[antimedia] antimedia: It's a mad, mad, mad, mad world....

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Posted by antimedia:
It's a mad, mad, mad, mad world....
http://www.antimedia.us/posts/1173837359.shtml


   ....where you have to repeatedly [1]point out the obvious because
   people refuse to admit the truth.

     In terms of fundamental historical changes favoring 21st century
     freedom and peace, what Free Iraq and its Coalition allies have
     accomplished in four short years is nothing short of astonishing.
     Consider what Iraq was, not simply in A.D. March 2003, but in 2003
     B.C. Both historical frames provide instructive lessons in the
     obvious.
     Iraq, as ancient Mesopotamia (the land between the Tigris and
     Euphrates Rivers), seeded Abraham's Ur and Hammurabi's Babylon. The
     region was the Eden of city-states, the consolidator and exporter
     of the Agricultural Revolution. It is also the center of a
     predominantly Muslim region where -- to paraphrase historian
     Bernard Lewis -- something "went wrong." Lewis was addressing the
     "fossilization" that began to afflict the Middle East at least six
     centuries ago, a cultural, intellectual and, yes, political
     ossification and decline.

   It is that decline and its consequences that confront us now. We have,
   for far too long, ignored the obvious results of allowing a people to
   remain oppressed while continuously tempting them with modernity.

     Credit the Iraqi people with taking the opportunity by conducting
     three honest, open, democratic elections. In May 2006, Prime
     Minister Nouri al-Maliki formed a democratically elected,
     consensus-seeking government not simply in Mesopotamia but in the
     heart of the politically dysfunctional Middle East.
     That's an astonishing achievement.
     Al-Qaida's now-deceased emir in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi,
     understood the stakes. In a message to al-Qaida (intercepted by the
     Coalition in February 2004), Zarqawi wrote that after Iraqis run
     their own government, U.S. troops will remain, "but the sons of
     this land will be the authority. ... This is the democracy. We will
     have no pretexts." Iraq's new army and police will link with the
     people "by lineage, blood and appearance."
     The terrorists and tyrants understand. It's a shame America's
     chatterers don't.

   Strange how the barbarians of our age more fully comprehend reality
   than the highly educated elites of America and Europe. But
   understandable. Their minds have been befuddled by the siren call of
   liberalism, that completely illogical fantasy that ignores human
   nature and insists it doesn't exist even while the evidence surrounds
   them. (Hat tip to [2]Austin Bay.)

References

   1. http://www.strategypage.com/on_point/20073131816.aspx
   2. http://austinbay.net/blog/?p=1656