There are some fairly difficult issues buried under these questions.

For the US to deal with sectarian violence, we might very well have to use a level of violence against civilians (these are all civilians) greater than we are comfortable with. That would likely mean operating concurrently against both Sunnis and Shias, and risking the enmity of both.

We must also be completely even-handed in dealing with all groups, both in appearance and in fact.

We would also be in the difficult position of acting against the Iraqi police, in those circumstances where they are part of the violence.

The violence is still an Iraqi problem; we can help get it under control, but probably not stop it.

Partition would be a serious problem, because with the splitting of the country will come the split of oil revenue. Once again, the Sunnis will come out the losers, and there's a risk of a failed state. A Shia state would remain at risk for Iranian mischief. The Turks (and probably others) would be very unhappy with an independent Kurdistan, and there would be a real risk of turmoil among Kurds in Iran as well as Turkey. In short, everyone loses; partition is a very bad outcome.

Now that Iran has opened a war on two fronts (Iraq and Lebanon), the forces of evil (Al Qaeda and Hezbollah) will be stretched even thinner than they already were. In addition, the surrounding Arab nations seem oddly reluctant to get involved with the present mess, leaving Israel and Iraq and the coalition free to destroy the terrorists even more.

I think this bodes well for Iraq and may well be the reason why Iraq was the focus of Zawahiri's recent video. He's concerned that the "troops" will lose focus now that their arch-enemy Israel is actively killing their "warriors".

The US should allow the Iraqis to take the lead in Baghdad operations (as they have already been doing) and use their forces to relieve the Iraqis from security duty so they can put more troops into offensive operations. That would avoid the problems diane addresses while putting more pressure on the dead-enders and terrorists who persist.

Diane,

I think the nature of US participation may mitigate the risks of creating enmity from both groups. I don't think the nature of the battles to come will be US vs. others. I think the US will be mixed in with the gov't forces instead. A close reading of the news once it starts to break will tell if I'm right.

I can't really see the value of partition either.

Partition could not be worse than what we've got now and could be better if it is initiated by the Iraqi's themselves. If the Iranian Kurdish and Shia areas are partitioned from Iran, so much the better. A Persia separated from oil is defanged. Incorporate eastern Saudi Arabia into this Shia entity and the Wahabi are defnaged. And if the Turks don't like Kurdistan, all the better. There might be a whole lot less killing if the borders were aligned with reality instead of what some Europeans thought made sense looking at a map 80 years ago.

I think I read somewhere that most of our new troops would be embedded with Iraqi Army and Police units.

If a large part of the problem is Iraqi troops/ police doing some revenge stuff on their own, this may reduce that without fighting anyone.

It will also give us more accurate reporting on what is happening.

It may also help the Iraqis use their training better, as I read somewhere else that when they get excited they tend to go back to pre-training tactics.

Our military has shown real confidence in the Iraqi army, and judging by some of the comments in Iraq the Model, so have many of the Iraqi people. Mixing in American troops with the Iraqi army (but not interior ministry troops or police) can help unify the country by giving a clear Iraqi face to the cleanup that must be done. Chester clearly believes Sadr's Mahdi army is the main threat to a united Iraq, and he's probably right, but Sistani has to believe it too before he gives the go-ahead to taking out a Shiite power center.

If there were three Iraqs, Kurdistan, Sunnistan, and Shiistan (for some obvious and unlikely names), I wonder if the Shi'ites would still have a democracy. Several sources have noted since all of this began that the Shi'ite clergy learned during exile in Iran that theocracy is not the way to go. Sistani is a good example. Sadr though is too young to have learned such a lesson. I think he's only about 32 or so.

Also, it seems that a partition of the country favors the Sunnis the least. I suppose that has been mentioned in many quarters before. But with no major cities, aside from Tikrit perhaps, and half of Baghdad, and no resources, they would become the poorest Arab country pretty quickly. A friend said the other day that he thought the Shi'ites would all up and leave Baghdad and move south if the country split. He might be right -- all of the Shia religious power centers are in the south central area of the country, and Basra is the second largest city. But I wonder . . .

Finally, a post over at the counterterrorism blog the other day noted that the US had caved into some Turkish demands about assistance against one of the Kurdish guerrilla groups: Counterterrorism Blog: U.S. and Turkey to Develop Joint Strategy Against PKK. My guess is that was an overt warning to the Kurds not to declare independence. Nice as they are, we'll still side with Turkey, a NATO ally.

If the Kurds did declare independence, I would definitely negotiate basing rights and park a division there for a few years. I might even just park the division there and then negotiate the rights.

If there were a partition with multiple political systems and peace would that be inferior to unification with gun point potemkin democracy with ongoing civil violence? We've given them the chance for democracy. If they reject it is it our job to shove it down their throats?

If it favors the Sunnis the least, they'll have to work harder. Life's not fair. Somehow I doubt they'd want to migrate to Shiastan as they would be more than happy to even the score from the last 30 years when the Sunnis were on top. But, hey, if they want to get to know the Tater better, fine with me.

And Turkey is in NATO, but an ally?

I have come to fear that the Iraqi government don't have the brain power to be a democracy and the American government doesn't have the brain power to win this war.
This war on terror seems more suited to losing rather than winning and not offending the enemy.
And the enemy is un named!
American government reminds me of the movie Mars Attacks, The president always clueless as to the Martians desire to mouth peace while turning every body into smoking skeletons.

The WoT is going to be a long one, longer than any war the US has fought. It could be a century-long war with successes and failures throughout and I seriously believe it will be 100 years. By 2111 9/11 will be but a marker for the beginning of the big fight to defeat an evil many do not yet understand, much less willing to attack realistically. We can't depend on the EU because they walked away from responsibility for just about everything 40 years ago. They firmly believe there will always be a Europe regardless of their huge immigration mistake. Any leader who would go on vacation while his capitol is burning and wait for the rioters to get tired and go home is not a leader but a damned fool.

We can't win hearts and minds and teach democracy while our own government is cought up in corruption and controversy. Where's the example for the non-democratic to follow?

We have to bring the country together before we can defeat the enemies trying to destory us. More importantly, we have to decide at the outset exactly how far we are willing to go to win the war!

There can be no half-measures, no quick-fixes, no accommodating other countries at our expense. We are the only hope the World has. But first, we have to get it across to peoples in other countries exactly what is at stake and what our true aims are in terms they understand.

Deplomacy has proven to be a smoke screen for fools while tens of thousands die. The days of blah blah are over. Democracy and freedom can not be sold by government used car salesmen at summits. When we give a renigade country a a warning we have to be ready to back it up and act acordingly, not extension after extension.

How many of you readers think we have reached Jim Geraghty's "Tipping Point" about war in the mideast?

West hawk, it is to late to implement your strategy. The time to cut our loses was December 13th, 2004.
Then it was possible to pack up and go without it being a major defeat for America.
I question the logic of the Battle of Iraq being just regime change. If regime change was the sole criteria, then a bombing Campaign would have eventually done the job. If the US Air Farce had bombed evey night until they got Saddam, then I think Saddam would now be dead, or living in the South of France, if there is a difference.
The Idea that Democracy can spread like some sort of influenza, like the idea of 'hearts and minds', has no historical precedent that I am aware of. If anyone knows of a war that was won thru a 'hearts and minds' campaign, then plese point to it. Show me where Democracy has 'majically' jumped a border to overthrow a tyrant. It hasn't happened in Cuba, or The DPRK. The Former Warsaw pact nations were all liberated by the breakup of the Soviet Union. They are trying to make democracy work because they have tried everthing else and those other governments didn't work. Russia today is no more of a democray then the Soviet Union was.
So throw out regime change and the democratic flu. That leaves stealing OIL and forward deployment.
Stealing is stupid when it costs more to steal something then it does to buy it. If the USA has just been concerned with OIL, then the best way to do that would have ben to sell Saddam a few thousand Abrams and a few hundred F-16s, then provide him ammo while he conquored the Arabian Peninsula. After Saddam controlled 80% of the worlds OIL resources, due to American support, I think we could have gotten a real good deal on OIL. Closer to 25$ a barrel then 100.
The Leaves forward deployment. The Center of Gravity of the Jihadist movement is Iran. The Saudis wish they were, but they don't have the resources, human wise. I suspect that the DOD figured this out way back when. After all,the Pentagon has no peers when it comes to Logistics.
You want to hear a Marine Coprs general's spincter slam shut, tell him he has to invade the southern Coast of Iran with his logistics base on the other side of an ocean. The best we could hope for would be Australia. The Ozzies are tough, but they are also within range of Iranian misslies, I think. It would be asking a lot of them.
Launching an invasion from Iraq would be a walk in the sun. With the AIr Force creating C&C havoc, it would just be a matter of using vertical envelopment to grab a few choke points and then driving hard for Tehran. 4 Days at the most. The War on Terror is actually a war on state sponsored terrorism. That means it's a war on Iran. The Left for some insane reason sees Iran as Iraq X 3. That couldn't be more wrong.
Religous zelots NEVER quit. They cannot be reasoned with. You have to kill them. Iran will have to be invaded if America is to survive as America. The time to leave Iraq is AFTER the Mad Mullahs of Tehran are rotting in their graves.
Then we can wash our hands of the entire place. Or we can stick around and do bug hunts. Bug hunts are a good way to blood new troops, as long as the generals don't get carried away.

Amazing! Chester asks for advice on going to law school and gets nearly 80 responses. He asks for advice on Iraq and gets only a dozen.

Does this mean that people care more about his personal life than the war in Iraq? Not really, just that the war in Iraq is so very complicated, we are all getting war weary, and we have discussed this in so many ways since the atart of the war.

We have to stay until the country is stable. . .no other choice. Partitioning would be a nightmare that would eventually involve all the neighboring countries in a regional war.

We need get more Sunnis involved in the Iraqi forces. Then intermix the troops with all units a mix of Shia, Sunni, Kurds, Turkamen, and other ethnicities and tribes. Only a truly integrated force can have the national acceptance necessary to quell the violence.

We must start chipping away at the militias. Slowly take away their territory and their power. And we need to get tougher with Iran and Syria and their meddling in Iraq.

Tipping point? Hard to tell. Sometimes you don't know the tipping point until you already tipped. And we've had so many already, both good and bad. Thought the first election was one to the good side. Thought the bombing of the Golden Dome in Samarra was a tip to the bad. Killing Zarqawi another good lean.

But it seems we are still at the same point. And afraid we will have many more such points ahead, both tipping to the good and to the bad.

"The WoT is going to be a long one, longer than any war the US has fought. It could be a century-long war with successes and failures throughout and I seriously believe it will be 100 years."

It has been going on for at least 120 years already. We were fighting in the Sudan and Afghanistan in the 1880s.