<<Are Sunni's not Iraqi's? Are Shiite's not Iraqi's?>>
You tell me. In 1918 they were three provinces of the Ottoman Empire. Never was an Iraq. A few years later, the British and French drew a few lines on the map and voila - - there is Iraq! There are people living today who can actually remember when "Iraq" was created. For awhile, it had a monarchy given to it by the British - - some Arab who had been promised Syria in return for helping T.E. Lawrence and then found Syria was going to be given to France. So they made him a King of a newly-conquered region (Mesopotamia) whose inhabitants didn't know him and didn't give a shit either way.
Iraq has no national history in the sense that the U.S.A., Britain, France and Russia have national histories. It's an ancient civilization but it is not a nation. Except in a very technical and artificial way.
The U.S. can pull in all kinds of different nationalities, races and religions because it stands for something, something bigger than all of them. It stands for the ideals of the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. People will gladly put aside their other differences to be a part of something that's bigger than themselves, but it also has to be bigger than their own sub-groups. Most Americans are proud to be associated with the idea of America, and with good reason. Same cannot be said of Iraq. Nor can it hold together by virtue of common ethnicity and/or religion like some European countries like Poland or Romania or Lithuania,with little enough to be proud of in terms of ideals or history but a common bond of ethnicity and/or religion and a common history of victimization by surrounding, more powerful neighbours.
Have you ever seen an older Iraqi's birth certificate? It's pretty interesting in its own way. It looks a lot like the birth certificate of a person of the same age born in Jamaica or India or Palestine or Nigeria and it's printed on the same shitty-looking paper and then you realize they all look the same because they were all designed in the same Colonial Office in London and probably printed there too. But there are some differences too. The Iraqi certificates have a box for the tribe and the clan the guy was born into. That's just as important, perhaps even more important, than who the father and mother and grandparents are. Sunni Iraqis - - I don't know any Shi'ites - - are Muslims in more or less the same way that bacon-eating Jews are Jews. The religion is a part of who they are and they are more or less familiar with the rituals of the religion although they may or may not practice them. They are a pretty secular bunch, certainly no strangers to alcohol, and they might even like to believe in an Iraq like the one you describe, where everyone's an Iraqi first and foremost and the secondarily a Shi'ite, Sunni, Kurd, or even, God forbid, a Christian or a Jew. On a personal level they get along fine with all individuals, but if you ask them about Shi'ites in general, my impression is that they feel most of them are uneducated and overly religious and simplistic in their beliefs.
Most importantly they KNOW that the Shi'ite Iraqis will vote in blocs as dictated by their religious leaders, who are also to a large extent their political leaders as well. The Shi'ites will vote for their own. The Sunni also will vote for clan and tribe representatives knowing that their first duty is to their clan and tribe, not to "Iraq," whatever "Iraq" may be. They had no problem with an "Iraq" so long as it ran on principles - - anti-democratic for sure - - which always made sure that their tribes and their clans got to call the shots. NOt the more numerous Shi'ite tribes. The Shi'ites are happy with "democracy," however, because it will ensure their tribes' and clans' dominance over the Sunni tribes. NOT because they think "one man one vote" is intrinsically a beautiful and good thing.
From what I see of most Anglo-Saxons, they live pretty individualistic lives, their second and third cousins are not a huge part of them and large family gatherings are few and far between. I would bet that Iraqis in general through social habit, gatherings, shared housing and shared neighbourhoods, have become much more closely involved with their second, third or even fourth cousins than Americans ever have been or will be. Politics take on a whole new personal meaning. A lot more people have a personal stake in politics because that next oil minister just might be someone who has known them since infancy and could do a hell of a lot of favours for them. So that ministry falling into another tribe's hands is definitely not a good thing.
Your problem is one of incredible naivete and innocence. Some might call it ignorance. "Why can't they just be sensible like Americans and look at things the way we do?" They are NOT Americans. They DON'T look at things the way you do. They were raised the way they were, and you were raised the way you were. This is not a genetic thing. John Sununu and Ralph Nader have no genetic predisposition to "bad citizenship." But you are taking a system that works fine for YOU and can't understand why they don't believe it won't work fine for THEM. Ironically, the Iraqis best adapted to run plays from your playbook are the Sunnis, and of them, the most likely candidates would be the former members of the Ba'ath Arab Socialist Party, which stressed modernity, as well as national and international loyalties over religious ones.
One last point. America did not come together from a diverse bunch of people. America was basically a creation of white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants from Great Britain who brought the ideals of their home country to America and rebelled when denied what they saw as their natural rights as Englishmen. Others who came later were attracted to the ideals and the accomplishments of the new state and they were all too ready to sacrifice most if not all of their former national identities in order to fit into the newer and better model of a nation-state. This is obvously not the case in Iraq.
