Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

A friend sent me this, with the subject line "plus ça change..."* (from the French saying which means "The more things change, the more they remain the same"):

Even Feisal [first king of Iraq] acknowledged that "there is still - and I say this with a heart of sorrow - no Iraqi people, but unimaginable masses of human beings, devoid of any patriotic idea ... prone to anarchy and perpetually ready to rise against any government whatever."

from a book review by Adam Kirsch in the New York Sun

The idea that someone could come in and draw lines on a map, with no regard for the natural divisions among the peoples living in the actual places, and so create "nations" (as opposed to political entities needing to be held together either by outside threat or inside tyranny) has failed spectacularly all over Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Central Asia. And yet we - the line drawers, all of us - continue to be startled when its failure is demonstrated one more time.

Plus ça change, indeed.