Mort Kondracke is Executive Editor of Roll Call and a frequent panelist on Brit Hume's Fox News show. He writes in the RealClearPolitics website about what he calls "winning dirty" in Iraq.
In Iraq the Shia outnumber the Sunni three to one and would, in a democratic Iraq, control the country. Today U.S. troops are in the middle of a Sunni-Shia civil war trying, but failing, to keep the two sides from killing each other. As he points out, civil wars eventually end when one side wins and the other side loses.
Kondracke wonders if maybe we should side with those Shia who are not in Iran's pocket, while protecting the Kurd minority in the north. The result would be ugly, involve ethnic cleansing, and result in Sunni refugee flows into neighboring Sunni-majority countries. It could, however, leave Iraq with a government that represents most of the people and is not an active enemy of the U.S.
This proposal is an example of the often cited maxim "don't let the best become the enemy of the good." Our current goals represent "the best" outcome, while winning dirty represents, in the minds of some, a "good" outcome. Kondracke makes an interesting argument, I do recommend it for your consideration.
