Wrong because this attack was against Kurds, an ethnic group, not a religious one. It is by no means established who the attackers were working for, or even if the group's agenda is solely Iraqi. What is obvious is that the targets were the leaderships of two active political parties working for an autonomous Kurdistan. Many groups, including a couple of nations, have an interest in discouraging this.

Destructive because any national government that refuses to share power with a sizable and important minority is setting itself up for civil war before the ink is dry on the constitution. Any national government that refuses to share power with citizens who are members of minorities within the country has cut itself off at the knees in the "no taxation without representation" department. This slogan is also symbolic of voluntary compliance with any other law as well. Americans, of all people, should remember that, unless we have drifted off too much from our republican history into an imperial dream world.

Impractical because all of Iraq, except for the people who are blowing up Iraqi political leaders, has an interest in re-establishing some form of order. They will never get it if one part of the nation is deliberately excluded from the nation-building process. If the Sunnis as a group decide to boycott the process, to walk out, to vote "no", that's their choice, but they will have exercised one. If they are excluded by the rest of the nation because they have violent people in their midst, the rest of the nation hands the keys to Sunni lands to the violent ones, whose opposition will be vindicated by the act of exclusion.

You can try to tell other people how to act, but you can't make them act that way except by use of force. They have to agree for it to stick. Force only works in the short run. People remember its application for generations, and resent it.

It's really tempting to apply force because we can. People mistake that for leadership all the time.

Regards--
Mary Anne