Endgame: partition.

I have always thought that yeah, this would be the easiest way of bringing down sectarin violence.
It does leave, however, the question of what will take place in Anbar after the partition. Will they allow a safe haven for operations conducted by al-Queda? (I know they have turned against them for the time being, but what happens when the American Tribe is no longer dominant in the area and able to provide support and secruity to the populace?) Will the Sadr controlled area allow Iran a conduit and haven for enacting anti-American policies? Will we be able to prevent a Kurdish/Turkey war in the north?
If splitting them up would bring peace I would support that course of action fully. I just can’t see a neat and nice end if we simply partition and leave.

VolMagic on July 19, 2007 at 11:43 PM

A pity Biden and the other poli-pimps dont; grasp the first fact of any conflict: stick together, or you embolden the enemy.

Now that it is too late, and they are emboldened, the question becomes:

do we encourage their militant lunacy even further by slinking away, excusing our retreat with weasel words about “redeploying”?

- or:

-do we guard the oilfields, Kurdistan and the borders between Iran and Syria, and let the Iraqis, after 4 years or training, get their asses in gear and defend themselves …from the foreign jihadists… and also from themselves (i.e. get over their suicidal sectarian silliness and build a stable country for their children’s future instead of warring over medieval minutae)?

People are no suffering from “war fatigue” but b.s fatigue.

Primarily the b.s. behavior of the irrational, self-defeating Iraqis.

(Beheading, and revenge killing and blowing each other up, nearly every day, as if it were something normal.)

And the irrational, self-defeating homegrown surrenderistas.

People are weary that we waste our blood and treasure for a people who don’t seem to appreciate the chance we are giving them.

Instead of building a free, prosperous, healthy democracy, they descend into primeval bloodthirsty vendettas.

Over a blown Golden Dome. Or a dead heir to the mantle of a dead “prophet”.

We have better things to do than babysit the infantile.

That’s the essence of the “weariness”.

profitsbeard on July 19, 2007 at 11:50 PM

Allah, explain to me how you’re gong to seperate the 40% of families that are mixed Sunni and Shiite. I’ve never once seen or heard an Iraqi who wasn’t in Al Qaeda or JAM speak about how sectarian division is even possible let alone desirable. This is so frustrating. The Iraqi sectarian war will last forever because so many families are mixed. This plan for partition is totally divorced from reality, just as Reid and Biden’s view of the surge is divorced from reality.

Also, just because Biden says we’re out, don’t mean we’re out. If people put their money where their mouth is we can buck up flagging support among Rep. Senators and Reps in the House.

The Apologist on July 20, 2007 at 12:00 AM

The other problem with partition is that it would probably leave us with a three-way situation reminiscent of India-Pakistan tensions, but with Turkey’s paranoia about the Kurds, Saudi Arabia’s loyalty to the Sunnis and Iran’s ambitions thrown into the mix. It’s not hard at all to get to an endgame featuring a three-way all out war with those countries directly involved and the Syrians, Jordanians, Egyptians, and Gulf States involved to a lesser extent, and all fighting it out mostly within Iraq’s borders. And that’s not going to leave any of those combatants hermetically sealed off from instability within their own borders–look for the Saudis to get wobbly before any of the others do.

Sweet dreams, Harry Reid.

Bryan on July 20, 2007 at 12:03 AM

Nobody is proposing we leave precipitously. There are still going to be U.S. forces in the region that could intercede, with an international force, on an emergency basis,” Obama said

Allmighty Obama knows best.

________________________________________________________

AQ being the common enemy is actually the saving grace.

The three factions learn by having a common enemy what war between them feels like.

No end in sight unless they agree.

I cannot state this too many times. So I will say it again.

AQ being the common enemy is the saving grace. By the time they have won over AQ, they will realize the value of working together if they want a country of their own.

Mcguyver on July 20, 2007 at 12:14 AM

These war games were not done by the Pentagon. Instead:

That was the conclusion reached in recent “war games” exercises conducted for the U.S. military by retired Marine Col. Gary Anderson

Then he went to the WA Post with the results? Taken at face value, I would say, knowing nothing else, that maybe, just maybe he left out al-Qaeda in the equation. Where is al-Qaeda in his report? Is al-Qaeda just sitting around letting eveyone push them out of Iraq? Wouldn’t they cause a lot of devistation and try to regain ground in al-Anbar and Baqubah where they were successful in the past? And with us gone, why not? Who would prevent them? The tribes are fine when they have US backup and air support, but they have proven ineffectual on their own.

bnelson44 on July 20, 2007 at 12:26 AM

Disgusting. Was there no way to avoid this? If the Republican base had held their noses last November, the GOP would still be in charge, but the left would be shrieking even louder. That, in turn, would have caused the most worthless and already wobbly GOP congressmen to crap their pants and run for cover by now.

Consequently, we’d probably still be on the verge of an immoral, indefensible, short-sighted and foolishly reckless retreat.

How did we get here? Good Christ, how did we get here? Don’t they know what harm they’re going to do, not only to this country but the rest of the world, too?

They should all be run out of office. Every last one of these bastards without a spine.

Kensington on July 20, 2007 at 12:28 AM

Does anyone know what sect of Islam Obama’s school taught when he attended? Sunni, Shite, Wahabist?

Egfrow on July 20, 2007 at 1:31 AM

You know what? I’ve wargamed Gettysburg, and the south won…

I’ve wargamed the Battle of Britain, and the Germans won…

I’ve wargamed Waterloo, Borodino, and about 100 other Napoleonic battles, and had very mixed results…

Wargames are nothing more than a guess… based on rules set up by umpires to TRY to come out with a reasonable conclusion based on moves by different commanders… and cannot really potray how a population will react…

Romeo13 on July 20, 2007 at 1:52 AM

Maybe someone can explain how it can be that the “situation” in Iraq is SO BAD between Sunnis and Shiites that there will be a genocide if “we” leave, and yet at the same time as believing that, also believe that there can be any significant hope, even if “we” stay for another 4+ years, that the Sunnis and Shiites can get along well enough together to build George Bush’s “Iraqi democracy that respects the rights of their people, uphold the rule of law and fight extremists alongside America in the war on terror”.

The two beliefs seem incompatible to me.

Keep in mind that there are not enough “al-Qaeda in Iraq”, aka “al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia”, aka “AQI”, aka “faux al-Qaeda”, or real al-Qaeda for that matter in Iraq, to do that anything like by themselves.

MB4 on July 20, 2007 at 2:13 AM

Scenario:

There is a brutal man in control of the apartment house down the street from you. Most of the residents of the apartment house are very afraid of him, he has even beat up people in the apartment house, and would like someone to get rid of him.

You go over grab his a$$ and bring him to the law and he never comes back to the apartment house.

Now the people in the apartment house blame you because the toilets are stopped up and the roof leaks and some of the apartment house residents are fighting each other.

They say you can’t leave until everything is OK fine and you are a bad person if you do.

You have already been there for more than four years trying to help. A pesky neighbor has started to tell you that you should just go home, but he has not done anything to make you do that.

What do you say to them?

MB4 on July 20, 2007 at 3:25 AM

Partitions are neither permanent nor do they “settle” things.

Cyprus was partitioned in the late 50’s or early 60’s, and in 1974 Greece invaded and tried to take over the Island (both Greece and Turkey claimed it as being theirs). War between two NATO allies resulted. And Cyprus is STILL partitioned, today, except that Turkey’s slice is bigger.

Korea is partitioned. We’re still stationed along the DMZ and the North still hasn’t given up its designs on the south. Unless the regime in the north falls, we will, no doubt go to war there, again.

Vietnam was partitioned. And we all know how that ended up. The North invaded and tried to overthrow the south. After 56,000 US KIA, we pulled out and the Democrats made sure that the next time the north invaded after that, that the Vietnames would lose and that is exactly what happened.

Partitioning Iraq will not settle anything. Shiiteland would want revenge against the Sunnis. Sunniland want’s the oil that the Kurds have. Kurdland wants their own state that would include parts of Turkey and Iran as well.

But who cares?

Obama and the rest of the traitor party don’t give a crap about any Iraqi genocide. And this includes Biden. Just like they didn’t give a crap about Cambodia’s Pol Pot and the millions he murdered or the 800,000 Vietnamese executed by the Communists and the hundreds of thousands of tribesmen in Laos who fought with us.

Liberal Democrats are the monsters among us.

They’re cold, murdering bast*rds just like their old Soviet masters were. The death of human beings doesn’t faze them — that’s why they adore abortion and “mercy killing” of the lame and elderly.

Oh, they’re willing to spend US blood and treasure on places that don’t matter to America, where we have no interests at all. So they can feel good and tingly self righteous. Places like SOMALIA, KOSOVO, BOSNIA, where they can’t really fight back. Or course, Clinton let Rawanda happen (Tutsis don’t vote Democratic anyway, so WTF and to hell with them!) in 1994. Cigarman was still smarting from the beating Osama bin Laden gave him in Somalia. Because in Mogodishu, the enemy DID fight back and Clinton, like all liberal Democrats doesn’t have the stomache (spelled COURAGE) to fight our enemies.

They’re great on “sending messages,” like blowing up asprin factories and murdering donkeys in empty terrorist camps in Afghanistan. But when it comes to actually engaging the enemy, those that don’t commit treason in helping them, run away like the little girly-men they are.

But other than “sending messages,” DEMOCRATS REFUSE to defend American national security interests. Period.

They screwed the Vietnamese and the Cambodians. They screwed the Somalians, too. And now, they’re about to screw the Iraqis. And they fully turn the sacrifice of American blood into worthless mud. God Damn Them.

georgej on July 20, 2007 at 5:37 AM

MB4: “My God, you are talking about roughly a third of Americans.”

Yep. They are the monsters among us. How else would you quantify their behavior? You have to be an IDIOT to not know that millions of people are going to die in the violent collapse of Iraq if we pull out now. Even the New York Times admits it. And yet, they either deny it, or don’t care. They want Bush defeated and to hell with the consequences.

Some of these “people” are the very same people STOOD BY and watched Pol Pot murder 2.25 million Cambodians. First they pretended that it never happened; that it was overblown rhetoric from the right. Then they started to JUSTIFY it as being necessary to achieve social justice. Then, when the scale of it reached genocidal levels, they blamed Nixon, and (believe it or not), some even try to apply moral equivalence to blame Ronald Reagan.

Boston Globe columnist, Jeff Jacoby wrote:

“In the name of a radical utopia,” The New York Times recalled in its long obituary, “the Khmer Rouge regime had turned most of the people into slaves. . . . Dictatorial village leaders and soldiers told the people whom to marry and how to live, and those who disobeyed were killed. [Those] who did not bend to the political mania were buried alive, or tossed into the air and speared on bayonets. Some were fed to crocodiles.” Nearby was a photograph of human skulls — emblem of the dreadful “killing fields” in which the communists butchered a quarter of Cambodia’s people.

But nowhere in the Times story was there a reminder that the Khmer Rouge was able to seize power only after the US Congress in 1975 cut off all aid to the embattled pro-American government of Lon Nol — and that it did so despite frantic warnings of the bloodbath that would ensue. President Ford warned of “horror and tragedy” if Cambodia was abandoned to the Khmer Rouge and pleaded with Congress to supply Lon Nol’s army with the tools it needed to defend itself.

To no avail. US troops had come home two years earlier, but American antiwar activists were still intent on effecting the “liberation” of Southeast Asia. Radicals like Jane Fonda, David Dellinger, and Tom Hayden stormed the country, denouncing anyone who opposed communist victory in Cambodia and Vietnam. On the campuses, in the media, and in Congress, it was taken on faith that a Khmer Rouge victory would bring peace and enlightened leadership to Cambodia.

“The growing hysteria of the administration’s posture on Cambodia,” declared Senator George McGovern, “seems to me to reflect a determined refusal to consider what the fall of the existing government in Phnom Penh would actually mean. . . . We should be able to see that the kind of government which would succeed Lon Nol’s forces would most likely be a government . . . run by some of the best-educated, most able intellectuals in Cambodia.”

Liberal Democrats caused the fall of Cambodia and Vietnam. That’s history. Liberal Democrats pretended that the genocide wasn’t happening. That’s history, too. Liberal Democrats stuck their fingers in their ears and went “LA-LA-LA-LA-LA” when people tried to tell them what was really happening in Cambodia. Just like they are trying to do today.

The New Republic told its readers that the ouster of Lon Nol should be of no concern, since “the Cambodian people will finally be rescued from the horrors of a war that never really had any meaning.”…

…On April 13, 1975, [Sydney] Schanberg’s dispatch from Phnom Penh was headlined, “Indochina without Americans: for most, a better life.”…

…On the op-ed page, Anthony Lewis was calling “the whole bloodbath debate unreal. What future could possibly be more terrible,” he demanded, “than the reality of what is happening to Cambodia now?”

As the death marches out of Phnom Penh proceeded, Lewis went on making excuses for the Khmer Rouge. He mused that it was “the only way to start on their vision of a new society.” Americans who objected were guilty of “cultural arrogance, an imperial assumption, that . . . our way of life” would be better….

…The “scholars” were the worst. Gareth Porter and G.C. Hildebrand of the Indochina Resource Center insisted that Pol Pot’s horrendous cruelties “saved the lives of tens of thousands of people…. Twenty-three years ago, American leftists cheered, justified, and denied as the communists plunged Cambodia into a nightmare of atrocity.”

And you dare to complain that I label them for what they are? They were monsters then, and NOTHING’S CHANGED! They are going to repeat their performance in Iraq!

They’re older and grayer now, but their ranks are swelled by a new generation of USEFUL IDIOTS who intend to turn a blind eye to the murder of millions of Iraqis. Just because they hate George W. Bush.

If a group of people not only stand by, but advocate the very actions which will bring about genocide, then you cannot call them anything but monsters. Because that is what they are.

And if the people of DKOS are upset because I dared to tell them that they ‘wear no clothes,’ then f*ckem. They ARE what I say they are. And they will wear that label forever.

georgej on July 20, 2007 at 7:11 AM

The U.S.A. did cause the mess in Iraq.
We are about to run away and leave the mess.

The Senators who want to leave the mess say that we should go back to working with out Allies. The Iraqi exit question is, after we abandon our allies in Iraq where will we find some other county to trust us?

The tag “monster” will be hung around the neck of President Bush because he will be assigned the fault. Here’s a clue. When first tuning into a hearing on C-Span I can quickly tell the party of the Pol by the question. If the question is about the past to find fault the Pol has a “D” by their name. If the question is about what to do next to make it better the Pol has a “R” by their name.

TunaTalon on July 20, 2007 at 10:01 AM

The question is how many would die on each side before the sectarian populations were finally settled into their new mini-states.

That depends, are you talking about body counts in the next few years or the next millenium?

The Dark Age mentality and religious driven culture of the Middle East was there before we came, has persisted while we are there and will be prevalent long after we’re gone. The death-obssessed mentality of radical Islam has gone far beyond being an incurable desease, it has transitioned into a genetic deformity passed on in the bloodlines and nurtured by the brainwashing of generation after generation of the terrorists of tomorrow.

Other than Israel building a nuclear arsenal, what other accord, agreement, peace negotiation, diplomatic solution or foreign intervention has had any effect on the bloodthirsty nature of the barbaric jihadists or positively altered the volatile landscape of the Middle East?

Nukes have kept the enemy at the gates of Israel, but the rest of the Middle East is still boiling over with Arabs who want to kill one another, and will, in great numbers, as they have for thousands of years - all in the name of Allah.

fogw on July 20, 2007 at 10:18 AM

U.S. intelligence analysts, however, have a somewhat different view of al-Qaeda’s presence in Iraq, noting that the local branch takes its inspiration but not its orders from bin Laden. Its enemies — the overwhelming majority of whom are Iraqis — reside in Baghdad and Shiite-majority areas of Iraq, not in Saudi Arabia or the United States. While intelligence officials have described the Sunni insurgent group calling itself al-Qaeda in Iraq as an “accelerant” for violence, they have cited domestic sectarian divisions as the main impediment to peace.

This is fundamentally wrong and tells you all you need to know about our “intelligence analysts”.

BAGHDAD (AP) — The U.S. command announced on Wednesday the arrest of an al-Qaeda leader it said served as the link between the organization’s command in Iraq and Osama bin Laden’s inner circle, enabling it to wield considerable influence over the Iraqi group.

Bergner told reporters that al-Mashhadani carried messages from bin Laden, and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahri, to the Egyptian-born head of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Ayyub al-Masri.
“There is a clear connection between al-Qaeda in Iraq and al-Qaeda senior leadership outside Iraq,” Bergner said.

After all this time, after clear examples of what took place in Afghanistan and is now happening in Pakistan, neither our “intelligence agencies” nor the majority of people in DC have a clue about the threat we are fighting. The don’t understand or refuse to admit the jihad threat.

Depressing.

JackStraw on July 20, 2007 at 11:36 AM

The Dhimmis are walking a tightrope alright. Interesting to see how they’re going to try to pull us out of Iraq and turn around and blame it on Bush. It’s amazing to me that most of the Dhimm candidates are campaigning on mostly the war in Iraq. Without that, they have nothing, even with it they don’t have much, except their hate for Bush.

4shoes on July 20, 2007 at 11:57 AM