Do you remember the stories you read as a child about people whose lives were changed, usually for the worse, because of a misplaced word or a transposed comma? I was reminded of these stories recently when reading about Iraq. Iraq is collapsing because we have misplaced a word.

The word is federation.

In the year and half since the Bush administration first began championing regime change in Iraq the one assumption everybody made was that whatever came after Saddam it had to be a country that looked on the map the way Iraq does now: as a single entity, with Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites bound together as one whether they liked it or not.

It's time to reconsider this assumption.

Were Iraq divided along ethnic lines the order we are seeking could be established almost immediately in two out of three regions. The Kurds already have a functioning government in the north. Shia in the south could in short order if they were given the authority to do so. Only the Sunni-dominated region in the middle would pose a problem. But it would be far easier to try to straighten out one region rather than trying to reorder all three simultaneously.

Donald Rumsfeld likes to say that if you have a problem that seems insolvable, enlarge it. In this case, the problem can be solved by reducing it.

Heresy? Perhaps the policy wonks will think so. They have warned that we cannot divide Iraq without major risks. An independent Kurdish government in the north would possibly lead to conflict with Turkey, which worries that its own restive Kurds would be tempted to follow the example of Iraqi Kurds, leading to a separatist crisis. Iran no doubt would likely dominate any government set up by Iraqi Shia, and who wants that?

But are the fearful outcomes associated with an independent Kurdish north and Shia south any worse than the situation we are facing now? And anyway, who says an independent north and south cannot be part of an Iraqi federation, which would tend to mitigate the dangers policymakers have associated with an outright breakup of the country?

We do not have to look further than Afghanistan to see how such a federation might work. There, without much public debate, a federation is precisely what we have established. Hamid Karzai runs Kabul, the warlords run the rest of the country. There is pretense involved in the arrangement. Each of the "governors" of the states of Afghanistan swear fealty to the central government while in reality they exercise power pretty much as they wish in their own spheres. But the place remains largely peaceful. To be sure the Taliban continue to cause trouble and Afghans complain that the United States has neglected to fund the infrastructure projects needed to ignite a floundering economy and stave off a Taliban resurgence. But Afghanistan is far better off than Iraq. And a couple of billion dollars a year in direct economic aid would go far to help. Just because Afghanistan has not turned out as well as it might should not be allowed to obscure the reality that success is possible there with just a little more effort and a little more wisdom. The basic policy is sound.

The goal in Iraq is democracy. What better way to achieve it than by giving the people in the north and south the opportunity in the near future to take charge of their own governments? In return all we would ask is that they agree in advance to honor a few basic democratic principles.

No doubt forces in each region would likely want to undermine democratic efforts. But these could be kept in check by the skilful use of American aid money. Were we to adopt this approach we could immediately reduce our military force in Iraq. The Kurds and Shia could easily establish order in their regions, leaving us to tangle with the remaining Baath contingent in the Sunni-dominated middle of the country.

By turning over responsibility for security in the north and the south to Iraqis we could save billions of dollars. The money we save could be better spent on repairing Iraqi infrastructure. (We must make sure that we spend what's needed to restore Iraq's economy and not repeat the mistake made in Afghanistan.)

No doubt the situation as it developed would be a bit messy. Establishing a working government free of Baathist influence in the Sunni-dominated middle section would be difficult. But the picture would undoubtedly look brighter than it does now.

All that stands in the way of this realistic approach is the unwillingness of policymakers to take a second look at the assumption of the desirability of establishing a single central government in Iraq on which they based our policy.

Can you say the word "federation"? Let's hope our policymakers can.

Unfortunately, history suggests that they will be loath to adopt such a dramatic reversal. Long after our course in Vietnam became obviously unfruitful policymakers stuck to it. In part this was due to sheer obduracy. But it was also owing to a lack of imagination. They simply could not conceive of an alternative vision even though their own was obviously bankrupt. Poor Lyndon Johnson in the end became the most obdurate of all, refusing to acknowledge the doubts he had entertained at the beginning about the wisdom of his administration's policy. By 1968 he had pushed out of the administration all of the people who had shared those doubts, leaving he and a small coterie of true believers in charge.

Change finally came in American policy toward Vietnam only when Johnson left office. His successor Richard Nixon was as wedded to victory as LBJ but because he had no responsibility for designing the Johnson policy, Nixon felt free to adopt a new one, Vietnamization. Vietnamization did not in the end save Vietnam from communism, but the failure of Nixon's approach was ambiguous. While the South Vietnamese succumbed to the North's aggression, the United States had not simply cut and run. By 1974 when Saigon fell the United States could not be accused of fecklessness. For nearly a decade we had stuck it out under unpleasant circumstances. The collapse of Vietnam had severe consequences on domestic politics but barely weakened our position vis a vis the communists in the Cold War. In the end the Asian dominoes didn't fall, though several countries, notably Cambodia, fell victim to fanatics who gained power in part as an unintended consequence of our actions in Vietnam.

There are lessons in all this which we would be foolish to dismiss.

First, we must recognize that we may have to wait for the replacement of Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz and Bush before meaningful change can be achieved. Until then, we may be stuck with a failed policy in Iraq.

Second, victory in Iraq may need to be redefined. The Bush administration has defined victory as the establishment of a democratic government directed from a single seat of power in Baghdad. Perhaps victory instead could be defined as the establishment of a government that is more democratic than Saddam's but not as democratic as, say, Israel's.

Third, we cannot simply up and leave Iraq. Having replaced the government there we have an obligation to establish a new one. We cannot, as was famously suggested in Vietnam, simply declare victory and go home. Such a "victory" would be a symbol to both our enemies and friends of weakness at a time when strength is necessary. But fortunately we do not face the option simply of surrendering the country or remaining as the ugly occupier. A middle course is possible. It is the one suggested above. This course would not be emotionally as satisfying as the Bush administration hopes but neither would it be as emotionally devastating as a precipitous withdrawal.

It is certainly possible that ten or twenty years from now a decentralized Iraq would breakup into three separate states, leading to mischief and new problems. But it is folly to remain on the course we are on. Occupation will never work owing to the natural resistance of Iraqis to control by an outside power, even an outside power convinced of its own good intentions. The Bush administration is gambling that the occupation will be tolerated long enough to establish homegrown institutions capable of providing security and democracy. A fine dream, but events would suggest that Iraqis will not wait patiently as we remake their country. And the longer we remain in charge, the more frustrated they will become, providing Saddam supporters and religious extremists innumerable opportunities to cause trouble.

Americans do not like ambiguous endings. But we had better learn to live with them. Powerful as we are we are not powerful enough to remake the world in our own image, as the Founding Fathers so clearly saw 200 years ago.

One would have thought that after Vietnam we had learned this lesson. But apparently we have not. That is a terribly depressing conclusion but an inescapable one.