Bob Giramma wrote: > > > The glory days of Islam were nearly a millennium ago. > I am not that old. I live in the 21st century. These days Middle East > Muslims are among the least civilized people on earth, especially when > measured by libertarian values. Without oil, the Middle East (except for > Israel) would likely be as poor and unimportant as Africa.
Israel would be no better or worse than the rest without the 10s of thousands of per capital foreign aid. And they all would be better (except Israel) without foreign interference in their internal affairs and the effort that went into artificially creating the national boundaries. > BTW, I was recently in Turkey. The Islamists are contained by aggressive > government and military force. There are laws against too much religion. > So "Turkey is moving in the right direction" because their aggressively > secular military demands it. We all have our means to the end. The USA is a work in progress, note that woman didn't get the vote for almost 150 years and oppression of personal choice is still the norm. The interesting thing is the military in Turkey has set a precedent and tends to step in when needed and then withdrawal. Why they just don't take over is an interesting issue. > I know numerous Iranian-Americans. None of them like the regime. They > tell me almost no one in Iran supports the regime. I suspect Iran could > be a peaceful, free, and productive country if they could rid themselves > of the totalitarian Islamist clerics. I agree completely. We shouldn't be doing things that piss off the people that are against the clerics. > But those clerics cannot be > allowed to get nuclear weapons no matter what it takes. So, preventive nuclear strikes on Iran works for you? -- Steve - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Take World's Smallest Political Quiz at http://www.theadvocates.org/quiz.html "If a thousand old beliefs were ruined on our march to truth we must still march on." --Stopford Brooke
