THE IRAQ PROBLEM
The problem continues and we are faced with 1 candidate with a plan and timetable for what to do next -- a plan that hasn't been updated since before the handover in June -- and another candidate with no plan at all other than an expectation that his presence in the Oval Office will be enough to change public and political opinion in France and Germany to such an extent that they would be willing to invest billions of dollars and commit over 50,000 troops to what he calls the "wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time". So, in short, neither candidate seems to have a plan that takes into account the present realities on the ground - which all of us only know second hand.

But it strikes me that the leak of the National Intelligence Estimate will certainly damage our efforts in Iraq by further encouraging the terrorists who are only trying to hang on until the the U.S. loses its will. President Bush's steadfastness and public pronouncements that we are making progress are intended as much for the terrorists as they are for the American electorate - to show that we have the will to win and that the terrorists are failing in their effort to undermine our confidence. The NIE release works against those efforts, and demands for a definite exit strategy (read: withdrawal date) make it even more difficult to win the PR war against the terrorists, for whom we must daily make the case that they will be history's losers. Sooner rather than later.

It may also be time to start considering what we do if the elections in January only make things worse. Will Allawian Democracy flower in Iraq after elections, or will terrorists use the elections as further evidence that their only path to power - and the only path to self-rule for Shiites, or Sunnies, or Kurds -- is by the sword and IED? Perhaps it is time to consider that Iraq may be better suited to the post-colonial or post-cold war model, where nations of severe ethnic or religious differences that were previously united through force, despotism or benevolant autocracy, could not remain united after the restraining forces departed. Without an extremely powerful executive, should Iraq go the way of India, which split into Muslim and Hindu nations after British rule, or the way of the Soviet Union after the Tsars and General Secretaries left, or the way of even Czechoslovakia that thought germans and slavs didn't need to share a state. See also the Balkanization of the Balkans, the continuing Troubles in Ireland, and the myriad of states in Africa.

To avert a long term civil war, it may be necessary to carve up Iraq into Sunni, Kurdish and Shiite nations. Sure, that may mean you'd get one or two democracies and an Islamic theocracy very happy to ally with Iran, but it may be the best path to stability and some form of non-Turkish democratic republic in the Islamic world.