On the bright side, if a society USED to be secular and is NOW a theocracy, does that at least mean better, more fashionable burkas? It's been awhile since any modern society returned to the burka with fresh eyes, no? Just asking.

Well, I recently perused the last
issue of Modern Bride, and frankly,
I was generally disappointed with
the interpretation of many of the
designers. I wouldn't necessarily
go so far as to equate "modern" with
"fresh eyes"

---Jensen

Iraq didn't have any connection to Al Qaeda before the war. But now—with some pro-Sharia folks in power—they could replace Afghanistan as Al Qaeda's official host country.

" The War on Iraq will make it clear to our friends and enemies in the Middle East (and elsewhere) that we mean business: Free your people, reform your societies, liberalize, and democratize... or we're going to come over there, remove you from power, free your people, and reform your societies for ourselves."
--Dan Savage, 2002

Thanks, Dan, for your naive & simplistic solution to the issues in the Middle East. Now that the Iraqi people have chosen a deeply Shi'ite government, would you please give us all another naive & simplistic solution? How about I give you a hint: Let's invade Iraq!

Dan wasn't wrong then, and he isn't now. Its all about the execution, or how the war was carried out. If Bush had not ordered troops in until their number equaled the first Gulf War numbers (500,000 or so, lots of different countries). It didn't have to be like this.

Also, it seems the Iraqis, of all stripes agree: they all want us to leave, and relatively soon.

Uh... Belltowner... No other country with significant troops wanted to invade Iraq and the longer Bush waited, the LESS anyone wanted to invade. And no way we were going to get more support for regime change based on Savage's reasoning then. The only way the US could have gotten 500,000 troops on the ground in Iraq would have been with a draft.

Furthermore, a Shia theocratic dominated government was a likely outcome no matter how many troops we had there. That's the democracy part. I'm not sure the democracy part is a bad thing by itself - its just that I don't support bankrupting the United States and building fascism at home to give the Iraqi Shia that opportunity. I can think of a number of African locations that could have achieved greater benefit for less money, if I wanted to support militaristic approaches to spreading democracy.

AND SNCC Kid: It is not the Shia theocrats dominating the government making it a draw to Al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda is rabidly Sunni. The Iraqi Sunni and Al-Qaeda are fighting for us to leave. It remains to be seen how Iraqi Sunni will work out their relationship with domestic and foreign Al-Qaeda forces when/if the US forces leave. The Shia lean toward Iran. Iran and Al-Qaeda do not support each other no matter what Bush says.

Hey, Chetob,

Thanks for the Sunni V. Shia lesson.
But I know the difference. I was just joking to make the point that if the super religious Shiite faction takes control of Iraq—a la the wing nut in Iran—it'll defeat the purpose of Bush's "freedom" agenda.

So, yeah, I know that Al Qaeda is Sunni.

Bush's biggest lie was that Saddam and Qaeda were allies. Saddam is secular shia & bin Laden, obviously, is not.

I thought about posting a link to my pre-war, pro-war stuff. But I didn't want to deny someone else the pleasure of doing so.

Jeez, thanks for clearing that up
for us, Dan. Next time you are on
a book tour, take a day off and make
a pit stop at Walter Reed. Nation
building can do amazing things to
the human body.

---Jensen