Fanatics vs. Freedom

Feb. 2, 2005

Whether you support the war in Iraq or hate it, you have to admire the courage of those Iraqi citizens who risked their lives to vote in their country’s first free election.
And who can feel anything but disgust over terrorist efforts to keep Iraqis from the polls? Using violence to deter voters is a despicable, heartless, barbaric act of desperation that seems more likely to spur democracy on than prevent it.
Going into Sunday’s election, leaflets were scattered around Baghdad, warning citizens that, “We vow to wash the streets of Baghdad with the voters’ blood,” according to a report in last week’s New York Times by Dexter Filkins.
The leaflets warned Iraqi citizens to stay at least 500 yards away from the polls, which would be targeted with car bombs, mortar shells and rockets.
“To those of you who think you can vote and then run away,” the leaflets warned, “we will shadow you and catch you, and we will cut off your heads and the heads of your children.”
How can these people be considered anything but arrogant sneaks and murderers?
Yet, the attitude of insurgents such as the Islamic Army of Iraq dates back some 800 years when Mohammad launched a religion which declared that unbelievers would either bow to Islam or bow to the sword.
Followers of a militant religion that demands the total integration of church and state have no qualms about denying others the right to choose their own destiny.
In Europe, our political ancestors renounced religion’s place in government during the Age of Reason. Swayed by science, logic, and ugly religious-inspired events such as the 30 Years War and the massacres of Oliver Cromwell, the philosophers of the 1700s evolved the principle of the separation of church and state as being essential to a democracy. America’s founding fathers gave the usual politically-correct lip service to religion, but drafted a Constitution with “hands-off” protection from the sort of fanatics that infest the governments of the Muslim world. Fanatics that infested our own American colonies in the 1600s.
Nobel Prize-winning writer V.S. Naipal notes that many Iraqis are well aware of the danger of mixing religion and government, having seen the disaster of neighboring Iraq, which is ruled by religious mullahs. “There will be no turbans in the (Iraqi) government. Everyone agrees on that,” said Adnan Ali, a Shiite political leader quoted in the Times.
Of course, one citizen’s free election is another’s injustice, with claims that the new Iraqi government is a puppet regime of the U.S.
“Let me tell you something important. As long as my country is under occupation, I feel that my vote means nothing,” said Walid Muhammad, the imam of a Sunni mosque, also quoted in the Times.
But that seems to be the kind of recurring gripe you hear one way or another in most every election. If there’s one thing democracy teaches us, it’s that you can’t please everyone.
The sad irony is that we‘re taking a page from the Prophet Mohammed‘s own playbook, spreading democracy to unbelivers at the point of a bayonet.

Laying an Egg
Head of a platypus, neck of a giraffe, body of an ostrich, legs of a crab, tale of a squirrel... If you want an accurate picture of our economy these days, that would seem to sum up the fantastical beastie we‘ve created.
Most every newspaper editorial page and certainly every business magazine is filled with dire warnings of the reckless economic road America is heading down. We’ve got an $800 billion trade deficit, for instance; no great nation has ever survived such a drain. Meanwhile, our federal government is coughing up another $80 billion for Iraq, adding to a federal debt of $427 billion at a time when America needs help here at home. Michigan is floundering with its own $1 billion budget deficit and the highest unemployment level in the land.
That noise in the background is the rumbling of economists warning of the decline of the dollar, weakened by our government‘s habit of borrowing hundreds of billions from the Chinese and other foreign banks.
On the home front, the average American family reportedly has an $8,000 credit card debt (up from an average of $3,000 a few years ago), and apparently doesn’t have enough savings in the bank to buy a week’s worth of Happy Meals.
Home heating bills are up 88% from 2000, according to the Detroit Free Press, and last I checked, my grocery bill had gone up something like 30% in the same period.
On the other hand, home ownership is at the highest level in our nation’s history and the roads are full of new cars. Retailers reported a rise in sales at Christmas.
And no one seems overly concerned that Social Security is slated for a Frankenstein-style experiment by the same team of wizards who brought us Iraq. You‘d think that the AARP would be declaring a jihad over trusting Social Security to the crash & burn tendencies of the stock market, but so far, nada. Consumer confidence (whatever that is) is up.
It’s like we’ve become SpongeBob Nation, so overwhelmed with conflicting information on the economy, so unable to do anything at all about the tsunami of global forces, that it’s easier just to sit in our pineapple house on the ocean floor and giggle nervously in hopes that nothing really bad will come swimming our way.
Personally, I doubt we‘re headed for another Great Depression, but it‘s not hard to imagine America 20 years from now looking a lot like Britain following the collapse of its empire -- a bit shabby, with less opportunity, but not a disaster. Maybe it will do us good.
About the only thing you can count on is that this weird beast of our economy is going to lay an egg sometime in the hazy future. Golden egg? Rotten egg? Whatever hatches, it’s going to be the omelette we cooked up by letting things get to this state.