Iraq is a mess. That's the strong consensus among Americans today -- notwithstanding that we disagree vehemently about the merits of our post-9/11 intervention there, the merits of our attempt at disengagement, the value (if any) won at a cost of trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of human casualties, and what we should do now that the whole region is blowing up.
Some provocative thoughts below the fleur-de-Kos.
The title image of wild cats in a gunny sack is one from my young years growing up on an Illinois farm where we had a sizable population of feral cats. They were tolerated as long as their taste for mice in the corn crib didn't extend to the chickens in the hen house. Wild cats are not the cuddly, faux-fierce mascots of modern-day sports teams. They are mean nasty terrorist killers on four legs. They simply don't play nice with others, including their own kind. (It always struck me as remarkable that they could get together long enough to procreate. But I digress.)
A "gunny sack" is a loosely woven burlap bag used for potatoes, chicken feed, or other commodities. If you've always lived in town you've probably only seen them in the context of "sack races" or a "three-legged race" or maybe coffee sacks that have been made into artsy beach bags. At any rate, wild cats in a gunny sack conjures an image of fierce, vicious fighting in close quarters that only ends when the combatants were either dead or victorious. In the country, "like wild cats in a gunny sack" is a strong metaphor for people who just can't get along.
Iraq is like a gunny sack of wild cats. Under the circumstances, if we wanted to decrease the fighting among the wild cats and promote peace, what would one do? One approach would be to try to convince the cats to get along, to create a kind of cat-Mayberry where everyone pretty much minds his own business or at least tolerates the other. That's what the United States has been doing in Iraq: we suppressed the major violence for a while, although the hate has never really stopped (bombings in Baghdad are about as common as rush hour traffic jams on I-405), and tried to create the conditions where a pluralistic, democratic society can take root and flourish.
Is it really necessary in 2014 to say that this is a poorly informed course of action and likely to be ineffective. Wild cats will be wild cats-- and they'll fight anyone who tries to intervene in their fighting.
But there is something we can and should do! Get rid of the gunny sack. Let's begin by acknowledging how those wild cats got in there in the first place.
After World War I and the breakup of the Ottoman Empire, Britain was given a "mandate" over Iraq (Did you ever notice Iraq's simple borders that were apparently drawn with a straight edge?) without respect to geographic features, ethnic and religious identities. That's the gunny sack. (The border between the US and Canada is perhaps the only place that a straight line border has not caused a major conflict. But again, I digress.)
In 1920, Iraq became a semi-independent kingdom,and Iraq became fully independent ten years later. The Brits set up Sunni rulers who were seen as more reliable British allies. The other major groups, the Shi'a and Kurds, were pretty much SOL. Over the next several decades, Sunni domination in Iraq led to periodic unrest by other groups that were brutally suppressed.
Fast forward to Saddam. Like Josef Tito in Yugoslavia, he knew what one had to control the wild cats inside the gunny sack -- Be brutal as hell!
That's when we arrived via Bush's war. Saddam and Sunni rule were soon toast. Nouri al-Maliki (Shi'a) took over. Unfortunately, al-Maliki is no George Washington trying to unite his new country. He's just a different wild cat who has power. And so today, the fight is on. The gunny sack remains.
Iraq is not a nation state that has a unified identity, and it cannot survive as one with a strong central government that is dominated by just one faction. Iraq's present form of government is fundamentally unworkable. Some analysts have argued that it could survive as a loose federation of semi-autonomous provinces. But why stop there? The US needs just stay out, even if it means a brutal war in Iraq (and unfortunately, it does). At best we can encourage the introduction of and help pay for a peacekeeping force.
Yugoslavia really needed to break apart when it did. And today the world is better off for it. The various factions still don't like one another, but they're not trapped together inside gunny sack borders that serve no practical purpose other than to allow one faction to lord it over the others.
The inevitable disintegration of Iraq will likely result in autonomous Sunni and Shiite states. The Kurds will pose a continuing problem for the west because part of what should be an independent Kurdistan currently "belongs" to Turkey (a member of NATO), and Syria.
I don't claim particular expertise regarding any of this (and I expect more than a few commenters to agree). What I know should be common knowledge among members of Congress, the media, and the Administration. Like many of you, I am extremely depressed about to level of discourse coming from DC about Iraq where people do not seem to know much of anything. "Iraq" needs to die -- and be reborn as at least three independent entities. The Shiites will align with those in Iran; the Sunnis with others in Syria; and the Kurds will do their own thing.
Perhaps the region will eventually embrace pluralism and democracy, but it might take centuries for that to happen if it ever does. In the meantime, it will be messy. Perhaps we have a role to play in minimizing the bloodshed associated with the political dislocation, but we should not pledge ourselves to the chimera that is a "united Iraq". Naive Americans will argue for a long time about "Who lost Iraq?" when it was foolish western powers (The League of Nations) who drew the Middle Eastern boundaries that set us up for a century of failure and frustration. It's time to the let the wild cats out of the gunny sack and each find its own way.