This article may be what it takes to extract me from my self-imposed blogging exile.

I’m almost ashamed that the author and I receive paychecks from the same company. If you are so inclined, read it, but be prepared to be underwhelmed by the lack of clear thinking, logic, and plain common sense.

Anyway, before even reading the article, I had been thinking a lot about the idea of church recently. For a lot of reasons, it’s been on my mind. I find my self oddly struck by the fixation that so many people have with a relatively rigid notion of what church — or perhaps more specifically “the Church” — is supposed to look like. People tend to have these real deep-seeded notions about things like authority and structure and vision.

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There’s a lot of talk about pulling the troops out of Iraq. At this point, it’s going to happen, it needs to happen, and I think even President Bush recognizes that it’s inevitable.

Pulling troops out of Iraq is not a signal of defeat. The goal is Iraq has always been regime change. We’ve accomplished that. The fragile, developing democracy in Iraq is not going to look like democracy in America. It’s going to have a decidedly “Iraqi” flavor. The real question is what will Iraq look like once America takes off the training wheels and begins to pull out of the country?

Austin Bay suggests seven scenarios.The one that I find most appealing and most sustainable over the long-term is what some call the “three-state solution”. This scenario recognizes that what is tearing Iraq apart and leading to so much violence and insurgence is the fact that you have two ethnic, religious factions fighting over power. The solution would be to divide up Iraq and its oil revenues amongst the three predominant factions. They’d each get a slice of the pie and would be able to hold onto some asset that they believe to be valuable.

This would likely mean that the Kurds in the north becomes the independent Republic of Kurdistan. They can then work out their problems with Turkey. In the south, the Shia majority would become Iraqi Shiastan. The remaining areas, mainly parts of Anbar province, would become a Sunni state — Iraqi Sunnistan.

All areas would retain some oil revenue. All areas would be independent. But the big question remains, what happens in Baghdad? Shared capital? The Berlin of the desert?