I mentioned deliberate partition as an exit strategy back in 2007 in response to a list of options suggested by Lum (who I miss greatly in his former role as one of this board’s best fiscally conservative/socially liberal posters):
I’d argue for a D) option as well, deliberate partition. I mentioned this to my wife at the onset of the invasion, since “Iraq” has as much national reality as many other failed states created by Versailles (i.e., none. And yes, I know the Brits administered it for decades, but it was carved out of the Ottoman Empire post-WWI just as Yugoslavia and Czecheslovakia were carved out of the Austro-Hungarian Empire). The end results would be similar to A), but we’d have some say in the final outcome. The process would be messy (just look at India/Pakistan/Bangladesh for an example of how bad it could get), but in the long run the 3 main, mutually antagonistic groups would be out of each other’s immediate hair and across a border.
This, and B), strike me as the “best” of a bad bunch of options–best for the Iraqi’s anyway, though not for our soldiers and treasury.
