Post: #1

ISIS controls something like 1/3 of "Iraq".

Kurdistan in the North controls maybe another 1/4 of "Iraq".

Can this country really be said to exist any more? It seems like it's a diplomatic fiction. Outside of the Shia area, is Iraq a country any more?

Post: #2

I would not count Iraq out yet.

The new president is Kurdish.

They will get rid of Maliki and probably cut a deal with the Sunni tribes and the ex-Baathists and military officers.

They will get rid of the ISIS foreigners the same way they got rid of Americans.

Post: #3

But are many Sunnis in Iraq happy to no longer be part of Iraq? I got the impression that ISIS was tacitly supported by many armed fighters in the Sunni areas because they preferred them to the Iraqi military.

Post: #4

Iraq is now 3 states - a Sunni Arab state in the northwest, Kurdistan in the northeast, and a Shiite state in the center and south.

Post: #5

USA set to bomb.

That should bring the country back together, right?

Post: #6

We need to forget about these arbitrarily but well intentioned straight line borders drawn up after the war.

The only way this entire region, like africa, has any chance of a peaceful future is many smaller countries divided by tribe and religion.

Nothing else can ever work.

Post: #7

It never really did.

Post: #8

Iraq is a state created from the fall of the Ottoman Empire about 100 years ago. Much of today's problems stem from British, French, and American (mostly British) drawing of the map based on their interests rather than along ethnic/religious/cultural lines. I don't know why the Kurds keep getting screwed with. They seem like a very reasonable and hard working people that just want their own land.

US ROI on the Iraq venture is so negative it's not even funny. What a disaster.