We've been hearing a lot lately about how much better the U.N. - more especially France - is at writing constitutions and setting up stable governments that allow citizens to prosper and become as well-to-do as their national resources will allow. Why not go back and review some history and see just how well some of those folks are.
We had a revolution and for the first time in history wrote a constitution that gave the power of government to the people. Our constitution has built-in methods of changing, using 2/3 votes of the Congress, and simple majorities of 75% of the state legislatures. Our Revolution took place in the 1770s, and the Constitution was adopted in 1787, and has had only 27 changes made in the form of amendments. Ours is a government of elected officials.
France had their revolution about the time our Constitution was being implemented. The French chopped off the heads of the king and queen, and all other nobility and wealthy families they could find. Then they started chopping off the heads of their own leaders! Did they ever get around to writing a constitution? No matter, because in all the confusion Napoleon Bonaparte took control and made himself Emperor. He did codify the laws, but did he allow a written constitution? He disrupted the peace of Europe for around 15 years before he was finally exiled to St. Helena Island. Then another king, then another revolution and another king. The "glory" that had been France ended with an inglorious defeat at the hands of Otto von Bismarck in a very brief war in 1870, when Bismarck unified many Germanic states in Europe into the nation we call Germany.
The British and French were always on opposite sides in the perennial struggle for a balance of power in Europe until Germany came into being. Then, when World War I began, Germany was trouncing the French again, only now England sided with the French, and Germany was gradually defeating them both until we came into the war. In World War II, the Germans ran roughshod over all of Europe, knocking Poland out of the war in 28 days, and occupying Denmark and Norway, then overrunning the Dutch, Belgians, and Luxembourg. They drove the British and French armies off the Continent at Dunkirk, then put France out of the war in something like 6 weeks. The French collaborated with the Germans to prevent being wholly occupied, moving their government to Vichy. Then the British destroyed the French fleet, which Vichy was going to allow the Germans to use, in a rather short battle in the Mediterranean.
It doesn't sound like the French were very good at much of anything after their revolution. After World War II, the French were so good at self-government they had over 200 political parties, so many, none of them could gain a majority necessary to elect a premier. In the ten years following the war, the French had 9 premiers. None of them could get enough organization to get anything done toward rebuilding the country. When they finally persuaded Charles de Gaulle to come out of retirement and be president, they had to give him virtual dictatorial powers to get him to serve.
Meanwhile, remember that France was one of the European powers that had a rather large colonial empire ... such as it was. At this point, it is important for you to realize that of all the colonial powers, Great Britain was the only one which established some form of colonial government, based on the parliamentary system they used at home. Of all the British colonies that are now independent countries, try to think of one of those colonies which does not now have a stable government. Now, of all the former French colonies, try to think of one that has a stable government. Does that tell you anything about how proficient the French are at building strong republican forms of government? It should.
The French pretty much had their "chestnuts roasted" in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870; the British and Americans pulled the French chestnuts out of the fire in W.W.I and W.W.II. The Soviets refused to agree to giving the French any zones of occupation in West Germany, Berlin, and Austria, because they had collaborated with the Germans. (The Soviets were right about something, after all.) And they didn't really want the French to be allowed to have a veto power on the Security Council of the U.N. To be polite, the French had lost the bloom off their fluer-di-lis; to be blunt, they had become a bunch of has-beens, living on past reputation, for 100 years. And that's one of the countries who would teach us how to build a nation in Iraq, or anywhere else?
Now, look at the Russians. They had czars until 1917 when Alexander Kerensky established a social-democratic government, allowing the czar to stay in his position, with little or no power. Then the Bolsheviks had their revolution in the fall of 1917, and they took over the government, eventually murdering the czar and his family. There was nothing really stable about the communist government until Stalin gained control and simply killed his opposition. They had a totalitarian government until it collapsed of its own weight near the end of the twentieth century.
Germany wasn't even a country until 1870 when Bismarck unified around 300 Germanic states with Prussia to make the new Germany. Then Kaiser Wilhelm, then the new German Republic, then Nazi Germany, and later another German Republic.
Now I ask you, which of those "nation-builders" is going to do a better job of building a republic in Iraq, or anyplace else, than the coalition of the United States and Great Britain? Even though the once great British Empire is no more, the British colonies have formed themselves into a United Kingdom, independent countries who have pledged a certain degree of loyalty still to the British Crown. You decide if the Continental Europeans are the ones more capable of establishing a democratic government in comparison to our Republic which has stood for more than 228 years, or the British parliamentary system which has been around nearly 300 years. You decide whether the Coalition of nations we have with us in Iraq is more trustworthy than the "allies" we have in Europe who took bribes from Saddam to vote against our interests in the United Nations.
Is there really anything you have to think about to make that decision?