Breaking up is easy to do

As we start 2015, RtO offers a contrast between American policy in 2 Koran Belt "states."

Under both Republican and Democratic administrations, the United States has spent trillions and most of whatever (small) credibility it had in the Koran Belt to keep up the shabby pretense that Iraq is a unitary state.

Meanwhile, Libya falls apart and neither the administration nor its usually eager critics seem concerned to keep it together.

It cannot be that one has oil and the other doesn't, always a favorite explanation of incoherence in American policy. Both have plenty of oil.

You might suppose that the Republicans, who evidently consider the attack on the ambassador to Libya the most significant foreign policy event of the past 25 years, would therefore have a basic Libya policy, but they don't.