Confronting the 3-Headed Elephant in the Room

From the beginning of our adventure in Iraq, the administration has pushed the goal of creating a unified, democratic Iraq. Is such a thing even possible? Is it worth trying to hold together an unnatural coalition of different religious and ethnic groups in order to preserve a country that only came into existence when the British started to shed their empire after World War I? Those questions animate this column in today's USA Today. It rightly argues that until we deal with the three constituent national identities within Iraq, democracy and some kind of peace is likely to be a pipe dream.