Iraq in a Nutshell

This is an excellent piece in the NY Times today about the tensions between the Sunni tribes recently recruited into the Iraqi police force and the Shiite-dominated Iraqi Army. And it raises the central moral question of the war:

Does anyone doubt that these Sunnis and Shiites would be battling each other full-tilt if we weren't there to referee? (A subsidiary question: Does anyone doubt that Muqtada Sadr will rule in Baghdad, and the south, when we pull our troops from there?)

Now, there are two morally legitimate answers to this question:

1. it's their country and none of our business, so we should leave.

2. We broke it, we have a moral responsibility to the Iraqis to referee this fight and seek a "soft landing."

And then there's the realpolitik answer:

3. We should only stay if it's likely that this war will become a regional struggle. Otherwise, we should be pulling out of Iraq, recalibrating our involvement in the region to respond to the changing threat matrix--file under Pakistan, Afghanistan--and allowing our armed forces to recover from their criminally stupid use by the Bush Administration.

You can believe, as I do, that this war was the worst foreign policy mistake ever made by an American President and still favor any of these answers. I tend to think a regional war can be avoided, so I'm in favor of 3. But this isn't easy...and the free-range sliming of those who honestly take any of these positions is several notches too simplistic for my taste. Anyone who questions those who stand with position 2 isn't thinking hard enough about the internecine carnage that is sure to follow. And anyone--say, Joe Lieberman or Lindsey Graham--who says those who take position 1 are counseling "Defeat" and "Surrender" doesn't understand (a) this war and (b) what being an American is all about.