A very interesting, sophisticated (and guardedly optimistic) analysis of the current situation in Iraq.

To understand what follows, you need to realize that Iraqi tribes are not somehow separate, out in the desert, or remote: rather, they are powerful interest groups that permeate Iraqi society. More than 85% of Iraqis claim some form of tribal affiliation; tribal identity is a parallel, informal but powerful sphere of influence in the community. Iraqi tribal leaders represent a competing power center, and the tribes themselves are a parallel hierarchy that overlaps with formal government structures and political allegiances. Most Iraqis wear their tribal selves beside other strands of identity (religious, ethnic, regional, socio-economic) that interact in complex ways, rendering meaningless the facile division into Sunni, Shi’a and Kurdish groups that distant observers sometimes perceive. The reality of Iraqi national character is much more complex than that, and tribal identity plays an extremely important part in it, even for urbanized Iraqis. Thus the tribal revolt is not some remote riot on a reservation: it’s a major social movement that could significantly influence most Iraqis where they live.

You won't get anything like this from most of the simpletons in the MSM.

[Update at 11:30 AM]

Michael Yon, who endorses the article linked above, has published his third dispatch from Anbar. I haven't had time to read it yet, but if it's anything like his first two, it's well worth the read.

[Update]

I glanced through it:

Over the next several days, I saw how much the Iraqis respected Rakene Lee and the other Marines who were all courageous, tactically competent, measured, and collectively and constantly telling even the Iraqis to go easy on the Iraqis. It’s people like Rakene Lee who are winning the moral high ground in Iraq. It is people like this who are devastating al Qaeda just by being themselves. Over those same several days, I would also see the Iraqi Lieutenant Hamid treat prisoners with respect and going out of his way to treat other Iraqis the way he saw Americans treating them. Lieutenant Hamid, in his young twenties, seemed to watch every move of the Marines and try to emulate them.

Hearts and minds.

This paragraph is dead spot on, IMHO:

The strategic logic, from our point of view, is relatively straightforward. Our dilemma in Iraq is, and always has been, finding a way to create a sustainable security architecture that does not require the “coalition-in-the-loop”, thereby allowing Iraq to stabilize and the coalition to disengage in favorable strategic circumstances. But taking the coalition out of the loop and into “overwatch” requires balancing competing armed interest groups, at the national and local level. These are currently not in balance, due in part to the sectarian bias of certain players and institutions of the new Iraqi state, which promotes a belief by Sunnis that they will be permanent victims in the new Iraq. This belief creates space for terrorist groups including AQI, and these groups in turn drive a cycle of sectarian violence that keeps Iraq unstable and prevents us disengaging. (There are several other drivers of violence, of course, but this one of the most significant ones).

An imbalance in the balance of power between the various tribes and factions and sectarian elements -- Shia vs Sunni vs Kurd is merely the most well known and obvious form of division between "Iraqis" with countless other fault lines readily seen if we look more closely -- is what creates space for AQI to enter Iraq.

In other words, AQI is a symptom of Iraq being unstable, not the original cause of Iraq being unstable, even as the presence of AQI makes Iraq more unstable.

The article also says that previously the Sunnis saw AQI as "useful idiots" in their struggle with the Shia but now the Sunni tribes have concluded that the price being charged by AQI is too high.

This is an altogether good development yet by itself this does not signal ANY progress on the underlying issue as to whether Shia and Sunni and Kurd can create a stable Iraq.

Even after AQI is eliminated, reconciliation between Sunni and Shia remains the unaccomplished core mission.

This is an altogether good development yet by itself this does not signal ANY progress on the underlying issue as to whether Shia and Sunni and Kurd can create a stable Iraq.

Bill, I'm surprised at you. In science, even a negative result is still a result that gets one closer to the correct answer. The Sunnis "experimented" with AQI to try to achieve what in their view would be the best possible result for them, and the outcome was negative. That option is now eliminated, and they've learned something about the realities of the situation they didn't know before.

It may not be progress on a pace most of us would like, but contrary to your assertion that it doesn't signal "ANY progress," it most certainly does.

Even after AQI is eliminated, reconciliation between Sunni and Shia remains the unaccomplished core mission.

Yeah Bill, and the Japs are too backward to accept Democracy and the Krauts are too militaristic and locked into their 19th Century Kaiser worship.

And Bill, there is a huge difference in unaccomplished, and no possibility of accomplishment. What is it about the possibility of winning this war that rubs you the wrong way Bill? Because no matter what's said about that possibility, you see the dark heart of the thing.

Excellent find Rand

Winning is a matter of definition.

I simply do not believe there exists an "Iraq" (as a Westphalian nation state) that can transcend the fault lines of Shia, Sunni & Kurd let alone the myriad other fault lines that emerge upon closer examination.

Is there anyone better than Maliki to unify Iraq? I doubt that there is even as he is doing a lousy job.

It took a Saddam to hold Iraq together before we removed him and perhaps only Saddam-like tactics can keep Iraq together, today.

Something that we Americans will never do.

The emergence of a de-facto Kurdistan for example, poses a threat to Iran (good, IMHO) and Turkey (more problematic). How we define winning in that context is very far from clear.

Expending energy trying to force oil and water into a stable blend or trying to unscramble broken eggs will drain valuable resources away from the struggle against the true radical Islamicists AND drain our economy and national will when we face growing geo-political threats from Russia and China.

We simply do not have unlimited resources.

It took a Saddam to hold Iraq together before we removed him and perhaps only Saddam-like tactics can keep Iraq together, today.

Iraq is being held together with considerably less brutal tactics now. Perhaps, there's some reasons not to like how it's held together or to question how long it's stay "held".

Right now, Maliki and the Kurds have established a government based upon dominating the Sunni.

The Sunni at first accepted aid from AQI to contest this situation and more recently have decided that the AQI agenda was unacceptable to them. Good.

Sadr has told his militia to stand down and be quiet. Is he now on-board with US policy or merely playing possum? Recall that the Mahdi army is taking over Basra, right now.

If the Sunni accept this political reality and if the Shia decide not to extract too much revenge for the years under Saddam then Iraq will be relatively stable. With Sadr as a major player within the Iraqi political structure.

And with an Shia leadership that is decidedly more friendly with Tehran than Saddam was. Even if none of the Iraqi Shia can fairly be described as Iranian puppets, IMHO.

If we can call this "victory" then I am happy we won.

Eradicate AQI, get the Shia to agree not to go genocide on the Sunni, get the Sunni to accept minority status and a much weakened political position within Iraq and the war is over.

But if we eradicate AQI and thereafter the Shia and Sunni do not come to a peaceable arrangement I see no reasonable point to our staying longer to referee their civil war.

Of note: Even Pollack and O'Hanlon seem to believe that some sort of soft partition is inevitable.

> Expending energy trying to force oil and water into a stable blend

Mayonaise is stable enough as is milk and icecream.

White apparently believes that a unified Iraq can't happen. Fair enough, but does that mean that he supports a partitioned Iraq or is he (once again) supporting some inherently superior alternative that he's unwilling to describe.

On the off chance that White supports partitioning Iraq, how does he propose getting there from here?

I simply do not believe there exists an "Iraq" that can transcend the fault lines of Shia, Sunni & Kurd let alone the myriad other fault lines that emerge upon closer examination.

And you're American, I take it? Perhaps you haven't traveled around in your own country very much? Haven't had a chance to compare 'n' contrast South Central LA black ghetto youth, wealthy investment banker couples along the I-95 corridor in Connecticut fretting about getting the (sole, IVF-conceived) offspring into the correct pre-school, the big ol' family on the Western Slope of Colorado with two sons in the USMC, a daughter helping out in the family business and looking at secretarial school, and a fifty-person family reunion party every fall?

Faults and fissures all over the place, you'd find. San Francisco gay crystal-healing Gaia-worshippers to devote evangelicals. WASPy childless Hollywood lawyers who never met someone who didn't vote Republican, or employ a maid, to virulently anti-Communist Catholic Vietnamese refugees who run scruffy restaraunts in Santa Ana and force the five kids to take after-school English and math lessons so they can all be doctors. And so on.

Boy, it will never stay together, will it?