Post #105

Subject: An open letter to Charles Krauthammer….

I like the way you write – thoughtful, respectful. You seem to actually listen to “the opposition” and try to understand without the usual dim-witted snipes of many right-wing-ers. As a rhetorical device, I like the way use “reality’ and “logic” in your arguments as tho your view is the only “correct” view – I do the same in this blog. :p

Which brings up “Iraq divided” – your column of September 7, 2007. You said: “It took political Washington a good six months to catch up to the fact that something significant was happening in Iraq's Anbar province, where the former-insurgent Sunni tribes switched sides and joined the fight against al-Qaeda. Not surprisingly, Washington has not yet caught up to the next reality: Iraq is being partitioned -- and, like everything else in Iraq today, it is happening from the ground up.”

The partitioning of Iraq is an idea that was discussed BEFORE the invasion. As you wrote, “Joe Biden, Peter Galbraith, Leslie Gelb and many other thoughtful scholars and politicians have long been calling for partition.” Indeed, Senator Joe Biden has been running for President for more than a year on the adoption of a partitioning plan – the Biden-Gelb plan. Joe said, “… that [plan] offers the possibility of stabilizing Iraq as we leave. [The] plan is based on the reality that Iraq cannot be governed from the center because the Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds are too fearful of each other to entrust their futures to one another.”

More reality for ya! :p In other words, Bush’s dream of a Jeffersonian democracy is unrealistic. Reality also says that we will leave eventually. This war must end. We must begin to get out now, protecting our troops as we withdraw – not wasting more blood and treasure for an unrealistic dream. Leaving Iraq is necessary. We also have to manage the aftermath, to shape what we leave behind so that we don't endanger America's interests for a generation. That is, partitioning.

You have laid it out: “A weak, partitioned Iraq is not the best outcome. We had hoped for much more. Our original objective was a democratic and unified post-Saddam Iraq. But it has turned out to be a bridge too far. We tried to give the Iraqis a republic, but their leaders turned out to be, tragically, too driven by sectarian sentiment, by an absence of national identity and by the habits of suspicion and maneuver cultivated during decades in the underground of Saddam's totalitarian state. … Whatever the reasons, we now have to look for the second-best outcome. A democratic unified Iraq might someday emerge. Perhaps today's ground-up reconciliation in the provinces will translate into tomorrow's ground-up national reconciliation. Possible, but highly doubtful. What is far more certain is what we are getting now: ground-up partition.”

Exactly. But your “logic” fails me in your last paragraph: ‘This is not the best outcome, but it is far better than the savage and dangerous dictatorship we overthrew. And infinitely better than what will follow if we give up in mid-surge and withdraw -- and allow the partitioning of Iraq to dissolve into chaos.”

Even tho Iraqis are standing up in Anbar, we cannot stand down. Huh?