Can Soccer Bring Peace to Iraq?

The mainstream media is all fuzzy wuzzy over Iraq beating Saudi Arabia 1-0 in Jakarta to win the Asian Cup.

While any good news coming out of Mesopotamia is welcome, I’m having just a wee problem translating an on-the-field sports victory into a watershed moment for a country whose off-the-field problems border on catastrophe.

Besides which, the Saudis are Sunnis, a fact not lost on the majority Shiites.

By way of reference, remember the Ivory Coast's thrilling – if brief -- run in the 2006 World Cup? Did things begin to turn around in that hardscrabble nation?

Well, there's still a civil war, but a ceasefire has held for five months.