http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2014/6/23/122728/980#11
I agree with much of what Booman has to say on domestic politics, but I tend to disagree more on foreign policy.
When it comes to the current crisis in Iraq and Syria, I think it's time to let the Sunni populations that extend from Baghdad to central Syria create their own state. Let the Kurds become independent. Let the Shiite Iraqis control everything south from Tikrit.
The only other option is to create a new Saddam or empower the existing Assad.
Because without a stable polity, you can't have even a notional form or representative government. You can rule these groups with fear and co-optation, but you can't create pluralism among groups that viscerally hate each other. And as much as Democrats and Republicans hate each other right now, they are the picture of fraternal love compared to the Middle East right now.
The "Bush Doctrine" of bringing democracy to the Middle East was always strikingly naive. To some degree - to a large degree - what we are witnessing now is the fruit of that naivete.
But if there is ever to be some sort of peace in the Fertile Crescent, it will come when each national group has its own state and not one created by the British in 1921.
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