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Originally Posted by Seaver
Tell that to the Iraqis. Tell that to the Kurds who, less than one year after being massacred, signed up on mass to fight Iran under the Iraqi flag. Tell that to the Shi'ia who died in the millions to fight fellow Iranian Shi'ia under the Iraqi flag. Iraq may have been an invention, but there IS an Iraq in the minds of Iraqis.
This is not a civil war. This is no different than race riots that happen all over the world. Yes, it may spill over into a Civil War, but it's not at the moment.
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Not my point...to point out that Iraq is a historic construction is to say that some people may not choose to affirm it, because they see the particularity of it's origin...Others still choose Oz, even after seeing the man behind the curtain.
But the fact that this choice is made immediate by sectarian violence reduces the chance that enough people will affirm the concept of Iraqi over and against their other claims. It's ridiculous that we <i>expect</i> them to do so. If someone asked North Americans to affirm that over and against our national idenities...what would we say to that?