"felton" wrote

I was listening to a discussion the other day that might clarify this
particular point, though. Saddam was a bit like the right wing
dictators we used to "support" in Latin America and elsewhere.. They
were considered to be an effective means of countering "communism",
which seemed to be considered the greater of the two evils.

Communist fanatics were better than religious fanatics because religious
fanatics despise our democratic way of life even more than communists did.
They believe it heretical for people to make our own laws and decisions
because their invisible friend (god) has already told everybody what to do
and not do. Worse, they believe that their group or sect is the only one
that understands what invisible friend wants, and that it is their job to
either convert everybody else to their way of thinking or kill them.

Muslims learn to read and write using the Koran taught by religious
fanatics. Then they learn history and philosophy from the same book and
leaders, without exposure to any other ideas, especially conflicting ideas.
So, by the time they are adults, they believe in what the invisible friend
told Mohammad even more fervently than Jerry Falwell believes the late JC is
God - and it is probably impossible to convince them otherwise. But wait,
you say, Shiites say they want freedom. Yes they do - freedom to make Sunnis
and Kurds and everybody else obey their religious rules. Ditto the rest of
them.

Saddam held them all together by providing a secular government. We didn't
like the way he did it but now we are finding that his was the only way.
Give these zealots an inch of liberty and they immediately fall on eah
other - and us.

The only solution is to deprogram these people - teach them that the god of
abraham is a false god. But that's\d face too much resistance from
Christians and Jews, who worship the same god.

The only other way to bring peace is to bring back Saddam - or somebody just
like him. The alternative is contineous chaos.

Question is why are we spending Americn lives and $trillions to do the
impossible?