As the U.S. military struggles against persistent sectarian violence in Iraq, military officers and security experts find themselves in a vigorous debate over an idea that just months ago was largely dismissed as a fringe thought: that the surest -- and perhaps now the only -- way to bring stability to Iraq is to divide the country into three pieces.

[...]

The most radical view, which even now appears to have only a few proponents in the U.S. military establishment, is that the United States should step back and let a civil war occur. In this argument, the U.S. government created a revolutionary situation when it invaded Iraq and brought about a wholesale transfer of power from the country's Sunnis to its Shiites. So, this argument goes, civil war isn't something to be avoided, but rather a necessary part of the process of changing Iraq.

[Thomas E. Ricks, Merits of Partitioning Iraq or Allowing Civil War Weighed, The Washington Post, 30. April 2006]

Today, the mystifying elements are mastered and employed in productive publicity, propaganda, and politics. Magic, witchcraft, and ecstatic surrender are practiced in the daily routine of the home, the shop, and the office, and the rational accomplishments conceal the irrationality of the whole. For example, the scientific approach to the vexing problem of mutual annihilation - the mathematics and calculations of kill and over-kill, the measurement of spread ing or not-quite-so-spreading fallout, the experiments of endurance in abnormal situations - is mystifying to the extent to which it promotes (and even demands) behavior which accepts the insanity. It thus counteracts a truly rational behavior - namely, the refusal to go along, and the effort to do away with the conditions which produce the insanity.

[Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 7: The Triumph of Positive Thinking. One-Dimensional Philosophy ]