…that, amazingly, Iraq could end up with a decent government. Inter-group reconciliation is a heck of a good sign for a society that was for decades a tyranny of a single clan (the al-Tikrîtiyya) and then, not a couple years ago, was disintegrating along religious and ethnic fault lines. I’ll bet you wouldn’t get these kind of numbers in what was Yugoslavia.

Conclusive? Hardly. Possibly chimerical? Sure. But… maybe…

And remember, for all our pusillanimity relative to Sa‘ad ed-Din Ibrahim, etc., the erection of a decent, popularly sovereign Arab state with some stability would be the most important act in the Middle East since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire—and an unambiguously positive one.

Confucius, Œc. Vol.

Don’t ask impertinent questions like that jackass Adept Lu.