Iraq.

Editor,

An ISIS offensive buttressed by former members of Saddam Hussein's military who were banished along with Ba'ath party members from the post-American invasion Iraqi government was inevitable.

All that was necessary was for American firepower, which is useless as an instrument of politics in the first place, to leave the county.

The USA made a fine mess in Iraq and really doesn't have much of a role to play in this crisis beyond agreeing not to cast it as a conflict between "terrorists" and "the government of Iraq."

There is a monumental struggle for power going on in the Middle East right now, due in no small measure to the USA having implemented a version of "democracy" in Iraq constructed on the basis of sectarian identities. In the abstract this has worked out about as well as Jim Crow, Apartheid, or any other system in which political actors are defined by ethnicity, race, tribe, or sect.

Knowing how dismally the USA failed in its mission to bring "democracy" to Iraq is not a way forward, however, nor is escalating the sectarian divide by finding no alternative to military participation by Iran or ratcheting up Shi'a militias' involvement on the ground.

Diplomacy is the only path forward, with two preconditions: give up on unconditionally defeating "the terrorists," and allow the parties living in the region to share power as they decide, Western access to Arab oil not withstanding.

Re: "Beleaguered Iraqis Court Iranian Mastermind of the Shiites Who Fought the U.S." (6/14/2014)