It's refreshing to get an actual question that invites thinking rather than fighting. Thanks.

Five years is a significant time period: At nearly nine years, the Iraq war would bust Vietnam's record as the longest quagmire in US history. As for forecasting the situation five years out, the answer is that I have no idea, with any certainty. The lack of clarity is, I think, a large part of the reason that Americans have become fed up with the war. The Bush Admin had a good plan for starting a war, but to this day has no plan for ending it. Their crystal ball went completely dark on them.

The best I can do is try to analyze the situation and identify categories of outcomes. I can't assign probabilities because this isn't just blind forces that can be modeled statistically; the intentions of powerful entities will heavily influence the outcome. The outcome will boil down to whose ambitions and visions win.

The dream of Iraq as a model franchise of America Inc. is dead. It's incompatible with history and culture. First, the idea of Iraq as a nation is a fiction. In the 1920s the British arbitrarily drew lines on the map corralling three incompatible religious and ethnic groups into a "nation" that could only be held together through force.

People tend to see Saddam Hussein as the cause and Iraq as the result, but I think that with the horse in front of the cart, Saddam was the inevitable result of Iraq. If not him, some other Strong Man would be required to impose naked dominance on independent tribes and sects. The current civil war and all its brutality signal that the real fight is to see who will be anointed Saddam II. Everyone who counts in Iraq sees the imposed democracy as a passing phase and a tool to power.

The only way we'll see a unified Iraq is if some tyrant can do it at gunpoint.

Short of Saddam II, Iraq will have to separate into three distinct countries along ethnic and religious lines. If we try to resist it to the bitter end, we'll see it happen amid chaos and bloodshed. The probable outcome will be that Iran will dominate the south, Turkey the north, and Syria and Saudi Arabia squabble over the godawful empty west. Puppet states or outright annexation, the distinction is probably moot.

We might try to bring the dissolution in for a soft landing by accepting the inevitable and guiding events. Iraq might be well served by a compromise that forms a loose federation of the three states, under a Federal government that provides for regional defense and not much else. Baghdad might be declared a neutral capital, much like the District of Columbia.

Would that Iraq resemble a Western democracy? To some degree, but it will have to adapt to the culture. The term "Islamofascism" contains much hype, but it points to a meaningful description of the general mindset of the Muslim world: Authoritarian conservatism. It's not so much that self-determination is an alien idea so much as it is a somehow sinful idea. All rightness flows from Allah through His prophet Mohammed and his heirs unto the present day. Moral good comes not from one's own judgments but from following the judgments of the ultimate Authority.

This leads to a cultural divide we seem unwilling to face: Democracy in the Muslim world must give religion a seat at the table of power. That idea seems wrong from an American perspective (except to the religious Right), but you look at successful democracies such as Turkey, or even troubled ones such as Egypt and Lebanon, and you see that Islam and its authoritarian needs are accommodated. Iran, for all its flaws, seems to be trying a power-sharing arrangement between the clerics and a democratically-leaning secular government. In contrast, Lebanon makes no formal provision for religion, but yet religion nevertheless gained its seat at the table through the instrument of Hezbollah and the other militias.

In terms of culture and local politics, Islam will not be denied. The expansionist side of Islamic militism is what we must resist with resolution, but we're on the wrong path if we think we can sidestep the problem by changing Middle Eastern culture from within. For one thing, they've noticed, and they don't like it. Much of bin Laden's manifesto is protesting the meddling, what is often called "cultural and economic imperialism". We have to be willing to let the Middle East be the Middle East, and not expect it to become just another plastic franchise of The American Heartland&trade.

The foreground question on everbody's mind is how long American forces will be stuck in Iraq. The answer is that no matter what, it'll be a long time. Odd that so many extremists on the Right view that as a vindication of Bush's decision to go to war. That's like the dinosaurs admiring the wonderfully sticky properties of the tar pit.

The worst thing we can do is "stay the course" and pursue the unrealistic fantasy of a Western-style Iraq that will be a mirror reflecting our own wonderfulness. Down that path is the longest involvement at the highest cost in blood and treasure, for negative profit.

Pulling out right away would minimize the short-term cost, but the collapse of Iraq into chaos followed by incorporation of its parts into neighboring countries will be expensively bad in the long run. We shouldn't do that.

Quite likely, pursuing a middle path like forming an Iraqi Confederacy would take as long--those five years, at least--but it's possibly the least expensive and painful option. The violence may wind down as the warring parties see a resolution ahead that gives them and their constituents their piece of the pie, and we might be able to safely draw down the troops and suffer fewer casualties along the way. The key is, I think, to account for culture and psychology, and realize that a win-win must be defined in terms of the parties involved, and not by outsiders like us. Iraq will calm down when Iraqis see a solution that suits their needs.

I suppose it's unsatisfying that I don't have a Ten Point Plan for Victory In Iraq, but damn, it's the very intractability of the problem that's driving me and a lot of other people to distraction. There is no magic bullet. And I do not thank George W. Bush for that.