Honor Iraq’s Past With Three New States

The Times’ Feb. 15 editorial “High-Wire Act in Iraq” sounded like a scolding parent chastising three errant children with three “shoulds” and a “must.” But these aren’t kids. Asking the Kurds, the Sunnis and the Shiites “Why can’t you all just get along?” is an exercise in futility. They were a nation only because they had been literally hammered together, first by the British, and then kept that way by a brutal dictator.

Better than three presidents of one forced union of warring factions might be a recognition that these people want to be separate. Why not permit the Iraqis to reconstitute themselves after ancient Mesopotamia; perhaps as “Assyria” in the north for the Kurds, “Babylon” in the center for the Sunnis, and “Sumer” in the south for the Shiites. This might head off a three-way civil war with the U.S. caught in the middle.

Richard A. Davidson

Woodland Hills