When Americans look at the rest of the world, they always assume that people are primarily classified by their religion and ethnicity and everything follows from there. Come to think of it, when they look at themselves they assume the same. The difference is that they assume in the US that "diversity" is a source of strength because of the success of the melting pot, and that abroad it is the source of all conflict, and that the rest of the world needs to learn the American way of integration in order to live with themselves peacefully.

I believe the situation in Iraq would be very different had the Coalition Provisional Authority not come in from the very beginning determined to "manage the ethnic and religious divisions within Iraq".

The frames we wear...

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman