On the military, the Middle East and grades of humanity

For anyone who's interested, there's a really good blog about the Middle East called Informed Comment, written by Juan Cole, the president of the Global Americana Institute. He posts a lot, so it's hard to follow everything, but he gives citations and brings up what our media doesn't want to touch.

( This particular entry caught my eye as a rather scary example of my theory of civilizations. )

To close, I'd like to mention a comment my dad made at dinner last night, while we were discussing how Costa Rica is the only country in Latin America without a standing army.

"On the off chance I get to be president, the first thing I'd do is set the military to doing public works around the country. Imagine what we could accomplish if we put our defense budget to improving the lives of our citizens. Not only would our standard of living be raised but we would have a population that would be much more willing to defend the US if we were ever attacked because they would have a personal connection to the good works of the military. And since our military would be at home instead of out attacking other countries, we would be less likely to be attacked ourselves."

It's a bit paraphrased, since I'm typing from memory, but he has a really good point. Perhaps I should start a "Dad for President" 08 campaign...