We should stop going around babbling about how we’re the greatest democracy on earth, when we’re not even a democracy. We are a sort of militarised republic.
A decade after Hitchens’ ballyhooed invasion, Iraq is a wretched basket case, a nation riddled with sectarian violence, religious extremism, ruined infrastructure, poverty, high rates of childhood cancer, and sheer human misery. The country is on the verge of disintegration.