Juan Cole wrote a timely post this morning about what it would be like in America if America were like Iraq. This post really hits home for me because the other day I was driving down the street in downtown Raleigh and started thinking about what it must be like to be in Baghdad. I pictured all of the buildings around me looking war damaged, of the constant fear of bombings, of military vehicles and people with guns being everywhere. It was sobering.

Cole also fails to ask perhaps the most important “What if?” question, which is: How would Americans react if, amid the chaos, there were 1,650,000 foreign, non-English speaking soldiers in our country.