Look, I have no ax to grind with our current course, at all.
However, to say: “the natural separation of Shiite and Sunnis are already occurring without violence because there is no civil war” is less than a half truth.
It is half truthful only in the sense that what’s going on is not a civil war. It is more than half untrue in that the “separation” of Sunni and Shia is NOT occurring WITHOUT violence as one of the factors in that separation.
It matters not that most Iraqis want to be done with the violence. The militia and insurgent groups create situations where “separation” is the only means of escaping the violence sometimes, for far too many Iraqis. The militia groups need and create “separation” as much as they can, as one of the means of proclaiming their “leadership” locally. They are like any other bunch of mobsters and the people do what they can - stay or go - to survive. Without the armed terrorism of the militias, most Sunni and Shia neighborhoods, in central Iraq, would not have seen as drastic changes in their demography since 2003. To say that violence has nothing to do with that separation is simply false.