Soon, very soon, we will have to choose between swinging 'round and defending the Sunni Arabs and Sunni Kurds from the Shias (read: attack the Shias), or aid and abet the consolidation of Shia power in Iraq (read: enable and empower mass retribution, if not genocide), or leave.
Since this is an election year for a GOP administration and its minions in Congress, one suspects that departure is not on the table at this time.
Which leaves the first two choices.
It Is The Very Model of A Modern Major Civil War
That an Iraq civil war is emergent is not subject to dispute, just disingenuous denial.
We cannot remain in situ and not choose sides, and we will not leave, period, so long as the Republicans call the shots.
More below.
Scenario One: How Bush Learned To Stop Worrying And Embraced Shia Islam
Siding with the Shias would keep Iran from becoming even more influential, and lets face it the Sunni even with the Kurds are no match for the Shia militias, who will be disinterested in the Kurds so long as they do not take up the cause of the Sunni Arabs. From the reverse, the Kurds will not care overmuch if the Shia concede the north oilfields to the Kurds, and their own leadership can keep religious affinities down.
The question is what will keep the Shia Arabs from provoking such a response, which may likely provoke a far more widespread reaction by the various Sunni neighbors of Iraq, including Turkey, which may find about as lovely an excuse to invade and occupy northern Iraq as it would ever receive, all in the name of saving fellow Sunnis from genocide, Kurd and Arab alike.
And there is no armed force in the region that would object terribly, not even Israel.
Oh, silly me. There is one: the United States.
American imprimatur on behalf of the Shias would make a lot of things possible, including so sudden and dominant a military outcome that there would be no excuse for massacres and, if they occured, no news of same getting out to embarrass anyone that mattered.
The risk is the Kurds declaring independence and the Turks getting involved anyway, in which case the second ugly choice would be what to do about the peshmerga. Given the cost-benefits and past crass behavior toward the Kurds by the Bushies, I think the choice would be to concentrate on the pacification of the Sunni Arabs by the Shia, and let staunch NATO ally Turkey move into northern Iraq and do what it needs to do, on the condition hands off the northern oilfields.
Then the situation on the ground would become quite different; southern and central Iraq would be fully in control of the Shia Arabs, for a price: American sponsorship would cost endure permanent US and British bases. That, and Shia Iraq would have to remain aloof of Iran for as long as those (permanent) bases were in place.
In the north, Turkey would by necessity become ensconced in bases in the north, the Kurds forcibly reintegrated with Iraq under Shia dominance (the choice of forced integration with Turkey being Plan B), but given significant autonomy of the sort they have refused to give up in any instance. Status ante bellum, less a few cities and a few thousand lives. Iran is shut out, more or less, and the ground is set for a future conquest to the east, this time with Turkey locked in as a participant.
Strategem Two: Maybe That Saddam Guy's Okay, After All
In this instance, the Bushies choose to align with the Sunni Arabs and Kurds, promising whatever concessions are required to secure the assurances it wants, then arming (for real) the Sunni against the Shia.
Why do such a thing? Because, just perhaps, aiding and abetting wholesale slaughter and possible genocide doesn't play well in an election year, and might, just might, alienate the entire balance of the Islamic world, and perhaps keeping in good with Saudi Arabia and Egypt, Pakistan and Indonesia is worth more to the United States than the begrudging tolerance of a few million Shia Arabs in Iraq.
In which case, the Americans are shooting for a status quo, a division of Iraq into two parts, though no one will acknowledge such as that gets people thinking of Korea and Vietnam in a big hurry. North Iraq will be Sunni, Arab and Kurd, and heavily dependent on American assistance as trade to the gulf and the southern oilfields will be in the hands of South Iraq, which will be more overtly sponsored by Iran.
The conflict becomes less a matter of sect and more a matter of geopolitics, though as in the first scenario the end goal is a favorable realignment of the geopolitics. In the first scenario, the United States does not care overmuch about wider Muslim opinion, and no consequences other than good ones occur, all for the price of a few tens of thousands of Iraqis more. In this scenario, that sentiment is threatening, and taken into account, and the question is what group will be angered that the United States not only doesn't mind offending, but actively seeks to do so: the answer is turning on the Shias, as that provokes Iran, and few others.
The Shia, though, are smart enough not to play the holy war card, and revert to secular concerns of sovereignty, which calms conditions in Iraq considerably, save in one respect: for the price of defending the weak, rather than signing off on their slaughter, the cost of instigating a war with Iran goes up even more.
It is a cheaper option, denying the Shia militias access to the Sunni neighborhoods, and likewise clamping down on the movements of Sunni insurgents, which can be framed as true peacekeeping and thus justify harsher measures as well as a more comprehensive media embargo.
But it means no resolution, just continued occupation against the wishes of all parties involved. It's the lazy way forward to the next bad choice.
Oh. I DID Mention Saddam, Didn't I?
This actually forms a third scenario that grows out of the second. I highly doubt the GOP are quite this shrewd, and if they are they are shrewd enough not to put this option into play until after November 2006 or better, leave it to the Dems to propose it. After all, just because it works doesn't mean it's good politics.
First a history lesson, loosely told:
Back in the day, the British Empire rousted a troublesome padishah out of Afghanistan. They marched right into Kabul, set up bases, and gradually found their mighty and incomparable army penned into comfortable bases while the country seemingly went nuts with a combination of tribal and sectarian warfare. In time a less kind, less gentle leader rose up in the place of the ex-ruler, who was growing on the British in confinement back in Lahore, and vice-versa.
Even as matters turned badly for the British commanders in Iraq, er, I mean Afghanistan, they were sending home missives extoling just how yea mightily they were rebuilding the country into a fine addition to Raj. After all, in no way shape or form could the Afghans in any combination take on their conquerors in a set piece battle.
Yet for some reason, by the end of the day that did not stop the Afghans from killing almost every single soldier that entered their country in what remains one of the most humiliating routs, I mean, orderly retreats, in military history.
Oh, the punchline
The British ultimately reconquered Afghanistan with extreme prejudice, and successfully reigned there, via a local ruler and his successors, for the next century.
That ruler: they guy they spent two years and almost thirty thousand men to depose in the first place.
Now, wouldn't it be a hoot if Bush was forced into a position to resurrect Saddam Hussein's political fortunes, on account there was no Sunni leader with a sufficient (albeit degraded) power base that could be trusted not to have some affiliation with Al-Qaida, save for the one man that had been under lock and key for the past two years?
Except it wouldn't be very funny at all, to either the Iraqi people or the American electorate.
My thinking
That which does not cost much, or require much alteration of 'the course', and defers hardship a little while longer for those who have so far incurred no hardship at all is the choice that the Bushies will make.
That means firming up patrols in central Iraq, curtailing by force if necessary the movement of Shia militias, clamping down in the name of keeping the peace on any movement whatsoever by the Sunnis, all to play to an audience back home. More O the same, only more of it.
And if people starve or die, well, so long as it's not on the American news who cares, that decides on such matters?
I see the Bushies deferring the choice, and inching as little as they must toward guarding the Sunni Arabs, who have heretofore been the most prominent adversaries of the Coalition forces in Iraq, on account suddenly switching gears and letting Sadr's Mehdi tear through Baghdad town would provoke a terrible outcry throughout Iraq, Islam and most important of all to the Bushies, in the approval polls back home.
