Bush Looks for the Sunni Side of the Street

The guy can't help himself. Everytime he hears Shia he sees Iran and then he sees red. That's preventing George Bush from finding any useful solution to his problems in Iraq.

The White House seems to be courting the Sunni world to somehow take over and sort things out in Iraq. That overlooks two huge problems - a Shia majority that will no longer tolerate Sunni interference and their Shia benefactor, Iran. Even the Kurds in northern Iraq are unlikely to welcome an Arab Sunni intrusion.

President Bush is never going to get the answers he wants to hear on Iraq. They simply don't exist. Getting Saudi Arabia and Jordan involved is all well and good but there's little they can do to quell the civil war without the agreement and support of Iran and Syria. So long as Washington has Tehran in its sights, getting the essential Iranian co-operation is unlikely, if not out of the question.

Now there's a proposal for quasi-partition in the form of a 3-state federalism for Iraq. That would leave the oil-rich Shia south and the oil-rich Kurdish north and the resource barren Sunni middle. It would also entail sorting out who will control several key cities, including Kirkuk, and an awful lot of ethnic adjustments. The Shia would probably go for it and the Kurds already have that degree of autonomy and more. Neither group, however, is in the mood to share their resource wealth with the minority associated with their decades-long repression.

Much as he doesn't want to, much as he would been seen as humbled, George is going to have to negotiate an Iraqi peace package with Iran and with Syria and he's going to have to come bearing gifts. Right now he's throwing a diplomatic tantrum, giving both the cold shoulder. Let's hope he gets over that and pretty quickly.