I've been doing a lot of reading up and research and geography lessons on the whole Iraq - Syria - Turkey - Iran issue.
There is no simple solution. We threw 250,000 ground troops at Iraq and the minute we try to leave, the power void left was just soaked up by extremists, corrupt government bureaucrats and outside backed military groups.
Now I will fully admit a couple things:
1. I was in favor of the Iraq war and I'm not Monday Morning Quarterbacking my decision like every politician in the world. It did not take WMD's to convince me to take down Hussein's regime in Iraq. That was a logical choice for us to try and create a stronghold in the middle east area because Hussein had no friends. Iraq hated him even though he was a Shiite. The Sunni's hated him. All his southern neighbors hated him after his invasion of Kuwait. He was an easy and logical choice for us to target.
2. I do think we strategically did the Iraq war incorrectly. There was no need to rush and Rumsfeld's lightning war campaign wasn't necessary nor effective. We should have stockpiled a TON more troops and invaded the country from both the north (through Turkey) and the south (through Saudi Arabia/Kuwait). We used about 200,000 troops (50,000 of which were foreign). We should have used 300,000. We did not have the strength nor the locations to quell the resulting civil war between Sunnis and Shiites nor defend ourselves against the numerous foreign fighters looking for a way to get at us (which I agree was part of the point of invasion - i.e. to take the fight to them and create a military target for extremists to target instead of civilian targets).
3. The long-term strategy should have never been to leave. We should have planned from the very beginning that we were going to establish large military complexes and bases in the Iraq area. Their central location in the Middle East is ideal for strategic purposes. We should have had a base in Baghdad vicinity and Mosul vicinity. I don't quite understand the American public's problem with having troops permanently in Iraq. We still have 50,000 troops in Japan, 30,000 in South Korea and 40,000 troops in Germany. It has long been the policy of the US Military to keep large amounts of troops in critical areas of the world for generations until the regions stabilize. Why we think the Middle East would be different is beyond me.
All that is water under the bridge now. And the problems now are rife with political, economic and military issues.
I do think we should consider re-deploying troops into Iraq again and go forward with my large-scale military base construction in two locations (one Shiite and one Sunni). Whether we're at a point of no return for a united Iraq is undecided. I think it's now much more difficult to consider a united Iraq (using the existing borders) than 4 years ago.
The problems with the 3-state idea now is I'm not sure any government we try to establish in a 3-state system would be strong enough to combat ISIS in the Sunni portion of the new country. The other big issue of the 3-state system is whether the US Government can maintain strong influence over the Shiite "part" (i.e. Baghdad south) vs. Iran. Iran has positioned itself perfectly during this whole thing. They don't care if Iraq breaks itself apart. They only care about the Shiite parts of Baghdad/South and their oil reserves. If you look at Iran's strategy in the area it is not to destroy ISIS, only keep it out of Shiite controlled areas (i.e. getting too close to Baghdad). They could care less if ISIS is murdering the indigenous Sunni groups along the Tigris River. They could care less if the Kurds and Sunnis fight it out.
So there is a big Sphere of Influence problem for the US Government in a 3-state solution, but because political pressure made us remove all our troops, we can't re-establish a stable one-state anymore.
So we're in a big pickle. I think we have to send troops back in, but that might be political suicide.
And the other option, of course, is do nothing. Let them all kill each other and see where the dust settles. We can hem and haw about how cruel ISIS is, how bad Iran is, Syria dropping chemical weapons on it's own people, etc. but maybe deep down inside there really isn't much we can do. The Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds have been fighting long before England/France divvied up the region and they'll probably be fighting 100 years from now too. You just hope by staying out of it nothing really bad happens here in the U.S. or in Israel (although I think Israel can take care of itself). We just have to accept a lot of chaos, terrorist acts and really ugly violence for a while.
