DS: What do you think will happen if we remain in Iraq?

JC: Oh, I fear it is likely that we will in fact remain for years in one way or another. My own analysis is that the US military in the Sunni Arab areas has over time driven most Sunni Arabs into the arms of the guerrillas. A lot were on the fence in 2003. But green troops killed civilians of important tribes or busted down doors and went through women's underthings, and over time virtually all the Sunni Arabs came to hate us. Search and destroy is bad counter-insurgency. Now they are experimenting with "take and hold" and "oil spot" strategies, but they just look like larger-scale search and destroy missions to me. (Tal Afar is an example, attacked by the US and Iraqi government troops in August, 2005, and given out as a success story. It doesn't appear to me anything of the sort.) If US military counter-insurgency were succeeding, it would be apparent in better security. It clearly is not succeeding.

So, if we stay in these kind of numbers, I think more and more Iraqis will take up arms against us.

DS: What do you think will happen if we pull out?

JC: If we pull out, the Sunni Arab guerrillas will turn their efforts full-time to overthrowing the new Iraqi government and taking the Green Zone. That development spells Sunni-Shiite civil war. Moreover, there is danger of an Iraqi civil war drawing in Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, so that it becomes a regional guerrilla war.

DS: Is there a solution, and what do you think will become of Iraq?

JC: The crisis in Iraq just has to be internationalized. The Italians are leaving, and probably most of the rest of the coalition will be gone by the end of the year. The British will draw down substantially and therefore become much weaker and reactive. There is no evidence that the Iraqi military or security forces can effectively substitute for the foreign troops in the hot spots, though they are good enough for places like Samawah and Najaf.

The political process has not in fact drawn in the Sunni Arabs. Mostly the political class of that community is deeply unhappy with the new government and its place in it. The guerrilla movement has gone from strength to strength and there is no sign that it is being effectively combatted. There is some danger of it taking over the Sunni Arab heartland as US troops withdraw.

A Salafi Jihadi mini-state in north-central and western Iraq is not acceptable to any of the neighbors, and they should be enlisted to stop it. Likewise, the new interest of the Malaysian PM and the Organization of the Islamic Conference in helping Iraq should be jumped on with alacrity.

But I am not optimistic. I think the likelihood is that either Iraq will descend into a Yugoslavia-type maelstrom with much death and destruction and a break-up into mini-states as a result; or it will descend into a Lebanon-type maelstrom with much death and destruction but manage to come back together as a weak nation-state in the end. The second is the better outcome for the region and the world, but it is not guaranteed. Both scenarios are dire, and could spin out of control into regional conflagration.

Clearly, there are no good options at this point, so we have to figure out which is the least bad option, which seems to be bringing in an international force to provide a modicum of security while the Iraqi government attempts to establish itself. Unfortunately, that also seems like the least likeliest possibility right now.

At this moment, "staying the course" is probably what will prevail until 2009, at which time it might be possible (certainly it must be tried) for a Democratic administration (if the President we elect is smart enough and crafty enough) to cut through the animosity that's been built up towards us and put together the kind of real international coalition that should have been prosecuting any action in Iraq in the first place. Once that's in place, we can gradually withdraw. This option is denied the Bush administration due to both their incompetency and their ideological predisposition against multilateralism and international cooperation.

By invading Iraq the way he did, Bush threw us all off a cliff, and we continue to fall. There's no question that eventually we are going to hit the ground, and that the landing is going to be hard -- the only question is exactly how hard.

Update (5/31): Chris Toensing explains Why exiting Iraq won't be easy