The Faithful Skeptic

The biggest problem I see in Iraq is that even if the military deals with al-qaeda, there’s still the massive problem of sectarian violence.  I’m just not sure there’s a good military solution - to some extent, the Shia are determined to wipe out the Sunni.  So here’s the plan:

Step 1: Find a predominantly Sunni state in the middle east.
Step 2: Offer them 20% of Iraq’s oil revenues if they will accept all Sunni that wish to leave Iraq.  They must agree to spend a certain amount (10%?) on integrating those refugees into their society.
Step 3: Open diplomatic relations with Iran.
Step 4:  Make it clear to Iran that they can annex Iraq - under two conditions: 1) Guarantee safe passage to all Sunni refugees that wish to leave.  2) Provide 20% of Iraq’s oil revenues to whomever agrees to accept the Sunnis.
Step 5:  Tell Iran that the US will not interfere in the internal politics of Iran/Iraq provided they do not provide a safe haven to terrorists or continue to fund terrorists in other areas.
Step 6: Give Iran a final message - if any terrorists, connected in any way to Iran, attack the United States we will bomb them back to the stone age, using all weapons at our disposal, up to and including nuclear weapons.  If they attack any other foreign state we will support the right of that nation(s) to take the same action.

What do you think?

One of my favorite blogs is Freakonomics - written by the authors of the book.  They just announced that the blog has moved from http://www.freakonomics.com/ to the New York Times.  The biggest change is that means they no longer offer a full RSS feed.  So if you use a feed reader (like Google Reader) you can’t read all of their posts in the reader.  You have to click through to get the full story.  That’s annoying and it means I’ll likely be unsubscribing (and a lot of others as well, if the comments on their blog are any indication).