This is the week when abstract and concrete conceptions of time collide, at least in my mind. Time is a relative, almost liquid thing, but this week I always feel as if I can watch the future become the present and the present become the past. It’s during this week that I’ll remember walking along a snowy Amerige Park at some early hour on a New Year’s Day, tipsy on Miller High Life (“The Champagne of Beers”), looking at the stars through the bare branches and thinking, “So this is 1977.” I was unsure of the future then, but I was eager to get going.

Twenty-nine years later, I’m still unsure, but not so eager. Iraq will be our preoccupation in 2006, for the fifth year running. George Bush’s poll numbers popped up after the newspapers ran more photos of the ink-fingered Iraqi election, but reaction to the election by those familiar with Middle Eastern affairs has ranged from sober to ominous. The December 15 election may have been the turning of another corner, but after all these corners have been turned, it’s clear we’re moving in circles.

Sunnis participated in much higher numbers in the recent election than they did in January’s but the results were still stark: “legitimate” power in Iraq is entrenched with Shi’ite theocrats and Sunnis are convinced their votes were stolen. In the coming year there will probably be more, not less, factional fighting as the country slides from insurgency to outright civil war between Sunni and Shi’ite Arabs.

Sunni Kurds in the north, content with decisions establishing a weak central government and allowing profits from regional oil production to remain in the producing region, now only have one item left on their wish list: control of the city of Kirkuk. If they’re smart (there’s every indication they are), they will wait until the Arab factions are in all-out battle before the takeover and ethnic cleansing of Kirkuk, probably in mid-to-late summer.

In central and southern Iraq, the Shi’ite Badr Brigade (Organization, if you prefer) will morph into the sanctioned Iraqi army and, with reduced presence of U.S. troops, do a better job of hiding its torture centers from western eyes.

In Iran, President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad is playing George Bush’s game, attempting to unify the nation behind by a reckless and belligerent foreign policy. He should notice the effect of that particular gambit fades during one’s second term. Whether Iran’s nuclear program has only civilian applications, as it claims, or may be used for nuclear weapons, it should be remembered that Israel bombed a nearly complete Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981. A similar strike in Iran would only make a tense region worse.

There is a better option. In this space six months ago, I called for a deliberate, international process for the partition of Iraq. The same idea is beginning to emerge from many points along the political spectrum.

Partition is no one’s first choice, but it will be everyone’s last resort. Attempts to “stay the course” on a flawed policy will lead to partition as well, after tens of thousands of death, untold misery for the living and barricaded, hostile and unbalanced factional states where Iraq once stood. I don’t think the United States has been a great force for good in the Middle East for some time now, but I do think a partition of Iraq that has the full participation of the U.S. will bring a far better result than letting events unfold organically.

Donald Rumsfeld announced a reduction of several thousand American troops before Christmas, it remains to be seen if there’s a concomitant drop in casualties. Deliberate partition would fit on John Murtha’s timetable for getting U.S. troops out fast, but leaving some in the region for quick response.

The worst aspect of this plan is that it brings only stability, not progress, to the region, but there can be no progress without stability. Stability will afford all nations to deal with issues like Iranian nuclear ambitions and the Lebanon-Syria crisis. Progress will require a level of international good will that does not currently exist and will not exist as long as the deeply flawed Bush administration directs American foreign policy. The best Mr. Bush can do at this point is contain the mess he’s made so a real adult can begin cleaning it up in 2009.

© Mark Floegel, 2005