Let me clarify. The current Iraqi government cannot contain or supress the insurgants in their borders. You're fooling yourself if you think the violence in Iraq is overblown (more like underreported) and that it'll magically stop when they have elections or the US leaves.
Breaking off Kurdistan would be a smart move. Granted, there are reasons keeping Kurdistan attached, but doing it now would save future generations from dealing with (at best) a Quebec or (at worst) a former Yugoslavia.
Yeah, most of the (real) polls I've seen put his approval rating fairly low.
Check Ebay. They were selling F-18s and MiG-29s a few months back. Don't see why you couldn't get an Abrams or something.
Depends how you divide them. When Czechoslovakia split after the fall of the Iron Curtain, they split into Slovakia and the Czech Republic. This was done on an ethnic split. Look at the former Yugoslavia...each one of those nations were ethnically split. Granted, most have natural borders (which Israel didn't) and most weren't patchworks (which Israel/Palestine was).
MMM brings up an interesting point though. No democracy has florished in the Middle East (except Israel, but they don't count). Look at the longest standing power: Jordan. The reason they survived for so long is due to the absolute power of the monarch and the sometimes heavy-handed tactics used by the military/police.
To go to a more realistic situation: what happens if/arguably when the Iraqi people elect a fundamentalist government to power similar to the one in Iran? |