The End of Iraq

I just watched Peter Galbraith on C-SPAN's Q&A discussing his new book, The End of Iraq. Galbraith, a former diplomat with tons of personal experience in Iraq, especially among the Kurds, retreads some familiar territory in describing the terrible blunders the Bush administration made in its hell-bent invasion of Iraq and total cluelessness about how to handle the country post-Saddam (though he does offer some mind-blowing anecdotes, like the story of three Iraqis who visited the White House shortly before the invasion and discovered that President Bush was not familiar with the Sunni-Shiite divisions within Islam!).

The C-SPAN interview was weak in that host Brian Lamb did not probe Galbraith for his specific ideas about what do to in Iraq now that the mess has been made. Reviews of the books indicate that the author is an advocate for a divided Iraq, which he calls "three states in one nation." Clearly a Kurdish partisan, Galbraith suggests that the US could maintain its military presence in the region via an independent Kurdistan, and essentially turn over the remainder of the country to the already-politically stable Shiite south, and a Sunni-governed central area. He argues that such a division would quell the sectarian tensions that currently dominated the so-called unified Iraqi nation and actually gain us a military advantage against Iran (how, I'm not sure; guess I'll have to read the book).