“I think the test is before Obama and other American leaders as we speak. Right now they can make a series of decisions. Regardless of what’s happened in the past, right now is a moment where the fate of the United States hangs in the balance. And the test for all of them is going to be where they can overcome the mistrust, the deep ideological divisions, in some cases just political opportunism and say, this is bigger than any one of us, and we’ve got to make sure that we do what’s right for the American people. And that’s a challenge. That’s not something that another country can do for us.”

President Obama held a press conference today outlining his response to the growing unrest in Iraq. Like his other statements on the region, Obama insisted the problem is more political than military. That’s a convenient rhetorical stance, but meaningless in the real world. War is the continuation of politics by other means, a fact we learned in the blood and fire of our own Civil War. Lincoln could have rightly claimed that the core problem was political, but he didn’t withdraw the Union Army from the field.

As many experts have noted, Iraq’s modern borders are but lines in the shifting sands drawn by the British Foreign Office, combining three former provinces of the Ottoman Empire. Obviously the Kurds and Sunni chafe under the boot of Maliki’s Iran-backed Shiite government. And when years of argument don’t achieve the desired end, force is often the result.