Time for Arabs to Grow Up?

These are remarkable words from an Iraqi politician. What would prompt this man who lives with daily threats to his life, to speak these words that will surely bring more religious assassins to his door?

If the Kurds succeed in building a civilised society in Kurdistan, what will that say about the arabs? Iraqi arabs have an opportunity that no other arabs have had--the opportunity to master their own fate through a representative government, and a modern system of laws.

If Iraqi arabs behave as arabs typically behave, they will throw the chance away, and descend into a bloody chaos of clan/tribal/ethnic/sectarian violence. But if Iraqi arabs do decide to join the civilised world--what an amazing thing that would be!

There is not a lot of time left for the arabs to decide. It is time for them to grow up.