Out Of Touch Elites Promulgate Partition For Iraq That 98 Percent Of Iraqis Oppose

[babylonsister]

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/09/11/brooks-partition/

Out Of Touch Elites Promulgate Partition For Iraq That 98 Percent Of Iraqis Oppose

This morning, New York Times columnist David Brooks joined a small chorus including Washington Post columnists Charles Krauthammer and Jackson Diehl, and Michael O’Hanlon in giving up on listening to what Iraqis think. Instead, Brooks wrote that the U.S. mission in Iraq is to partition Iraq:

What we’re really trying to build, in other words, is a road to partition. We’re trying to build a pathway to separation that involves the sort of low-intensity civil war that Iraq is enduring right now. We’re trying to prevent a pathway that is even worse — a high-intensity genocide.

This week’s ABC News/BBC/NHK survey of 2,000 Iraqis found the following:

Nearly every Iraqi — a whopping 98 percent — said the separation of people on sectarian lines is a bad thing for Iraq;

A majority of Iraqis — 62 percent — support one unified Iraq with a central government in Baghdad. Even though this figure has declined 8 points since 2005, overall support for a unified Iraq remains strong.

The surge of U.S. troops has seen the number of Iraqis pushed out of their homes double. As widespread sectarian cleansing in Baghdad occurs in the presence of tens of thousands of U.S. troops, extremist gangs and militias may push the silent majority of Iraqis closer to some partition scenario. But that doesn’t mean Americans should support the agendas shared by those Iraqi extremists who are murdering others in Iraq’s civil war.

This raises another tough question more Americans should ask: Is publicly advocating partition actually encouraging Iraqis who are conducting sectarian cleansing to accelerate their vicious campaigns?

[bryant69]

1. Yeah that's not a good idea

I also find it disturbing that our elites feel that we should drop Iraq's current president, as if we had control over the situation.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[The Magistrate]

2. Be That As It May, Ma'am

The outcome is going to be at minimum a period of de facto partition, with consolidation dependent on the degree to which the Shia Arab militias manage to defeat and destroy Sunni Arab resistance to their rule over Iraq. The Kurds are already essentially out of the country.

[Ian David]

3. Oh, now we and they are all truly fucked. Partition was the only solution likely to work...

and they don't want it.

But the point is moot.

The upcoming nuclear war with Iran renders the point academic.