IS THAT SO?

Sick to death of "identity politics" at home, Americans find themselves dealing with a tinderbox of ethnic division in Iraq. We may be the least well-equipped nation in the world to manage the kinds of group hatreds that threaten Iraqi society today.

Because of our belief in the "melting pot" and America's own relatively successful - though halting and incomplete - history of assimilation, we don't always understand the significance of ethnicity, especially abroad.

Seems to me that failing to develop a melting pot mentality...that is, heeding the lines of ethnic hatred has a whole lot to do with the middle east being the stagnant cesspool of zero manufacturing, zero economic growth, terror petri-dish that it is today...