Sam Brownback: partition Iraq

Sam Brownback reiterates his strategy to split Iraq into 3 parts along ethnic lines:

SEN. BROWNBACK: We ought to now push for establishment of a Sunni state in the west, still one country, still one country, but separate states. That’s a political solution -- that you can take advantage of what the military has done on the ground. That’s what we need to do to move forward now.

MR. GOLER: Senator, let me ask you, quickly, if you do that kind of loose federation, how do you keep the Kurds in the north from fighting with Turkey, how do you keep the Shi’a from allying with Iran, and how do you keep the Sunnis from rebelling over having no oil resources?

SEN. BROWNBACK: How do you do it now? I mean, I think you’re going to need a long-term U.S. presence in, I think, particularly in the Kurdish region in the north and the Sunni region in the west, that you’re going to have a long-term -- invited by those governments, and you’re going to need it to assure the Turks that the Kurds aren’t going to pull out and to assure the Kurds that the Turks aren’t going to come in. I think that’s what you have to do in looking at the reality.

Brownback's plan, shared by Democratic candidate Joe Biden, addresses the ethnic component of Iraq's civil war, but ignores the fact that there are more than 3 factions in Iraq and they don't all break along simple ethnic lines. The violence in Shiite dominated Basra is evidence that even when an area has become ethnically purified, the battle for power rages on.