You know what the best thing in the world is these days? Iraqi blogs. I'm just now getting into them and they're fantastic. This may sound extraordinarily condescending, but they're almost like listening to Uncle Herb Simpson's baby translator machine. (You have to be a Simpsons fan to know what I mean.) With beautifully broken English, you can read a people coming alive in their adulthood and see them seeing the world through new eyes.
We and our allies must succeed there, jackson. No question about it.
The day will come when I can fly into Baghdad International Airport, check into a nice locally-owned hotel, pay a local tour guide to show me the sites and to hear him or her brag about their cultural riches, and end the day with a dozen courses of the local cuisine, all the while listening to local musicians play their hearts out for me and the other guests. A bourgeois notion of success and stability you say? Maybe. But tell me how many times a democracy has gone to war with another democracy. I mean real democracies. It's a very rare thing.
Check out Hammorabi to get you started. I'll be adding more Iraqi blog links in the days and months to come.