It is at least as good as building nations.  When you think of all the artificial countries established at the end of wars when victors get to dictate peace, you should not wonder why the wars continue and nations are shuffled around again and again.

            Look at the most recent published account on how the conquered nation of Iraq COULD be made into three natural components.  The Shiite South regional entity, a central Sunnite land and a Kurdish north country are suggested today in the NY Times. What this does is recognize the identities of three feudal and feuding peoples who were combined into one after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire.  In our own CIVIL WAR, we came to grips with a divided nation, all speaking the same language and more or less secular in a central government but divided on slave ownership and expansion into western territories.  There is still talk of secession although the uncivil south has joined with disunion Republicans to take the government out of the lives of people by putting it into the hands of huge corporations.

            The litmus test is in the last century and in this, the twenty-first century, of course, Israel and Palestine.  The attempt to create two nations out of a tiny sliver of land in the Middle East has caused worldwide interest and agitation on behalf of the stalled Muslim part to drive out the successful Jewish part.  Partition of the land worked in India where the Hindus and the Muslims formed an unusual three state solution.  In the ruination of the Soviet Empire, many successful states were created although the animosity of the two religious (in a studiously non-religious Soviet model) groups, Christian Russia and Muslim Chechen.  The whole world looks carefully at the machinations of the Palestinians crippling themselves with a government consisting only of Arafat.  They make no move to help remove him and establish a real government, hopefully a democratic one.  This is a model for Iraq where the U.S. is imposing a built for failure model of democracy without that country and its three parts knowing much about self-rule.

            The un-building of Iraq is a good idea.  In fact, it would be a good idea in any area of the world where so-called terrorists, often named militants (meaning dissidents who want their own version of the country they find themselves in) are constantly in the news trying out bombings and massacres to gain attention.  This kind of activity was given a “go-ahead” when the most successful of deconstructionists, bin Laden, brought down the Trade Towers in NY City to the admiration of “nationalists” in many parts of the world.  Where people bomb and kill other people to claim their independence, we should listen to them.

            Partitioning Iraq into three natural areas might work.