On Wed, 21 Dec 2005 11:24:14 -0500, Brice Yokem <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> As I recall the French supplied help during the American Revolution
> including military forces.
> 

Are you claiming that the French invaded the thirteen American 
colonies in 1776, forced the local population to overthrow the 
legitimate authority of KGIII, and then selected collaborators to 
drive out the remaining loyalists and fashion a constitution eleven 
years later?  Because if not then your preceding statement is 
irrelevant to the situation in Iraq. 

> As I recall Foreign influence resulted in the UK divesting itself of it's overseas empire or 'commonwealth'.  This included Canada.

Really, and which wars compelled Great Britain do to do this?  What 
foreign power occupied London and dictated to the population of the 
British Empire the course of political development that led that 
empire to become first a commonwealth and finally an association of 
independent states?  

It is self-evident that observation and consideration of previous 
efforts, successes, and failures of others guide future decisions 
in human affairs.  The question is the degree of coercion employed 
by external agents to directly influence those decisions.  The 
political evolution of Canada, Australia, India, New Zealand, and 
other former British imperial provinces into modern nation states 
are, in the main, the result of indigenous political movements 
within those states or British economic and political preferences 
and never the dictate of some alien military occupier. 

I can recall no case where any former British royal province or 
colony was ever forcibly removed from either the Empire or 
Commonwealth as the result of foreign military intervention, unless 
you claim that the American Revolution was actually a French ploy 
against Britain, in which case the United States experience remains 
unique.

> 
> I do not fully understand the details of this, 

Evidently.

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