If America were just like Iraq... it would be occupied by an army that had invaded it on the pretext of ousting a dictator, killed tens of thousands of its citizens, and then, well, just stayed in occupation. It would have a puppet government answerable to that occupying power, whose decisions were immediately reversed by that power if they didn't suit the occupiers.

Its people would be divided between those trying to make a living under this terrifying occupation and those resisting the occupation - joined by others from outside the country who have come in to join the bloody fight.

Thousands of its people would have been arrested and effectively "disappeared" into jails from which photographs of abuse and reports of torture by the occupiers were pouring out.

All civil sanity would be disappearing, to be replaced by a bandit society in which anyone could be kidnapped (whether by occupiers acting "legally" or by bandit "freedom fighters" acting on their own orders) and might or might not reappear alive or dead.

It would be a country where all negotiation, all compromise and all decency would be dead and forgotten.