You may think I'm crazy but Iraq is too divided and it's recent history has been far too ugly for it ever to be a viable entity. I fear the place is going to descend into catastrophic civil war. Either it should be split into separate states (Kurd, Turkish, Sunni & Shi'a) or it should be allowed to return to dictatorship. Democracy simply won't work. Democracies evolve over many years/decades, they simply can't be enforced where there isn't a will.
It was clear from the start to everyone but the Bush administration (whose naivety and short-sightedness never ceases to amaze me) that Iraq would be extremely hard to keep together. It was basically created out of nowhere by the British after the fall of the Ottoman Empire for no reason other than it looked nice on the map. Whoever thought it was a good idea to put Kurds, Sunnis and Shi'a into one nation and not expect decades of conflict must have been off their tree.
Anyway, in my view we should work towards transferring UN rule in Iraq, as an interim phase before installing a fully fledged democracy.
