Your thoughts please (and anyone else's fro that matter) on the following Peacedove.....

[moondog]

Iyad Allawi (ex prime minister) was quoted over the weekend as saying that iraq is now in the grip of a 'terrible civil war.'

Now,whilst being firmly in the 'Britain and the USA had no right to interfere' camp, it seems that most of the violence is due to clashes between Sunnis and Shias?
Do you agree and is there any way in which it could have been avoided or was it inevitable?
Will/is it possible for these factions to come to a truce?
Was Saddam Hussein's tyranny the lesser of two evils.

I read in the liberal press that vat swathes of Iraq are actually delighted by the intervention of foreign forces so am feeling a little confused.

Another thing....

In Afghanistan,a male 41 year old medical worker is facing the death penalty after converting to Christianity.
The death penalty for 'apostates' also applies in other places such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.
Do you feel that this in an acceptable line to take?

In your own time.......

Under Sharia law

DC,what you say is most intersting and a lot of it rings true. Certainly a lot tallies with my experiences in the mE.
Bit alarmed by your reference to a 'defective culture like the Arab one' however!

I'm a judgemental person.
To me a society that cannot find employment for so many, that often regards female rights as evil and cannot even keep order on the streets as defective.

To me it's either blame the culture or the genetics. Given that Islam exists over many subsets of the human race, the inability to organise even simple things like elections is not down to any plausible idea of race.

Hmmmm...it will be interesting to hear what PD has to say when he eventually turns up.

But by your standards DC, practically every society that ever existed is defective.

Which is probably fair, come to think of it.

Indeed no society is perfect, but there is a big difference between a good try and malicious incompetence.