I am still confused. So a couple weeks ago John McCain said that we could be in Iraq for 100 years. Look it up - it’s all over the Internets. Anyway - now he is out there clarifying his statement by saying, roughly, “yeah - we’ll be in Iraq for 100 years like we are with Japan, Germany, and South Korea.”

Now I don’t quite have my M.A. in history yet, but I am pretty sure that we haven’t been in Germany, et. al. for 100 years . . .

It’s just kind of distrurbing to me when I see our electeds out there making silly statements that are devoid of any historical context. “Iraq” hasn’t even existed for 100 years. The Brits carved it out of Mesopotamia when BP discovered oil in the Kurdish north. Only way to get the oil down to the gulf safely was to draw new borders, and install a King. So that’s what they did. There really is no, “Iraq.” There’s just three groups of people - Shia, Sunni, and Kurds - being forced to live under one roof who don’t really want to.

So for McCain to speak of being in a “country” for 100 years, that hasn’t even existed for 100 years, that really doesn’t even historically exist, shows he lacks some insight into that region of the world. The one thing that you can absolutely count on is that “Iraq” will be a very different place in one year, in 5 years, in 20 years, and beyond - and none of those places will proabaly even likely be the same. “Iraq” may very well not even exist as a single place in the next year. So again, drawing the analogy of our relationship with South Korea, Japan, and Germany, is just not possible or probable.