The Path of Least Resistance

Michael Yon and probably others have been saying it for awhile, and now it seems that most of our political leaders and generals are jumping on board, too: there is a civil war brewing or under way in Iraq. There are clearly three sides in the war, the Kurds, the Shi'ites, and the Sunnis. These three groups have been at odds since the British lumped them blindly into one country and called it Iraq. Each of these groups has their own culture and belief system and each wants to run their own country with nothing to do with the others. So my questions is, why not let them? Its clear that right now they don't want to exist in a country together, but most of them do want a free independent country (not a dictatorship or theocracy). Why would we see it as a loss to allow them to each have their own country? Right now we have to exert a large amount of military force to try to keep them from ripping each other to shreds -- and we're still not doing that great a job of it. These are three groups that want independence that were forced to be governed together first by colonialism and then by an oppressive dictatorship. Why does it not make sense that part of toppling that dictatorship is to set each of these groups free to govern themselves? It seems to me like we have three choices at this point:

1. Maintain a vast military presence in Iraq so that the civil war that will be fought will look more like individual acts of aggression by rouge forces. When they eventually learn to get along years, maybe decades from now, then we'll be able to leave.
2. Maintain current troop levels or decrease them in any amount and watch the country fall into full fledged civil war that either ends in separate countries being made or one or more of the factions being dominated by another.
3. Set up three separate countries today, maintain our military presence to enforce the borders for some period of time, and call it a victory for everyone.

Now, I know things aren't that simple, but I think that there is going to be conflict between these groups for a long time if they aren't allowed to be autonomous. It seems fully in line with the mission of setting up democracy in the Middle East to allow these groups of people to govern themselves as they wish. Ethnic diversity has "worked" in the U.S. historically because before any significant new ethnic group arrives there is already a stifling majority of nationals who consider themselves "Americans" (meaning citizens of the U.S.). In Iraq you have these three groups trying to coexist with none having a clear majority and all having a different vision. So, let them have three countries. If the unite into one again some day, so much the better. But if we try to keep them as one now, I believe that odds are that they will eventually split anyway. It won't be that much extra government building because each group already has their politicians and some political infrastructure, and at least two of the groups already have trained militaries: the Kurdish militias are probably the best native fighting force in Iraq, and the Shi'ites mostly own the Iraqi Army. In the end I think this is the path we are going to have to go down. Why not go there voluntarily, when we can legitimately claim that it is still victory, rather than waiting for the thousands of lost lives and costly years, in terms of dollars and politics, and what will only look like failure, for the same result? If we make a united Iraq our goal there is no way we can claim victory when it splits, and at this point it looks like an inevitability to me. So it makes sense to split Iraq in terms of lives lost, money spent, and political gain, both at home and internationally.