This sounds an awful lot like perennialism in its strictist form.

I think Juan Cole's comments below speakto why partition is a bad idea. My own feeling is that to promote such an idea DURING the occupation of Iraq by a hostile power is morally repugnant. It bothers me that Hundt and Nossel do not sense this. Here are Cole's remarks:

"1. no such loose federal arrangement would survive very long (remember the post-Soviet Commonwealth of Independent States?), so the plan leads to the dismemberment and partition of Iraq. This outcome is unacceptable to Turkey and Saudi Arabia and therefore will likely lead to regional wars.

2. The Sunni Arabs, the Da`wa Party and the Sadr Movement are all against such a partition, and together they account for at least 123 members of the 275-member parliament. Some of the Shiite independents in the United Iraqi Alliance are also against it. I would say that a slight majority in parliament would fight this plan tooth and nail. The US cannot impose it by fiat.

3. The Sunni Arabs control Iraq's downstream water but have no petroleum resources. If the loose federal plan ends in partition, the situation is set up for a series of wars of the Sunni Arabs versus the Shiites, as well as of the Sunni Arabs and some Turkmen versus the Kurds. Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia will certainly be pulled into these wars.

It is not good for the region to have a series of wars over Iraq. It is not good for the security of the United States, since those wars will probably involve pipeline sabotage by guerrillas and will likely disrupt Middle Eastern oil flows. (Did Americans like $3.20 a gallon gasoline and $300 a month heating bills? Would they like to try $15 a gallon gasoline? What do you think would happen to the world economy?)

Finally, I just don't believe that the Arab and Muslim worlds would ever forgive the US for breaking up Iraq, and there are likely to be reprisals if it happens."

Why would the people in two-thirds of this new tripartite goverment want anything to do with American money? Only the Kurds want partition and the Bush administration thinks that is a wonderful idea because it will keep access to bases, oil, and fiction of spreading democracy alive in free Kurdistan. There may be some Shia and Sunni puppets that can be bought (we've tried it in case you haven't noticed) but the 20 million people they 'represent' don't seem to be enjoying any trickle down effects other than blood.

Have you seen any evidence that this partition would be carried out with any more comptence or regional diplomacy than the war itself? And what of Tony Blair in the UK? Will he just fold the Shia south and his legacy into Iranian control because of the Republican Party's political fortunes in '08?

And did I miss something or is Iraq a sovereign country? Who is James Baker to carve up Iraq? You didn't mention Turkey or Iran in this diary. Are they going to rubberstamp the Baker plan as well?

Wake up to the fact that the US isn't getting half a loaf in Iraq. We're not getting 1/3 of a loaf. We're getting a loss of face, $500B, and a river of blood. And if you think the price we've paid is high just think about the Iraqis. They've paid a far, far worse price in blood and have hundreds of thousands of refugees now spread out across the globe and close to that dead in their streets.

Back in reality, the US is either leaving chaos behind and trying to contain it or choosing sides in a regional war. That is the best case scenario, no matter how hard McCain, Giuliani, Romney and the GOP want to win in '08. All this talk of partition is about as serious as pimply teenagers playing a game of Risk in their mom's basement. The US already broke Iraq once, I don't think they will sit still while Dr. Baker says we much rebreak so it will set right this time.

Turkey has 1,000,000 troops and Iran has 400,000 troops. We've got our ass in a frying pan, report by James Baker, and an Army tired of fighting for something that has zero to do with 9/11. Don't look for it to turn out all candies and flowers. We've been down that road before and it's a fool's errand.

In Iraq, the end game was always going to be separation, and the United States precipitated this outcome,

And the American insistence on a unified Iraq belongs to the mysteries of this occupation along with the abolishment of the governmental authorities and the army ...and the frequently abusive treatment of innocent civilians.

But what's important now is to minimize the suffering during the ethnic cleansing. USA can, of course, not impose a partition of Iraq. What can be done is however support and protection of those families that decide to move from towns where they belong to a minority and feel this to be a danger.

In fact, I had hoped that a constructive Democratic opposition in Washington argued that the United States are responsible for the wellbeing of the Iraqi civilians, and hence must take a role to make people's movement as orderly as possible. If a family leaves land and a house somewhere they for ethno-religious reasons can't feel safe, they must have land and a house to be evacuated to.

After all that has happened, strong arguments could be raised for making at least this final thing right and giving the U.S. army at least one thing to be somewhat proud of. Of course it would require diplomatic work, commitment, concessions ...and fresh dollars. But there must still be left some competence somewhere in the State Department, mustn't there?

The worst thing would be if refugees ended up in empoverished refugee camps. That's a perfect breeding ground for all kinds of extremism and future generations of terrorists.

My position has always been; there are no Iraqis, there are only Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds living there.

As long as the Sunnis are given a  .  .  .  reasonable share of oil profits  .  .  .  .

Good luck on that one!

He who pumps the oil accounts for the oil -- and its profits. 

As in the former Yugoslavia, a state, or a division into separate states, that is formed by the force of exogenous imperialism.

Imperialism? What in the world are you talking about?

Re. the inevitability of Iraq's breakup, is that from the Reed Hundt School of ME Studies? What supporting evidence do you have? All the ME scholars I talk to disagree with that assessment. But maybe you know something they don't.

What might that be?

I've commented on this before, and I suppose I'll have to comment again.

The 'partition' of Iraq, is a solution in desperate search of a problem. Partition was touted in the 1990's by the PNAC crowd, based on the notion that breaking up Arab states into smaller, powerless entities would enhance Israel's regional domination indefinitely.

It should come as no surprise that the partition solution would be part of the discussions prior to the war, that it would be immediately touted as the solution following the conquest, and that as things steadily went to hell, that it would magically reappear as the solution.

The problems with the approach are obvious, and have been canvassed over and over. To illustrate just a few:

1) The Shia and Sunni are not actually different ethnicities, as the Kurds are. They're 'merely' different sects of a population which is predominantly ethnically and linguistically Arab, and which is quite mixed, even at the tribal level.

2) There seems to be no particular incentive for the Shia to accept 'half a loaf', or a divided and bowdlerized country. Particularly if they can take the whole thing. Overall, there's no special support for partition among Shiites. Contrary to Reed's thinking, the Shiites are not eager to give up on Iraq as a state and regional power, and accept a rump status as an Iranian client.

3) The notion of a landlocked, resource deprived 'Sunnistan' is not appealling to the Sunnis in every way. This is why folks like Reed keep speculating about ways to 'sweeten' the deal by pledging oil revenues or international aid or somesuch. This also highlights the fundamental dishonesty of their position. They're well aware that partition is not appealing to the Sunni's, so they immediately have to start talking about bribery.

4) The best support for a notion of partition comes from the Kurds, who have revolted literally a dozen times or more in the last 80 years. But Kurdish aspirations run up against those of Turkmen, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Christians and other minorities in the north. Most problematically, Kurdish aspirations conflict directly with Turkey and Iran. Finally, the Kurdish 'state' will be landlocked, surrounded by hostile enemies, and its access to or control of oil fields right now is more wishes than real.

The reality is that all this talk of partition simply involves white men who fancy themselves 'masters of the universe' redrawing maps on behalf of poor brown people.

Here's a tip. Go home, let them draw their own maps.

"Go home, let them draw their own maps."

Precisely. And that is precisely what the neoimperialists refuse to do. Nossel in particular has a vile post on Huffington Post

www.huffingtonpost.com/suzanne-nossel/
iraq-in-three-parts_b_31262.html

talking about what would make HER feel comfortable (hint letting the Iraqis decide ..but not without the American foot on their back). In poll after poll, the Iraqis have indicated the thing they want most is Americans to get the hell out. But that doesn't stop a phony like Nossel from claiming to respect Iraqi wishes. She remains "uncomfortable" with these wishes. These are Democrats without any regard for other nations' sovereignty; they should not be spokespersons for the Democratic Party. We ought to be able to learn something from this debacle.

The Kurds are biding their time and watching the Sunnis and Shiites decimate each other, then at the right moment the Kurds move in, Iraq disappears and Kurdistan is born. I imagine the Kurds have their version of Saddam ready to take power
and keep the peace.

So we're trading one failed state for 3 failed states? How does that help bring peace in the Middle East? Isn't that the latest excuse for invading Iraq? It was going to solve the Israeli-Palestinian problem, wasn't it? Help me connect the dots, to coin a phrase.

Ivan Eland, whom I fancy as an insightful guide to American foreign policies, wounds up an article dated today:

The president and those giving him advice should admit the truth to themselves and to the American people: A unified, democratic Iraq is unattainable. Only then can they adopt and sell the radical solution of recognizing the existing de facto partition in Iraq and drastically shrinking or even eliminating the potentially oppressive central government. This solution is the only remaining hope for a U.S. withdrawal with any honor and the best chance for achieving peace and prosperity in Iraq.

Interested may want to read all of his article.

Well, first of all, I didn't say "I" was trading anything. I said "we" meaning the United States. I guess I could have said "they".

But, OK, you tell me what it is if we (the US) start with a country we destroyed and is now exactly what we said we (the US) were going to prevent it from coming and replace it with 3 separate "country-lettes" that hate each other and will try to destory each other for their resources. Ain't that trading one for the other? And by the way, by what authority do we partition a SOVEREIGN country? George Bush always makes a big deal about Iraq being sovereign as one of his glorious signs of "progress" so he can't just ignore it, can he? (Jeez, what am I saying? Of course he'll ignore it if he thinks it suits his political purposes. Sorry about that little lapse.)

But I ain't running away from any mess I produced. That's an insult. I was against this phony war from the start. A person of only average intelligence could see that the claims about the WMDs were pure BS from the start. So I ain't walking away from anything. Got it?

And just where did you get the idea I sound like God? All I did was ask how splitting up Iraq would help anything, particularly the Palestinian problem that the Little Prince said would be fixed by getting rid of Saddam Hussein.

Just to remind you "Germany is one" largely because Helmut Kohl, in his infinite Christian Democrat lack of wisdom, bought the support of the East Germans for re-unification with West German Deutschmarks in the early 1990s. The West German economy still has not completely recovered to a point where it would have been if Kohl had not wasted West German resources.

Oh, I'm not insulted. Just a little confused how anyone could read the things into my post that some have. As far as personal responsibility is concerned, just how does that work with an administration that completely ignores the Constitution and has the Congress and Supreme Court in its pocket? Sure, we are personally responsible and can and will exercise that responsbility through our vote in a few weeks. But I have to tell you, if there is a change in Congress to a Democrat majority, I'm not at all optimistic that George Bush will stop his little adventure in Iraq. He's just stubborn enough to continuing the war even if Congress begins to investigate it and cut off the funding. He's a corrupt, Messianic, Fundamentalist fanatic who has always done whatever the hell he wants to. I see no reason for him to change.

I wasn't even refering to neighboring countries when I said the 3 mini Iraqs would destroy each other. I was talking about them attacking each other. The Suunis don't want to be the minority after ruling so long. The Shia don't want to be kept out of power now that they've tasted it. The Suuni won't have any oil resources and they'll want some from the Shia. I don't know where the Kurds will go in this mix but I doubt they'll sit it out. Neighboring countries won't want or need to get involved. Just like Iran today, they'll just sit back and watch the three new mini-states destroy each other then step in to assert their control.

And please don't tell me I'm the occupier of Iraq. I never wanted it, I never voted for it and I don't have anything to say about it as I said above.

In Iraq, the end game was always going to be separation, and the United States precipitated this outcome, while foolishly following a plan that was a fantastical projection of a Cold War mentality mashed up with a dizzy invocation of the Crusades. But with or without the American intervention, after Saddam died or was overthrown, the break-up of Iraq was highly likely to occur.

And how charming. The United States having worked so hard to develop this outcome, now sits back and declaims all responsibility. It was destined, the molester says. It would have happened without us.

Was the dissolution of Iraq always highly likely.

The answer to that is a big fat no. Iraq, or mesopotamia as a coherent cultural, social, economic and political region has existed for thousands upon thousands of years. As a discrete political entity or state, it has existed since about 1918-1922.

By contrast, Iraq is markedly older as a modern state than all but four African states. It is older than many asian states, including the Phillipines, Indonesia, Vietnam, Myanmar, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, South or North Korea, etc.

Iraq contains both ethnic and religious schisms? Well, get in line. So does the United States, or Canada, or France, Belgium, Indonesia, India, Guatemala, Bolivia, Peru and just about every African state.

Now, if we turn and look at how the United States own actions were and are driving a schism, we'll note the following:

1) Dissolution of national institutions, particularly the Army and the Baathist party, without bothering to replace it.

2) Degradation of national services... ie, security, policing, education, health care, state owned economic enterprises, fuel and food subsidies, water and sewer and electricity production.

3) Continuing emasculation of the Iraqi state in various ways, including deliberately reducing the army to light infantry, removing heavy armour, aircraft, logistics, communication and command and control. After three years, the Iraqi army has no real existence, except as a band of unreliable volunteers under American control.

4) Encouraging and failing to control militias. Started off with caving into the Peshmerga. Followed up by letting the Shiites have their Badr Brigades. Chalabi, for political purposes, was allowed or encouraged to have a private militia... and when all these things were done, the genii was out of the bottle.

5) The El Salvador option... yep, its in play. Believe it.