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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: pompsander who wrote (749549)	9/18/2006 4:41:50 PM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Respond to of 769667

Re: "move toward partition... could it be pulled off?" I don't see why not. Iraq was stitched together (over drinks one afternoon by Churchill and Lawrence) from three separate Ottoman provinces... so partition would simply be going back to the historic norm. (By the way: the British plan was to come up with a very internally divided and ethnically and religiously contradictory --- hence: weak and, hopefully, easily ruled by the British Colonialists --- new 'nation' which they called 'Iraq'.) Re: "Some Shi'ite leaders want to create a "super region" in the oil-rich south, modeled on that of ethnic Kurds in the north." Yep... and in a recent round of voting the Kurds in the North (by some 97% or so!) consider themselves already part of 'Kurdistan' and not 'Iraq' anyway. The die is already cast and the Shiites in the South want the same sort of autonomy --- by WHATEVER name it's called. So, in essence, 2/3 of 'Iraq' is already onboard the 'partition idea'. All that's left is for American troops to get out of the way (and the Sunnis to be driven back). "Sunnis fear that would break up Iraq and cut them off from its oil wealth, which is mostly in the north and south." No kidding! (They are correct in this assumption....) Still... the 'Sunni lines of control' will wind up being drawn to include Saudi Arabia, Jordan... and the Anbar province of the former Iraq. All to the good: the Democratic principle of self-determination is affirmed (over Colonialist/Imperialist interference), and --- not so incidentially --- the Islamic world will be consumed with the inter-Islamic religious schism between Sunnis and Shi'a (and Arab vs. Persian vs Kurd vs. Turkomen ethnic nationalistic rivalries) for a LONG TIME to come. Ultimately much more good will come from this (& from the locals inevitably settling the local conflicts) then could reasonably ever have been expected to come from imposition of 'solutions' by Big Power outsiders.... Sometimes I'm just flat-out amazed at how purblind, how short of strategic vision, some of the so-called 'neo-con' crowd are. (It's like they are big fans of the 'Moon is made of green cheese' astronomical belief system...and are unwilling to give up on their expected slice of 'green cheese'. LOL!) Whereas, I believe that much of what they assert to be true, really IS TRUE, (for example: Democracy is a popular ideal everywhere in the world, the Western-style 'consumer society' is a popular example that peoples everywhere want to sign up for, etc.), their ability to synthesize a coherent political strategy remains deeply hobbled by some of the, er... less plausible beliefs that they indulge themselves in (we will be welcomed with open arms... ethnic/religious differences are not material to the outcomes, the whole place can be made to look like Peoria overnight.... :-)