[wimpycat]

I remember you mentioning the Swiss canton system several weeks ago, before Jonah Goldberg brought it up.

You know your history, and you've studied how constitutions are formed and maintained.

The raw material is there in Iraq to form some sort of stable and democratic government. Telling us it can't be done only makes us try harder.

[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?