David Brooks' Partition Figment Posted by David Shorr

Anyone else get David Brooks-induced whiplash from his 'Road to Partition' column yesterday? Seriously, I don't know if I've ever seen so many switchbacks within the space of 760 words. Early in an article about the grounds for hope, Brooks quotes the harsh sectarian position of moderate Shiite MP Shatha al-Musawi and notes that "When conflicts become struggles for moral capitulation, they take forever to end." All the recent talk about how counterinsurgencies take a decade had me worried, but now apparently it's going to take forever! Yikes!

Brooks' concluding graf seems to read al-Musawi's mind. She's "unwilling to reconcile," yet "doesn't want to die in some cataclysmic civil war." Since there wasn't anything in the direct quote to indicate such a position, exactly what sophisticated journalistic technique is Brooks using here?

"Despite al the debates over the data, violence over all is on the decline." Ooops, better leave that for Ilan. Oh, not only is the Anbar miracle replicable, it's part of a "tribal revolt against extremism" that is apparently already spreading like wildfire. But that's not really what I wanted to talk about. Brooks takes Amb. Crocker to task for his "dubious assertions" regarding Iraqi leaders' emerging openness to power-sharing, and then in the next breath talks about a new effort by "sane sectarians ... to create a segregated yet inhabitable Iraq."

So here is the partition solution again, which is now not merely the obvious answer or natural drift of things, but portrayed as conscious project. Funnily enough, I agree with Brooks that the proper objective at this point is to "ensure that Iraqi sects compete for power in less violent ways." But trying to arrange a partition is a terrible way to achieve that objective. Telling the sects and tribes that now we're going to set boundaries and divvy up authorities only raises the stakes for the power struggle; why does anyone think that would have a calming effect? Anthony Cordesman has it right when he says "Partition is anything but soft." I also want to talk about something else that Brooks mentions, preventing genocide, but that's the subject of another (less snarky) post.

Comments

[Babylonians]

www.babylonians.wordpress.com/2007/09/11/the-road-to-partition-double-standards/

[Don Bacon]

from the web:
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/51624/Public opinion is squarely with Iraq's nationalists. According to a poll by the University of Maryland's Project on International Public Policy Attitudes, majorities of all three of Iraq's major ethno-sectarian groups support a unified Iraq with a strong central government. For at least two years, poll after poll has shown that large majorities of Iraqis of all ethnicities and sects want the United States to set a timeline for withdrawal, even though (in the case of Baghdad residents), they expect the security situation to deteriorate in the short term as a result.

That's nationalism, and it remains the central if unreported motivation for many Iraqis, both within the nascent government and on the streets.
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/51624/