Bailing
Andrew Sullivan has an interesting thought on the alternative to withdrawing soon from Iraq. Here's the dilemma: if you believe that "cutting and running" is wrong but you also believe that the Bush administration is waging this war incompetently, what's the alternative? As he says:
It's like asking Ken Lay to turn Enron back into an ethical, profit-making company.
What do you all think? Should the US clean up the mess it made, even if the cause of war was unjustified, or is withdrawing the lesser of two evils?
Update: Kevin Drum responds.
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Without having read his suggestion, I'll restate mine from a long time ago. Cut the country in three and be done with it. Sunni, Shi'ite, Kurd. Put US/UN troops on the borders and let each country deal with their interior security situation how they see fit. The country is already shaking down by ethnic group, separating the groups into neighborhoods and regions. Let's just make it official.
We prevent civil war by partitioning the country and patrolling the borders. Hopefully each country will do a good enough job internally to maintain some semblence of peace. We'll have to tolerate the occasional massacre, but it might be worth the price.
it worked pretty well for india, huh?
When this all started, I thought we had an ethical obligation to stay and clean up. Now, it seems obvious to me that we have an active interest in cleaning up, because leaving it alone in its current state is probably just gonna let anti-American sentiment fester and ultimately leave us worse off. That said, I have no special idea for how we could do any good there, aside from vague ideas about the Marshall Plan. Without special military knowledge, I'm just Monday-morning quarterbacking it.
So I guess the short version of all that was "ME TOO ANDREW SULLIVAN!!1!"
No kidding. Plus, I don't think that the Sunni's and Shi'ite's are anything close to linearly or quadratically separable.
CrazyMonk: Once you draw the lines, they'll move. They'll pretty much have to move. It's a cost, maybe we can help pick up the moving bills. Send guys with trucks over to help out.
Jon May: I haven't seen a war in India Pakistan for a while, have you? I admit it's not perfect, but at least they both deal with their INTERNAL matters just fine, which is what our problem is. Well, not so much Pakistan, let's just stick with India on that one.
Andrew Sullivan's Conclusion Couldnt Be More Wrong
He may be right that to Rove national security is simply part of a political game, but that doesnt mean that anyone else including Sullivan should treat as just a game or buy into Rove's rules.
Its not just a game and opposing the war does not mean being left hoping for catastrophe. Sullivan should "be above" repeating such an obviously false claim. You could say the same thing about Rove's position on the treatment of detainees and Sullivan's opposition. Given the fact that Sullivans opposition to the administrations postion on the treatment of detainees.
If you stick to your [opposition to the Bush administrations detainee policies] position, you are left with hoping for catastrophe, which a great political party should be above. Is Sullivan left with hoping that the policies result in more torture, false confessions, and bad intelligence information resulting from the policies. Obviously not.
Is a person opposed to the Bush administrations environmental policies left only hoping for environmental castastrophe, absolutely not. Is a person opposed to the Bush administrations reckless fiscal polices left only hoping for economic melt down, no again. Its strange that Sulllivan should readily play into Rove's game mentality - he should know better. Sullivans claim that being opposed to the war is tantamount to hoping for catastrophe is not only wrong headed but supports those extremists who try to assert that opposing the war is equivalent to hating America. Yes this is the game that Rove is playing, and people who help him with this game as Sullivan does with this statement are just helping him in his game that ends up hurting America.
Sullivan owes his readers a retraction and an apology.
Mr. Angiven, the country cannot be split into three. What Sunni or Shiite politician will hand over all the oil to the Kurds? And if you think that India and Pakistan deal with their internal problems in isolation from each other, then you need to read a bit on the subject. I dont know much about it, but I know that the strife resulting from partition is far from limited to the border regions. Send some guys with trucks? Ha!
I recognize there will be costs to cutting up the country; I don't think it would be a perfectly smooth trip. However, from an occupier's point of view, I'd rather have the India-Pakistan style potential for inter-state war than the Iraq style potential for intra-state war. Inter-state war you've got a chance of stopping with diplomacy and manpower. Intra-state war, you're going to have a hard time stopping or controlling.
Maybe, if we're really desperate, we could cut the country in three by handing off the Shi'ite portion to Iran and the Sunni portion to Saudi Arabia or Kuwait. Then neither of those factions is left without oil AND they've got an established government to whip them into line. The Kurds don't really seem to need a big-brother government in order to function as a state. They seem able to handle themselves with only a minimum of external help, so they can keep going on their own.
Well you and I see things very differently.
That's some effective spam.