Iraq will break up, but not in the really bad way

Matt Yglesias picks up on an article that shows something very interesting: Iraqi Arabs, both Sunni and Shiite, are rapidly starting to identify themselves as "Iraqis," while Kurds still mostly do not.

In one sense, this bodes ill for the future of Iraq. Kurdistan will secede, and either the Iraqi government will brutally crush the Kurds, or the country of Iraq will break in two. That's bad, because it means A) war and death, and B) a less democratic Iraqi government due to the need to repress the Kurds.

But in another sense, it's amazingly good. I never thought, after the brutal sectarian bloodletting of 2004-2007, that Iraq's Sunni and Shia Arabs would be able to knit themselves back into one united ethnic identity; if that ends up happening, I'll be blown away. Avoiding a Sunni-Shia religious war is very important to Mideast stability, and would prevent America's withdrawal from precipitating a return to ethnic cleansing in Iraq. A Sunni-Shia reconciliation is still no done deal, but if it happens I might be willing to say that the Iraq war had been, in some limited sense, a "success."