In general I agree.
However, Iraq is no more phony than a great many other countries: India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sudan, South Africa.
In much of the world, ethnic/linguistic groupings have little to do with where political boundaries are drawn.
Will enough Iraqis think of themselves as Iraqis before thinking of themselves as Sunnit, Shi'ites or Kurds?
Obviously not enough Yugoslavs thought of themselves as such rather than Serbs, Croats, etc.
Historically, the idea of Yugoslavia was formed as a way of grouping together enough of the peoples in the area to allow them to stand up to the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires, long before the USSR was a threat. Sort of the inverse of "divide and conquer."
Bismarck came up with the slogan "Deutschland Uber Alles", not as a way of asserting German superiority, but as a way to get Germans to think of themselves as Germans, and not Hessians, Bavarians, etc.