When we signed on to the charter for the United Nation we agreed that all signatory nations had: the right to have their soverignty recognized, and the right to self-determination of their form of government.

These are sound principles both in international macro terms and individual micro terms.

Individuals and nations both must own their own actions and the consequences of those actions. Failure to do so is the essense of denial.

And denial is always maladaptive.

So, to force a Balcanization on Iraq might make sense from our perspective, and might even been inevitable---but the question is do we have the ethical right to create this division? We fought a bloody civil war in this country over a similar problem, and the division made more sense than the probable one in Iraq.

I am not saying you are wrong here. But I am saying there are considerations that need to addressed.

Publius