Nitpicking again

I'll have to give the President credit. It only took him a few years to admit that he led us into Iraq under false intelligence.

I'll probably have more nitpicking after I read today's transcript. But in reading excerpts from the latest speeches, something else jumped out at me:

"It took a four-year civil war and a century of struggle after that before the promise of our Declaration (of Independence) was extended to all Americans," Bush said. "It is important to keep this history in mind as we look at the progress of freedom and democracy in Iraq."

Technially speaking it took even longer than that. Think more like 200 years after the Declaration was signed did the 1960's civil rights movement grant the last basic rights to blacks. Admitedly the fathers of the Declaration didn't picture blacks as equals when they signed it. Such biases require time for general assumptions to change.

I don't think we expect to keep troops in Iraq for that long. But it will take time for Sunnis to think that Shites are inferior (and vice versa). Until such assumptions change, we're going to have to keep them for killing one another. Can they eventually get along? I don't know the answer to that - unless reglious views change to be more accepting, probably not. It's like asking if Jews and Palastenians can get along - right now, that probably isn't going to happen.