Pro-Total-War / 3 State Solution - 3 comments

The discussion that follows today's Shot by both sides post is not an encouraging one. Still, it's worth seeing some of the better-known names in blogdom chucking mud at one another ("John the Tourette's victim, Peter the Tory Boy and Andrew the Very Solemn Bore") and being juvenile. Conservative Commentary Peter does make this point, however:

... for all the noise the pro-Bush/decent left [I'm taking this to imply the pro-war left] makes in the blogosphere - so much of it sensible and right - your numbers are so small that there just aren't enough to fill two slots of comments in any Question Time. You might ask why that is and reflect on the departure from reason and from a sane understanding of human nature that the left you belong to is determined to uphold.

This, by Jeremy from My Way of Thinking is also a worthwhile point, not often heard (though quite why, I don't know):

If you had read one single history book on Iraq, like I had before the war, and worked out it was made up of three religious groups who hated each other you might have been able to predict religious violence post invasion.

Is Iraq really viable as a single state? Ought we to avoid trying to centralise this 'Iraq' entity, if it only makes it more likely that the eventual fragmentation of the Iraq will be more bloody than otherwise?

Update: Much more on the prospects for Iraqi democracy at Talk Politics.