Thanks to Gene Callahan, I've just learned the civil war between Sunni and Shia in Iraq is already brewing.

Back when I still thought war was a good idea, I thought the idea of keeping Iraq one country was stupid:

The attempt to create a new "democracy" out of a large nation, one with at least three distinct groups, ignores history. The United States started with 13 small colonies. The 13 had to negotiate with each other until agreements were made. Instead of working from the ground up, we are stuck with a top-down government that is rapidly being disenfranchised by more legitimate leadership at a lower level. Case in point: Kurdistan. The Kurds are far better off than the rest of the country and would like to declare independence from the rest of Iraq, but since the U.S. would prefer not to aggravate Turkey, the Kurdish leadership is proposing a federation with the rest of Iraq.

See, this approach would have achieved a goal, which is why I finally became anti-war:

The true end to any of the pro-war sentiment I had in earlier days came when I realized we weren't achieving any of our ends. I had not thought that I was justifying means via ends, but apparently I was. War, in the absence of any decent objective, looks suspiciously like a lot of trespass and murdering. The means, bereft of any ends are easily evaluated.

We are in a war bubble. The end result of the war in Iraq is further destabilization of the region, which will no doubt be used to justify more war. More war will be used to justify more government. Politicians have access to the cookie jar, but they have no incentive to improve it or leave anything in it. War is the ultimate in bubble economics; the smoke is real and the fascist propaganda against other people should be a mirror- if only people were educated enough to see the reflection. The politicians will just take from the cookie jar, and then shatter it to pieces.