[Brilliant]

Break IRAN up. The oil lands abut Iraq and Kuwait, and are occupied largely by Arabs. They need independence.

[clee1]

Personally, I'd just nuke the whole region flat-n-glassy.

Saudi, Kuwait, Yemen, Iran, Iraq, Syria, etc.

[ncountylee]

Give the sunni area to Syria, then wipe greater Syria out.

[dakine]

Nah, the U.S. wants to keep the military there for a long time. Syria next....

[kinghorse]

patience grasshoppa. patience.

[jmc1969]

Whoever wrote this doesn't seem to know what he is talking about.

The Sunnis would fight for decades against the Shia and Kurds for oil in Southern and Nortern Iraq if the country was broken up. The entire Middle of Iraq would be an endless war zone.

[Mikey_1962]

TURKEY will not tolerate a Kurdistan!
For decades, Turkey has fought a violent and protracted revolt against Kurdish rebels on its own soil.

So it absolutely will not tolerate an independent Kurdish state on its western border. And it has repeatedly vowed to use force - including a massive invasion into northern Iraq - to prevent one from forming.

In response, the Kurdish militia, probably the best-equipped and best-trained non-Coalition force in Iraq, will strike back.

The Turkish army, in turn, will do everything in its power to undermine the Kurds, providing arms and support to the Kurds' local enemies -Turkmen (ethnic Turks living in Iraq), Iraqi Christians, and Iraqi Sunnis, all of which fear eviction under a Kurdish regime.

[Lazamataz]

You know that old song by Neil Sedaka.

Breaking Up Iraq Is Hard To Do.

[RobbyS]

It wasn't the idea of the US to break up Yugoslavia. Blame it on the Germans. They started the mess. I was sitting in the Chancery office listening to a flack asssuring us that the problem there could be handled by a borders patrol.

[Siena Dreaming]

I think we should break up the US too. Red states vs. blue states.

[DoughtyOne]

78% of the Iraqi voters, approved of the interum constitution... what were these people hoping for 99%? Go to the back of the class.

[jbwbubba]

That is a dumb idea, Turkey would freak over a kurdistan and Iran would pretty control if not annex the Shia areas given them huge oil wealth. Sunni's would be a terrorists nation beyond imagine.

[blackie]

Damn ~ I'm glad a clueless moonbat like you isn't in charge!

We and the Iraqi's are winning ~ the bad guys are losing ~ millions of Iraqi's turned out and voted successfully for a Constitutional Referendum!

Iraqi voters have ratified a new constitution by a margin of nearly 4 to 1!

Trolls, terrorists, democrat moonbat's, suicide bombers, and the mainstream media are sad ~ very sad!

Let The Good Times Roll!

[KarinG1]

The problem with facts is that there are just too dern many of them. I don't care what happened after WWI. This is the 21st century. Let's at least make our decisions based on more current observations.

[quadrant]

Actually, the British were not so much interested in oil - which no one knew much about oil in Iraq - as they were in access from Palestine to the Persian Gulf.
As everyone knows India was the Jewel in the Crown. The British had two routes to India: through the Suez Canal and around the Cape.
They hoped to add a third: by rail from Palestine/Israel across the Syrian desert, down the Fertile Crescent, and ending a Basra.
Anyone looking at a map knows that such a route would be expensive to build and impossible to defend (it could be cut at a thousand places) but such was the mentality of the British at the end of WWI.
This route also explains why the British were willing to promise Damascus to the Arabs. The British had no interest in Syria, which has always been a fixation of the French and not the British.
And as long as the British held the Mediterranean coast in Palestine/Israel/Trans-Jordan, then the Arabs could have Damascus.

[JLS]

Well you could slice of Anbar and let them join Syria. The Kurds and the Shia seem to be getting along fine. Slicing off Anbar would merely slice off a bunch of problem causers.

[Theophilus]

American world empire will last, metaphorically, for a 1000 years

What is the metaphor? While I believe in Manifest Destiny, this sounds like too much like: "Drittes Reich"

[NoClones]

"...fuggedabhatit..."???

[Billthedrill]

The Iraqis may well decide to break it up. Or not. My guess is not. Our 2000 gave them the freedom to decide. If they blow it it will be because they've the freedom to do so.

But that isn't why we lost people. We did that to ensure that Saddam could not use state means to support a terror campaign in the United States. And we succeeded in that, and what remains in the way of a new government is what is most likely to succeed in keeping Iraq's state means out of the hands of terrorists. I honestly believe that democracy, with all its attendent risk of failure, is still more likely to succeed than any imposed solution.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but what I hear you suggesting is that we should break Iraq up and then leave. Is this solution, with its attendant and inevitable warring, more or less likely than democracy to result in countries that will support terror organizations? If less, then we should follow your recommended course of action. But I think it's more, much more. IMHO, of course.

[Burr5]

I thought the cobbling together of these three groups into a single polity was for the purpose of allowing the interests of any two of them to blunt the undesirable aspirations of the third. Imagine the Shiites becoming an Iranian satelite. Imagine the Sunni becoming an outright terror state. And the Kurds are screwed again, sandwiched between four enemies.

This does NOT promote our interest in developing friendly democracies. It creates two unpredictable new entities.