The Potential Balkan-ization of Iraq

Iraq as a nation state was always in turmoil. Taking disparate elements and cramming them together and hoping an actual country would form was, and is, colonial folly. In this time of the borderless greed of multinational corporations and the Siren song of globalization, nationalism is a quaint notion kept on life support for some awkward reasons. Neo-traditionalist flag-wavers think we can transplant democracy and it would somehow thrive out there in the arid desert where none had existed before. If they were happy at one time as separate tribes in a loose confederation of ethnic identities, why are we trying to keep going the losing idea of a united Iraq that was only kept together by brutal force alive? Unless we are willing to become the enforcer for a new iron-fisted dictator we should explore the possibility of a fractured Iraq taking root instead. Welcome to Kurdistan, Sunnistan and Shiastan? Why not? Less can be more. Draw the lines, build the fences and put in the blue-helmeted U.N. troops to keep the peace.