She suggested that the turmoil in Iraq was not unlike the birth pains experienced by Germany as it was refashioned into a democratic state after World War II.
Germany was not a multiethnic state, though. There were no great divisions in the populace that could be easily exploited by demagogues -- Hitler had removed those.
A better analogy might have been Germany after WW I.
If you look at the multiethnic states that have existed for any length of time in history, they have been either empires, totalitarian regimes, or the US and Switzerland. If Czechoslovakia cannot survive, why do we expect Iraq to?
