Bush's cut-and-run strategy won't work in Iraq.

With public support evaporated and its Iraq strategy failing, the Bush administration has embarked on exactly the course for which it rhetorically bashes Democrats: cut and run. American troops are being withdrawn from Iraq's deadly streets. Democracy building is largely terminated. Economic reconstruction spending ends next year.

Moreover, the administration is reprising America's failed Vietnam withdrawal strategy. "As the Iraqi security forces stand up, coalition forces can stand down," says President Bush. "As South Vietnamese forces become stronger, the rate of American withdrawal can become greater," said President Nixon.

Replacing American soldiers with Iraqis is making matters worse, not better. The Shia police forces we have trained have become anti-Sunni death squads. Ethnic cleansing is a daily tragedy, extending throughout the country. Kurds, Sunni and Shia are fighting a three-way ethnic/sectarian civil war with the monthly body count now topping 1,000. Al Qaeda and anti-American insurgents compound the deadly chaos. U.S. troops are trapped in the middle, killing cockroaches who simply return the day after the lights are turned off.

What we lack is a victory strategy. The first step is to admit publicly that a united, democratic Iraq is not going to happen. In January 2005, over 98 percent of Kurds voted their preference to secede from Iraq. Last December, sectarian and ethnic party candidates captured 91 percent of Iraqi votes.

The answer is to balkanize Iraq. Roughly as suggested by Council on Foreign Relations emeritus president Leslie Gelb--even before the war was launched--geographically divide the failed nation into threeautonomous self-governments.

Balkanization worked in an analogous situation in Bosnia. The Dayton peace accord ended war there in 1995, by segregating Muslims, Croats and Serbs into ethnic enclaves and allowing each to maintain an effective territorial self-defense force. By 2005, these ethnic armies had been disbanded and GDP had tripled. Only 15 U.S. soldiers have lost their lives in Bosnia-Kosovo deployments to date and only 250 remain stationed there today ... a success.

Iraq's boundaries are no more than the 90-year-old artifact of oil-inspired British colonialism. Yet, except in the larger cities, the population remains ethnically regionalized with fairly sharp boundaries.

Under a balkanization strategy, ethnic boundaries would need to be drawn. To live with less violence, many in the ethnically mixed cities may chose relocation to homogeneous areas. U.S.-led forces would confine ethnic self-protection forces to self-protection. Oil revenues would be shared or fields divided so that some fall within each region. The U.S. would somehow need to persuade Turkey that Kurds in northern Iraq would not be allowed to unite with those in Turkey.

Kurdistan in northern Iraq is already a de facto autonomous state. With only 200 U.S. soldiers in Kurdistan, there are no kidnappings. Violent attacks are rare. The Kurds' crackerjack Peshmerga quickly exterminate the few Al Qaeda and insurgent troublemakers who manage to sneak through Kurdistan's well-guarded borders. Friend and foe are easily distinguished. Arabs and others not fluent in the local dialect are suspects, allowed to visit and establish residence only if they prove their good intentions.

As a result of Kurdistan's effective control over violence, a building boom in roads, parks and new buildings is under way, and the economy is creating jobs and growing.

Michael Totten said this to the National Review about his recent visit to Kurdistan: "It's astonishing. It's probably the most pro-American place in the world. Certainly the most pro-American place I've ever been." Pro-America, Al Qaeda-hating, politically-stable, growing economically, relatively peaceful ... I'd call this success.

No, the blatant racial profiling is not America's vision of multicultural harmony. But it's far, far better than the disaster we are preparing to leave behind in the rest of Iraq.

Jim Rubens is a former Republican state senator from Hanover and 2000 chair of the New Hampshire GOP platform committee.