David Ignatius, "A tragic replay in Ramadi": Actually, Iraq Is No Longer a Country

Following the fall of Ramadi in Iraq's Anbar Province to Islamic State fighters notwithstanding US Brigadier General Thomas D. Weidley's declaration that "The coalition strategy, I believe, is clear and our campaign is on track," David Ignatius concludes his latest Washington Post opinion piece entitled "A tragic replay in Ramadi" by observing:

"The United States shouldn’t abandon its strategy: This is still Iraq’s war, not America’s. But President Obama must reassure Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi that the United States has his back — and at the same time give him a reality check. If Abadi and his Shiite allies don’t do more to empower Sunnis, his country will splinter. Ramadi is a precursor — of either a turnaround by Abadi’s forces or an Iraqi defeat."

Question for Ignatius: What is an "Iraqi defeat"? The reality is that Iraq, created by the British after the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, has always been a fiction, whose borders failed to take into account the competing interests of Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds. Today, Iraq - like Syria - no longer exists. It has become a giant battlefield between Islamic State Sunni fighters and Iranian-backed Shiite militias, with the Kurds maintaining order in the northeast.

The Kurds? No mention in Ignatius's opinion piece of them, notwithstanding their friendly relations with the United States over the course of many decades and their past oppression by Saddam Hussein.

The some 30 million Kurds, living in Turkey and Iran and what used to be Iraq and Syria, deserve their own country; however, Obama, who does not wish to annoy Turkey or Iran, remains committed to a "united, federal and democratic Iraq."

Good luck to America's president in this quixotic pursuit of injustice.