The Iraqi Army No Longer Exists

[anvi]

It's hard for me, firstly, to see how as a practical matter Iraq could be partitioned.  Neither Shias nor Sunnis would give up Baghdad in such a "deal," nor will either easily hand over Kirkuk to the Kurds, and surrounding neighbors will come to the aid of both sides, and Turkey would freak out at a Kurdish-controlled North, even though such an independent northern state is itself practically implausible, so they'd throw in their lot too.  Different regions are interdependent in terms of infrastructure and travel too, and economically separating them as a partition would may easily bring incredible hardship on lots of places in the country.

And in general, I think partitions tend to be disastrous anyway; the India-Pakistan partition was a nightmare, and the way the middle east was carved up in the 20th century is an ongoing one too.  Plus, despite all the sectarianism in the country, communities of different groups in different regions have been living together for decades, and there are Shia-Sunni intermarriages and hence family ties in Iraq.

What is really needed is a government in Baghdad that is not hell-bent, as it has been for the past decade, on marginalizing and brutally suppressing Sunnis, but the guys running the show there don't have that kind of wisdom.  It's going to be a very bad mess in that country for a long time, and the U.S. is most definitely incapable of "fixing" it and shouldn't try to be in that business anymore.  The more equipment and weaponry we leave lying around or distribute in the region, the more of it will will be picked up and used there.  And, rhetoric aside, no president or Congress is going to agree to send the massive military resources there that would be required if our goal were "eliminating" ISIL.

The best thing we can do now, for my money, is really reflect on what a profoundly misguided  catastrophe our military and geo-political adventurism has been and change our own ways.  As painful, and incredibly unfair, as it is, Iraq will be a very difficult place for people to live in the foreseeable future, and our enemies are going to have some measure of power there for a while.  But there are also lots of other powerful balancers in the region, so no single one of them is going to hold uncontested sway.  What we need to do is resist the ever-nagging temptation to intervene further and make things even worse.

[anvi]

Basically we ("the West") have been outmaneuvered on a grand scale. If ISIL is to be defeated that means Iran becomes the dominant power with a "Shia Crescent" spreading from Iran through Iraq into Syria and Lebanon. There is literally no realistic mechanism by which ISIL is defeated without Iran being the ultimate winner.

Is that really that bad a thing?

I'm just curious how the quoted passage above became mine when it was Cory's.