Well TR, since you read the Bible when you wake up every day, you surely are familiar with the many passages in which it sanctions the gruesome killing of innocents that withstand YHWH. Stonings, putting entires cities to the sword, etc. And they say the concept of “total war” was Clausewitz’s. Hah! Glass houses … stones … you get the idea.

I work with an Iranian colleague, whose face is partially disfigured by the chemical weapons that Iraq used in the eight-year war with Iran on behest of the US (check out the Rummy-Saddam pics of the period). His best friend got much worse - the flesh just boiled off his arm and he died of complications. When his unit commander died a slow and painful death in the same chemical attack that he was wounded in, he volunteered for a revenge attack. In his position as artillery spotter, he saw the opportunity to reoccupy his recently overrun position and use his knowledge of the area to aid the counterattack. Commanding an small force of the Revolutionary Guard, he snuck back behind enemy lines and assisted in the succesful counterattack. Big whoop? Not really, the war lasted years after that, and nothing he and anyone else ever did in that war really mattered.

The fun thing is that according to him, the real issue is that the US and the UK have been fighting over Iran for several decades now, and (according to him) the UK has been winning grandly since 1979, when they got these schmuck students to attack the US embassy. I can’t summarize his arguments, and frankly don’t believe much of them, but I do accept them as the view of a very intelligent and politically active Iranian, that lived through most of the turmoil in the country in the seventies and eighties. It certainly explains why any Iranian would rather be dead than be caught dealing with the US, and to a lesser degree the UK. Some of it is bullshit rhetoric (like most of what Bush spouts about the region), but most of it is simply the result of bitter, hardwon, deeply rooted experience.

I certainly was stunned to hear his analysis (and his war stories) a few weeks ago. However, that was largely because he decided to move to the UK anyway, when he was finally able to. Here’s a very educated guy, politically motivated and heavily pro-western. But going to the US? Forget it! He has a wife, house, retirement plan and career. He isn’t about to gamble all that away, so he won’t be caught changing planes on US soil, let alone drop by in our HQ. Idiots with nary an inkling of the difference between Shia and Sunni, let alone Persian and Arab, would hold his fate in their hands. Why would he do something dumb like that?

As far as the rest of the world is concerned, the US is welcome to exclude 1 billion people based on their religion, and even more because of the region they hail from, or the colour of their skin. My colleague is a non-religious Persian (i.e. non-Arab for any Texan reading this), well-educated and exceedingly tolerant (from what I can tell a common Iranian trait). He, and others like him, are finding a welcoming home in the UK and other parts of Europe. Even American companies find their services irresistable, and are willing to work around the requirement that they can’t ever be brought to US soil (or our Candadian offices, for that matter).

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

That door leads to Europe now… so let history run its course.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wrote a letter to the noble American people yesterday. I assume he’s excluding President Bush from that characterization. The letter was full of liberal anti-war talking points … which should ordinarily give pau…

Americans are responding to Ahmadinejad’s letter calling for “dialogue.” Jason Smith: “Sorry, Mahmoud, but converting to Islam under the threat of beheading and carrying out a new Holocaust are not at the top of our to-do list.” Smash does a…

The problem is that Ahmadingaling really doesn’t give a rat’s rump what we think about him. He’s playing to the world stage and will use this as another example of how he continues to “reach out” to his enemies.

I get more convincing junk mail from credit card companies.