Quote Originally Posted by SteveMetz View Post
To tell you the truth, this could be a good thing. An external threat might focus the attention of Iraqis and encourage them to move toward resolution of their internal problems.
Again, I suggest a review of the Cyprus situation. A Turkish threat in Northern Iraq would probably be welcomed by factions in the south as a way of eliminating the Kurdish problem--a lot of Iraqis have about as little use for Kurds as the Turks and many Iranians do.

Your post suggests that there is a strong sense of Iraqi national sentiment. If this were the case, which I seriously doubt, then we would not have the sort of problems that we currently see in country. What the Iraqis most lack, IMHO, is a sense of a national identity. If they had one, I believe the Iraqis would close their borders to outside threats and band together to solve their internal security problems.

I submit that the presuppositions about Iraqis unifying in the face of a common foe as expressed in the above quotation reflect the same type of thinking that led to the adoption of the US small footprint approach in Iraq. It was mistakenly presumed that the Iraqi populace would pull together for the greater good of Iraq once we helped them get rid of that small group of bad guys (Saddam and his Ba'athists) who were holding the majority down.

Iraq represents a conflict, like that found in 18th and 19th Century US (and still to some extent today), between the adherents of states' rights and the supporters of Federalism. In Iraq, however, the states' rights (or tribal rights to be more correct) seem to have the upper hand across the country.

Most other countries in the world have not had the same level of success in "melting pot" experiments that America had in the 19th and 20th Centuries.
Of course many of those other countries also did not choose to engage in the experiment on their own--it was forced down their throats by other countries, much as we seem bent on doing in Iraq today.