The USA must get out now. We must prevent the Saudis from making good on their promise to intervene in the absence of the USA on behalf of the Sunni minority. I doubt the Saudi regime really wants to do this anyway, and I suppose it would result in a quick debacle and collapse should they be so foolish to attempt it.
And then await the quick and inevitable ascendency of Iranian hegemony over Iraq--either the outright incorporation of Iraq into the Iranian Islamic Republic, or the alignment of a Shia-dominated Iraq into a satellite relationship with Iran.
Honest to God, that's the best outcome I could foresee at this point. It has the following possible virtues--
1) The Iranians have shown themselves to be rather savvy and restrained as Islamic fundamentalists go, and might very well restrain their Iraqi co-religionists from vindicative acts against the Sunni minority, once it is established that the Shia/Iranian coalition is going to call the shots in Iraq.
2) It would reduce rather than multiply the number of power players in the region.
3) Iranian ambition is checked by the fact that they are Shi'ites, and that with the incorporation of Iraq into their system, they would have taken about all the territory they could reasonably expect to hold, unless they prove to be Solomonic indeed in their wisdom and restraint in governing Sunnis, which I doubt. Enough to hold a minority in sullen alligence perhaps, but enough to persuade Sunni-majority nations to submit to their "heretical" hegemony? I don't think so. Elsewhere in the Muslim world, Shi'ites are a small minority, except in Syria where they are a fairly large one, and in Lebanon and perhaps Israeli-ruled territory--where they are one small faction among many. But there is little likelihood that a Shi'ite-based hegemony could grow much beyond an Iran-Iraq coalition.
4) It does correspond to the will of the majority in Iraq, and is the only one-state solution I see short of some kind of dictatorship, which would only breed ongoing violence. It also corresponds to the regional balance of power.
5) As for Balkanizing Iraq, that hardly seems like a brilliant solution to me. The Sunni territories would have essentially no economic basis save funds extorted from the oil-bearing Shia and Kurdish territories. A loose confederation of mutually hostile regions is a recipie for ongoing regional war, by proxy or by direct confrontation once the charade breaks down. The Shia territory would almost certainly affiliate directly to Iran unless forcibly restrained, and it would contain most of the current population of Iraq and a lot of the oil.
I don't know what is to become of the Kurds no matter what. On their own they could probably maintain a state, but unfortunately for them, both Turkey and Iran have large Kurdish minorities in their territories. Turkey has certainly said repeatedly they will not tolerate an independent Kurdistan or even Kurdish autonomy within an Iraqi confederation; right now only US patronage is restraining them from attempting invasion. If we go and the Turks try it I suppose they might be sorry, many tens or hundreds of thousands of deaths and yet another ongoing bloodbath later. I wouldn't be surprised if the Iranians, gaining unrestrained influence over Iraq, would gratuitiously let Kurdistan go, perhaps even throwing in their own chunk of Kurdish territory (if Iranian Kurds are Sunni as I suspect they are) just to throw a monkey wrench into the works, to either give the Turks a loose cannon on their borders to worry about or draw them into a Vietnam/Afghanistan situation of their own, and consolidate their own hold on a reconfigured Greater Shiastan Islamic Republic. But there is oil in Kurdistan. And it is a potential willing ally and base for future US adventures, so I suppose that would not be too smart. Perhaps they would concentrate on trying to win the Kurds over to accepting Iranian rule, on the same basis they've kept their own Kurds quiet hitherto.
And that's a monkey wrench in the neat scheme I've outlined for peace by consolidation of sectarian lines--the temptation to add the Turkish-ruled Kurds to the set. Along with the grievances of any Sunni Arabs the Iranians or their Iraqi co-religionists seek to dominate, it seems that no matter where one draws the lines, the Middle East is a powder keg.
And of course nothing I've outlined is good news for the USA as a great imperial power. Nor is it likely to be anything but ugly from a human rights point of view, though I do think it would be less awful than the realistic alternatives--Western-backed puppet dictators, perhaps even Saddam himself, versus Islamic dictatorships to the liking of the simultaneously corrupt and whacko-zealous Wahabi Saudis. Either of these would make (and have made) the ayatollahs look like Oliver Wendell Holmes in comparison. But only in comparison. Iraq is not likely to be worse off under the kind of Shi'ite regime that has developed in Iran than it was under Saddam's nominally secular but corrupt rule, and they have been worse off still under ours. But make no mistake, it will be ugly, just, I hope, somewhat less so. And were it not for the ambitions of Iranian extremists to make political hay of the situation in Israel and Palestine, I'd be confident it would be more peaceful for them. But Israel is another mess entirely, and despite bluster Iran is some distance away.
Face it, we have blown it in the Middle East. We have abused the rights and legitimate interests of its natives for generations, and we can hardly expect a pleasant outcome at this point. In Iraq in particular, our policy has consistently sown misery and death.
I have outlined before my reasons for opposing the invasion in 2003, boiling down to my correct prediction that the Bush crew could not possibly be expected to do anything but make things worse. And we had no principled grounds for invasion by any consideration. But let's take it as given that we were going to invade in 2003--could we have done better?
Perhaps, if we had followed the recommendations of the numerous security and military experts the Bush regime chose to silence or fire instead, we could, with far more troops, have secured the place immediately, and then, if and only if we had in good faith set out to rebuild the devastated country with American money freely given, and Iraqi labor hired without prejudice and organized in a collective effort of the US military--no contractors!--and all factions of the Iraqi people working together, we just might have capitalized on the universal hatred of Saddam and goodwill earned by good work to form the secular, democratic, tolerant, liberal Iraq Bush told us fairy tales about.
And perhaps not, even with the best will in the world. Because morality has a certain integrity to it, and no amount of good deeds could paper over the fact that we had no moral call to high-handedly invade there in the first place. The strongest claim we had to invade was that we had created Iraq's mess and we had to therefore clean it up. But any attempt to profit from that obligation negates all credit for such intentions. And the fact that the operation was at every stage corrupt and malicious shows that whatever illusions we may have willfully clung to, in the matter of deeds we had no good intentions.
So this nightmare was perfectly predictable and predicted by many, and the best we can do is get out now, and let the chips fall where they may.
And if God is merciful, it will be nothing worse than the foundation of Iranian hegemony in the region. It would be bad, but we can do far worse.
And the Bush Administration stands ready as always to show us how.
