It is a good question whether there is anything that US troops can do to stop a civil war in Iraq. We certainly didn't stop one in Vietnam, but it looks like there is a good potential to win in Afghanistan, because there all that is needed is to flatten the Talibani . I might add, that we don't seem to be doing a really good job of this. It would be reasonable to assume that the Talibani should all be pushing up daisies by now. But alas, this would have involved finishing the real problem (Al Qaeda) before addressing a trumped up problem (Iraq).
The Iraqis have never considered the idea of minority rights combined with majority privileges, which is the basis for a pluralistic democracy. Throughout Iraqi history and Ottoman history before that, it has been the Golden Rule some have the gold and rule and the rest lie down and pay them homage. The Shiites have rarely been on top, and now that the US-staged elections have put them there, they are unwilling to surrender the idea of having the same absolute control that the Sunnis had over them since the British left.
The Kurds simply prefer to keep Kurdistan and as much of its huge oil resources as they can, for themselves. So long as the US does not interrupt their ambitions, they are willing to make nice with the Americans.
The US conquered Iraq because US interests want Iraq's oil. There were plenty of far easier and even more oppressive regimes to topple, but most of them had no oil, certtianly not as much easily exploitable oil. And Israel was frabjous about having US troops so close as well.
No Iraqi believes that the US is spending its huge amounts of money and the lives of its soldiers in Iraq just because we are such nice, decent folks. Iraqis think of rapine and plunder when they think of conquest. Most of them were quite happy with Saddam looting Kuwait. The Kuwaitis were far too uppity and deserved a clobbering for it, in their thinking.
The US will eventually withdraw its troops. Iran and Syria will always be neighbors. The Kurds will always crave autonomy from all non-Kurds, and this will annoy the Turks, the Iranians and the Arabs, as it always has. Those are irrefutable facts of the situation.
How is the US supposed to prevent or stop a civil war when we have only guns. Almost none of our troops know conversational Iraqi Arabic, which is a far cry from Koranic Arabic you might learn with Rosetta Stone. They know very little about the culture, which they surely consider beyond weird. If 130,000 monolingual, monocultural Americans with guns cannot stop a civil war, how are 150,000 going to do better?
It's what I would call an impossible job.
And even if we did end the civil war, as I said, eventually the US will pull out and come home. This is not going to be another Korea. And Iran and Syria will always be next door.
