WHICH COLONY SHOULD THE LOYALISTS HAVE GOTTEN TO KEEP?:

If Iraq fragments, what's Plan B?: A partitioned Iraq, which could preempt violent ethnic cleansing, looks ever more likely to many experts (Peter Grier, 1/05/06, The Christian Science Monitor)

The US might need actively to aid Iraqis in relocating to parts of the country where they feel safer, says [Michael] O'Hanlon. This sort of resettlement assistance wouldn't be unprecedented, he notes. The US did it in Bosnia.

Such a policy would perhaps preempt the violent Balkans-style ethnic cleansing that is already occurring in Iraq, O'Hanlon says. Sectarian strife is displacing 100,000 Iraqis a month.

"One-third to one-quarter of the ethnic cleansing that might occur [in Iraq] has occurred," says O'Hanlon.

Of course these supposed long thinkers are just as guilty of short-term thinking, having failed to consider the question of why the Shi'a should tolerate any Sunni state in the former Iraq.

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 4, 2007 7:33 PM