Whether that means several smaller independent nations emerging in its place, or some sort of national confederation of regions drawn based upon ethnicity and religion is subject to discussion and debate, the political status quo is difficult to overcome following decades of dictatorship during which the Baath Party exploited the divisions between different religious and ethnic groupings.

In part, of course, Iraq remains a place pocked by violence and fear, which makes compromise difficult. But more important, say Iraqi political commentators and officials, Iraq has become a cellular nation, dividing and redividing into competing constituencies that have a greater stake in continued chaos than in compromise.

In most areas, for most Iraqis, the central government today is either irrelevant or invisible. Provinces and even neighborhoods have become the stages where power struggles play out. As a result, Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds — or elements of each faction — have come to feel that they can do a better job on their own.

“No one can rely on the political participants who lack a common view of the public interest,” said Nabeel Mahmoud, an international relations professor at Baghdad University. “Such a concept is completely absent from the thinking of the political powers in Iraq’s government, so each side works to get their own quota of positions or resources.”

Because of their autonomy, the Kurds are perhaps best positioned to benefit from the government’s failures. American protection in the final years of the Hussein government helped disconnect the Kurdistan region from the rest of Iraq, bringing glass office towers and foreign workers to cities like Erbil.

Earlier this month the Kurds took another step in that distancing process, passing a regional oil law that will reach its full potential only if a national oil law is never implemented.

Shiites and Sunnis, however, are still the factions with the greatest responsibility for Iraq’s political stalemate, and the ones most able to gain from the dysfunctional status quo.

Personally, I prefer the confederation model, which I believe would produce more a more viable Iraq.

Why the problem? For the same reason we find instability in a number of Middle Eastern and African nations. Boundaries were drawn by imperialist powers in the late 19th and early 20th century without regard to the traditional affinities and antipathies of the groups that would be impacted by the borders.

In Africa, that got us Rwanda and Darfur. In the Middle East, that created Iraq and Lebanon. Rarely have the results been good.