Square Footage

I'm constantly hearing about how Americans can't find Iraq on a map. It even came up last night on the Daily Show, in Jon's interview with Rick Shenkman, who was there to pimp his book, "Just How Stupid Are We?" Perhaps I'm just making excuses for my poor geography skills, but does it really matter? I'm not promoting ignorance and I'm certainly not arguing we're on top of everything we need to be. I think Americans should know that Iraq is in the Middle East and generally where that is and I was appalled by Shenkman's claim that "only two out of five Americans know we have three branches of government and can name them". But what's the fascination with being able to find a specific country on the map? What exactly does that information do for us? We're not going to need to navigate there, are we? Most can find the US and our immediate neighbors. My guess is most can find Australia, China, Russia - the big ones (and by big I mean 'large', not 'important'). There are a lot of countries in the world. Isn't it more important that we know the issues we're dealing with in Iraq than where exactly it is on a map?

For those of you who are curious, here it is: