The vacation from complexity is over

The black and white days of good and evil, my side or the terrorists' is over. We can't hide from it any more, the world is actually more complex than a scantron form and we've come to the point where one word answers won't work.

Democracy, for lack of a better word, or rather the word that Bush has been using, is taking root in the middle east. But the elections in Afghanistan, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Iran, and now the Palestinian territory have all brought forth radical, religious, fundamentalists to power. The people have spoken and they have asked for American hating, religiously narrow, overly conservative, military leaders. The kind of militant groups that make the propped up dictators we've been peddling for decades look like Jimmy Carter.

In no way do I think we should go back to the Shah or any other American condoning, corrupt leader. But Bush has forgotten to be careful for what he asks for, because he just got it: An Afghanistan that is electing itself back to a warlord lead fiefdom; an Egypt that tried to act democratically to receive better trade deals but just voted for the party that backs Hamas; an Iraq that is bent on splitting apart and a Shiite majority that has sad it will side with Iran if America attacks it; a Lebanon electing itself back into chaos; an Iran that is out the prove the Holocaust didn't exist, Israel should be wiped off the map, and Nuclear weapons are their solution; and finally a Palestine that has just purposely cut itself off from the rest of the world by electing the worse of two parties because the worse party was more violent but less corrupt and actually collected the garbage.

I think Bush was right when he said that all people want democracy. I see how that makes sense. Democracy keeps governments honest with their people and doing the bidding of those people. But Bush forgot to take into account what would happen when those people hate you and most everything else that you stand for. How do you fight a country for doing what you wanted it to do. Bush basically asked, if you want to destroy us, could you at least take a vote on it first? Well the people have voted, and they are voting for an Islamic Empire from Spain to Asia with the immediate end of Israel and the eventual destruction of the United States.

I'll never forget the image I saw on TV in my bedroom in Chicago the morning of 9/11, not of the towers falling down or the people running and screaming, but of the celebrating Palestinians on the streets. They quickly quieted down when they realized what being televised meant and Yassir Arafat even donated blood. (I pity the poor soul that received his blood if no one in the red cross was decent enough to throw it out.) But that, that right there is all the proof I will ever need that everything else is an act, a mask to keep us thinking we have a chance to change their mind, that deep down they really do like us. Why shouldn't they? We're nice people.

Yes, there are genuinely good people in Palestine, there are genuinely good people in every culture that just want peace and harmony. I believe this. But the majority of the Palestinians and most Arabs and Persians want Israel and America destroyed. We should never forget that no matter what we want to dream. I'm sure most of you disagree, that most of you think the majority want just, at worst, to be left alone. But I think that is only the best. The world is not as small as we'd like it to be and no matter how close we're all related genetically (thanks National Geographic genome project), we have a long way to go before we even understand how to understand each other.