---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine
Date: Wed, Jun 11, 2014 at 1:30 PM
Subject: re: Sunni Militants Drive Iraqi Army From Big City
To: "letters@nytimes.com"
From: barry levine
Date: Wed, Jun 11, 2014 at 1:30 PM
Subject: re: Sunni Militants Drive Iraqi Army From Big City
To: "letters@nytimes.com"
To the Editor:
Seven years ago, when the U.S. embraced general Petraeus' strategy of empowering and arming sectarian militias rather than building national Iraqi institution, we ensured and fueled the civil war that has been churning since. That left--broadly--three options:
1-Iraq as a perennial basket case, forever dependent on the U.S. with L. Paul Bremer as satrap
1-Iraq as a perennial basket case, forever dependent on the U.S. with L. Paul Bremer as satrap
2-partition, in which the Kurds at least get the self-determination of peoples that we've promised since we signed the UN charter
3-Iraq as a festering failed state and incubator of Terrorists who threaten the world.
The Iraqi people rightly rejected the first option and the third is intolerable. So lets give serious thought to the second. Iraq's borders have never made ethnic, cultural or political sense. They were drawn in haste as we dismantled the Ottoman empire. The Kurds deserve self-determination no less than do e.g. the Jews.
Barry Haskell Levine
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