A Fly In the 80% Ointment

The White House has been making signals that they would make an attempt to back the Shiites over the Sunnis in Iraq, in a short-term maneuver designed to restore order. That's essentially what they did by invading, but explicitly taking sides in the civil war, what many have called "the 80% solution" (so named because it would mean certain doom for the 20% of the country who's Sunni), would essentially be an endorsement of genocide, as Josh Marshall essentially says.

Point one. In the 1990s, the Czechs and the Slovaks managed are remarkably amicable and peaceful divison of their country. Let's say that the Sunni and Shi'a don't appear to be pursuing that model. At the moment, we're in a process of what you might call slow-motion ethnic cleansing and mass-killing. Once it's war to the knife, I think you have to figure both escalate dramatically. There's probably a decent chance of inter-sectarian bloodshed on a Balkan scale, or perhaps one that would make what happened in the Balkans in the 1990s pale by comparison.

My recollection is that Sunni Arabs make up about 20% of the population in Iraq. If we're actively backing the Shi'a, how well do you figure they make out? How well do they fair in the areas of mixed population? And where do we fit in in that? We'll be on hand to enforce the Geneva Conventions?

Point two. If Iraq's Sunni population is set to be slaughtered or at least dominated by the Shi'a Arabs, where do they go for help? Presumably to the rest of the nearby Arab states, each of which is overwhemingly Sunni. (There are some exceptions here: I believe the majority of Lebanese Muslims are Shi'a and I think that at least one of the Gulf emirates has a Shi'a majority even though it's ruled by Sunnis.) In any case, the major point is they don't have a shortage of potential allies nearby, not the least of which is Saudi Arabia. So it's us on one side and potentially the Saudis, the Jordanians, possibly the Egyptians who see the Iranians as major rivals, maybe the Turks since they may assume a Shi'a-dominated Iraq wouldn't care as much about keeping the Kurds in the country.

Well, funny you should bring that up, Josh, because the Saudis have given what would amount to a warning on that score. Actually, they did this a couple weeks ago. And now they're feeling the need to do it again.

Saudi Arabia has told the Bush administration that it might provide financial backing to Iraqi Sunnis in any war against Iraq’s Shiites if the United States pulls its troops out of Iraq, according to American and Arab diplomats.

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia conveyed that message to Vice President Dick Cheney two weeks ago during Mr. Cheney’s whirlwind visit to Riyadh, the officials said. During the visit, King Abdullah also expressed strong opposition to diplomatic talks between the United States and Iran, and pushed for Washington to encourage the resumption of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, senior Bush administration officials said.

We've now put ourselves into a regional war, and we have to take sides between the guys that have been our key allies since the early 20th century, and the guys that we invaded to liberate. We can't leave because the Saudis won't allow it, and we can't stay because the Americans won't allow it. And I think that Saudi warning is more about the US taking the Shiite side than the US leaving.

The President clearly wants to respond to the growing chaos by doubling down and sending in a surge of troops to Baghdad to make "one last chance" to secure the country... until the next last chance, that is. Because the last time this happened, just a scant few months ago, we didn't do a thing to help in Baghdad for more than a couple days. But this is much worse. Now we're being essentially blackmailed into staying, and as what? As policemen standing in between two groups with guns pointed at our heads? We have no mission left, and we suffer whether we stay or leave. We've turned the Middle East into a massacre zone. Millions will die. Tens of millions maybe. And we've got 140,000 Americans right there with targets in their sites.

Digby, in discussing how adding 20,000 troops will kill a McCain presidency, but it will... put 20,000 troops into grave danger, speaks the absolute truth:

It's a very unpalatable set of options these right wing failures have left us, isn't it? Let's hope they are taken out of the foreign policy loop for a good long time. If this mess doesn't finally prove they are incapable in this area, nothing will.

UPDATE: Here's the "and monkeys might fly out of my butt" moment:

The Bush administration is also working on a way to form a coalition of Sunni Arab nations and a moderate Shiite government in Iraq, along with the United States and Europe, to stand against “Iran, Syria and the terrorists,” another senior administration official said Tuesday.

Yes, and maybe Pervez Musharraf and a call center in New Delhi can team up, and Kim Jong Il and Shinzo Abe can become the Wondertwins and fight crime together, and maybe Sinn Fein's Gerry Adams can become Prime Minister of England and start a new church with the Pope and the ancestors of Martin Luther! Somebody get a report from the Heritage Foundation on that!