves to an endless occupation of the country
and we're not likely to succeed."
Unfortunately, neither Galbraith nor Eland sees any
interest for a partition inside the Bush
administration. Eland thinks Washington is still
pushing a unified Iraq in part because of the
president's unwillingness to give up the idea of
having permanent military bases there.
What the Bush administration wants or hopes for in
Iraq has been moot for a long time, however.
Partition will happen eventually anyway -- violently
or peacefully. The best thing for us to do now to
salvage our blunder in Iraq, Eland says, is help the
breakup process and work for a peaceful and stable
Iraq, not thwart it.
Then, Eland says, we could tell the Iraqis: "We've
toppled Saddam. We've helped you mediate this
settlement. We've provided incentives for various
groups to do things. And now we're saying goodbye."
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