Ku Klux Klan redux

I've had a long comment published to an old post I made in January about the analogy between the Sunnis in Iraq and southern Whites in the Reconstruction South. I'm not really sure what it meant, except that the situation was quite complicated in the American South.

But I wasn't really concerned with Reconstruction, which is pretty much a done deal. I was observing that in a fight without American interference, the outnumbered Sunnis are likely to do pretty well against the Shiites, having the greater tradition of military leadership. That is still the point, but the situation is changing. The American South was more likely the old Iraq, with Whites and Blacks living in close proximity. Iraq has largely been converted into ethnic neighborhoods. The decline in civilian deaths is largely due to the completion of this process.

Leaving the question, what does the US military presence now achieve? Juan Cole has long argued that we are obliged to keep some military presence to prevent the outbreak of large scale civil war operations. I've noted that the action was taking place on a micro scale anyway. But perhaps the micro phrase is past and now the question really is, can we prevent a standard civil war between identifiable military groups by keeping our own troops on the ground?

Maybe we can. And anyone who thinks it's a good use of 200 billion a year is free to use that as an excuse for staying. Something like 15% of the population is now displaced and there is no indication that a political solution will ever get Iraq back to normal. Maybe we can do this forever. Any takers?