This month's issue of Foreign Affairs features a "round table" on Iraq. The participants use an article - "Seeing Baghdad, Thinking Saigon" - in the March issue of the magazine as a starting point. As with any group of 'experts' on Iraq, there is little consensus except that things are going to hell in a handbasket.
I was surprised to see that Les Gelb, former Congressman and former head of the Council on Foreign Relations, espousing the federalization approach that I wrote about last year. It made sense to me then and it makes sense to me today. The approach is to divide the country up into three regions - Sunni, Shiite, Kurd - and a small efficient federal government that controls the oil revenues. It was an idea floated originally in 2003 when Bremer took control. He didn't like it, but, then, this was not his only mistake.
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