The problem with Iraq is that we've used some techniques - paying off tribes/shieks as an example - but we haven't taken a side because there is some kind of belief that all groups are to be treated equally, which is an extremely foreign concept (along with democracy/mobocracy) to most Islamic cultures. We can't really ask the peshmerga to take care of that nasty Sunni insurgency because it means placing one group above another. This would be blogged to death by the media.
Ski

Good post but I would say we have taken sides and not always recognized that we were in fact doing so. We have certainly accomodated the Kurdish side all along. We took the Shia side early on under the rubric of reconciliation when it was anything but that. Now we are in bed with the Sunnis of all sides.

Best

Tom