And Oceans Ought To Be Made of Hot Cocoa

Ahh, the fervent daydreams of the Fatuous Baker Boys:

According to the ISG, the way forward for the U.S. is not to fight Iran and Syria. It is to negotiate with them. (Side-note: Although ISG executive summary does not portray Iran’s actions in Iraq as acts of war against the United States, it does acknowledge that Iran is responsible for “the flow of arms and training to Iraq,” which, as noted below, the ISG hopes Iraq will “stem.”) Iran and Syria, the ISG suggests, could be persuaded to help us in Iraq because, notwithstanding that they have assiduously destabilized the situation for three years running, they are profoundly interested in having a stable Iraq. “No country in the region,” the ISG believes, “will benefit in the long term from a chaotic Iraq.” Even if we assume for argument’s sake that this is so, the actions of Iran and Syria certainly demonstrate that they believe they will benefit in the long term from an Iraq that is chaotic for at least a while.

The ISG says: “Iran should stem the flow of arms and training to Iraq, respect Iraq's sovereignty and territorial integrity, and use its influence over Iraqi Shia groups to encourage national reconciliation…. Syria should control its border with Iraq to stem the flow of funding, insurgents and terrorists in and out of Iraq.” The ISG does not appear to proffer what concessions it believes the United States should make in order to get Iran and Syria to take these helpful actions.

It must take a lot of effort for a bunch of doddering old anti-Semites to come up with this load of crap.

The situation is pretty simple:

Iran and Syria want Iraq to fragment. Then they want to pick up the oil-producing fragments. Syria will of course settle for Lebanon in lieu of Sunni territory in Iraq proper. The Kurdish areas in the north are coveted by the Turks, not least of which because for the past couple of decades the Kurds have been sending terrorists into southeastern Turkey.

Is that so tough to comprehend?

Perhaps our eminences-grises might consider looking at a map, or, failing that, open up a history of Poland, which went through the same thing despite having a greater degree of ethnic unity than Iraq today enjoys.