Opinion (Chaim Kaufman): America's final mission

WHATEVER PRESIDENT BUSH and his advisers might like to believe, it is too late now to stop the Sunni-Shi'ite civil war in central and southern Iraq. The proposed "surge" of 20,000-odd additional US troops will not change this.

Ethnic cleansing is not only an expression of hatred or a means of revenge; often it is a rational strategic response to real security fears. The more atrocities are committed in any ethnic civil war, the more everyone in both communities becomes afraid of the other. People on each side feel dependent on communal militias to protect them, even though those same militias may be murdering members of the other community and contributing to the escalation of the war.

Read the rest at the Boston Globe