[Mr. Silverback]

I wish the leadership country -- both parties, that is -- would give up this silly, childesh notion that "spreading freedom and democracy around the world" is somehow a moral/political mandate of the United States. In some cases, "freedom and democracy" is the last thing this country really wants -- and I've made the case that Iraq is a perfect example of such. The development of a viable nation-state in Iraq is absolutely impossible, and anyone who thinks it would work out in the end is naive, delusional, or both.

That's funny...I figure if you think you've made any such case convincingly you are either naive, delusional or both.

[Alberta's Child]

I hate to break this to you, but Iraq doesn't even exist except in the minds of government leaders in the U.S. and Great Britain. It lacks some of the most basic elements of a "nation" (a common religion, culture or ethnicity, for example), and is really nothing more than a remnant of the colonial era that was cobbled together in the aftermath of British rule.

Dis-aggregation and "downsizing" is the clear trend around the world today -- as more and more people understand that totalitarian governments are a necessity whenever people from different religious/cultural/ethnic backgrounds are thrown together and expected to live as a "nation." This is true whether we are talking about the harsh totalitarianism of Eastern Europe and the Middle East or the soft, lazy totalitarianism of a Western country like Canada. Paper nations like the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia have been consigned to the dustbin of history over the last 15 years, and the people in those places are better off today than they were before -- primarily because they were able to shed what were basically fraudulent notions of nationhood.

Why the U.S. thinks Iraq will be any different is beyond me. In fact, the U.S. quite specifically cannot promote real "freedom and democracy" in Iraq, since the people of Iraq -- if left to determine their futures independent of any outside influence -- would likely decide to break the country up.