OP-ED: 'Letter From Baghdad,' By Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times, September 5, 2007

Stunningly good piece by Friedman, who remains the hands-down best on-the-ground reporter of his generation on the Middle East. This is a very honest analysis with a guy whose mind is willing to be changed on a dime, like any good reporter, but he just can't get there on the surge, noting we've achieved a tactical shift vis-a-vis AQI but not a strategic closure on Sunni-Shia strife in Iraq. Again, Hitchens' breakdown still holds: 1) The Kurdish victory (and no, let's not get hallucinatory and start babbling about either "liberating" all Kurds much less "betraying" them all simply because the Kurdish regional gov doesn't instantly--or perhaps ever, quite logically given the history we've seen in eastern Europe and the Balkans--morph into a Kurdish-wide union. 2) the strategy of aligning Sunni tribes against AQI is working 3) the Sunni-Shia split is unabated and advanced and the "cleansing" continues, something our troops can mitigate in terms of violence but can neither stem nor reverse. If the Sunni-Shia split is the key remaining dynamic, and our success with the Sunni meaning the bulk of our casualties are coming from Shia militias that are increasingly fighting each other as much as us, then we have two choices: 1) resurge on that dynamic (unlikely in the extreme due to rotational stress and political impatience back home) or 2) engage Iran either in engagement or punitive action. You know Cheney's preference. The question is, Are you ready for the next war? Me personally, I can't see--as I've said for years now--casually lumping Shia and Sunni extremists in the same "war on terror" bucket. To me, that's strategically unsound (too many enemies, too few friends) and politically unrealistic (if you want pluralism in the region, it cannot continue to feature repression of half the population, which means you've got to find a place for Iran--like it or not [just like the Palestinians]). We can either seriously work toward pluralism in the region, facilitating its integration into globalization, or we can continue the same old, same old (unblinking support to Israel versus the Palestinians and unblinking support to Sunni dictatorships versus oppressed Shia minorities/majorities). The big fly in the ointment of pursuing the same old, same old: Bush's decision (which I support still even though he now seems to regret) to create the first Arab Shia state--Iraq.