[Burkeman1]

Raw material? What raw material? A thousand years of feaudalism? Of exposure to Judeo-Christian thought- to western thinking? Iraq is not even past the tribal stage which Europe was almost fully over a thousand years ago including Switzerland.

Who has the magic democracy wand? Does Jonah have it? I don't. If you wave it do mature democratic states appear over night? Mexico isn't even a real democracy and we are going to build one in Iraq?

[wimpycat]

Ummmm...I'd rather discuss this with somebody who knows about this sort of thing.

But I will explain what I mean by raw material. I mean natural resources, a largely secularized, relatively well-educated people, with lots of exposure to western ideas. The British were there for awhile, remember. And a lot of Iraqis have Western educations. Unlike Afghanistan, which I personally think is a hopeless case, they have infrastructure--telephones, electricity, water, sanitation, factories, universities, some pretty decent highways, and they have the oil reserves to maintain it. That's what I mean when I say "raw material".