What happens after -- whether Shia attack Shia, or join to crush Sunnis, or Arabs engage Kurds -- is not a war Americans are willing to intervene in with any new surge of U.S. troops.
About Afghanistan there is a gathering consensus that victory over a resurgent Taliban with a sanctuary in Pakistan's border region cannot be achieved without an infusion of U.S. troops this country is unwilling to support.
Escalating the war means more air strikes that have alienated the Afghan people as well as President Kharzi. More Predator strikes in a Pakistan where anti-Americanism is rife and the government is besieged hardly seems a promising policy.
What is the U.S. bottom line in Kabul? Not the impossible dream of a democracy modeled on our own but a government committed to keeping al-Qaida out. Given the bloody beating the Taliban have taken for seven years, they may be amenable to such an arrangement.
But the first test of the Obama-Clinton team may be Iran.
Tehran claims its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes, and the International Atomic Energy Agency has never declared it in violation of the non-proliferation treaty. Yet, the suspicion is broad and deep in Washington and Tel Aviv that Iran is hell-bent on building an atom bomb. Obama and Hillary have both said that will not happen, no matter what it takes.
If war with Iran is to be averted, the new team must move swiftly to talk to Tehran and put its cards on the table. It is here that the potential for a split between Barack and Hillary is greatest.
If Likud's "Bibi" Netanyahu wins the Israeli election, he will push hard for U.S. air strikes on Iran's nuclear sites, and push back against any Obama deal with Tehran. With the Israeli lobby and a Jewish community that gave Barack 80 percent of its votes, plus the neocons and Evangelical right calling for strikes against Iran's nuclear sites, would the Obama-Clinton team stand united -- against war?
Would Hillary, a former senator from New York who relied even more heavily than Barack on Jewish contributions and votes, stand by Barack if the two disagree on whether the survival of Israel is at stake?
On second thought, the antiwar left is right to be nervous.