Quote Originally Posted by SWJED View Post
27 March LA Times - Insurgents Report a Split with Al Qaeda in Iraq by Ned Parker.
Seems like this an example of what Edward Luttwak has proposed ought to happen in war: let the internal conflict burn itself out by self-attrition. An example of his position is in this LA Times Op-Ed piece:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/...mment-opinions
He also pushed this line in his 1999 Foreign Affairs piece entitled "Give War a Chance."

As another deja vu, we might consider the Spanish Civil War. Iraq now seems to be rather like that conflict with the current government akin to the Nationalists and the the displaced Saddamist power elite being similar to the Republicans. Just as Iraq is splinteredinto a number of factions, each side in the Spanish Civil War had internal issues. For example, the Carlists and Falangists had issues with their allies, the Nationalist generals, and the Republicans were split amongst Anarchists, Socialists, and various Communist groups, not to mention Catalonia and Basque separatists/nationalists.