Seems Mr. Negrino not only saw my last post, but responded to it very quickly. He might have been better off reading it again and thinking about it before replying so quickly.

"Mean man say I wrong. Me not like that. Must hit with club or say ugly things." (Which is fine, I can take it, but please be careful to not actually read everything I wrote.)

He starts out by saying that my post was unsigned. All the posts on my journal (the home page) are by me. It even says so, down in the lower right corner. "Truer Words is Seth Dillingham's personal web site." He probably didn't scroll down that far, but the comments link for that post does have my name, right there at the top.

I've read his post, twice. Much of it is strangely reminiscent of the old question, "Are you still beating your wife?" I never said or implied most of what he's talking about, nor did I comment on most of his post. (I quoted the paragraph on which I was commenting. Maybe he missed that.)

Actually, I intentionally avoided my first reaction to the original post. "Oh, here's another liberal who's hurt and angry because Bush got another four years. Now that Iraq has taken a real step towards democracy and self-rule, it's not as easy to pick on Bush and the utter failure that is the Iraq war, becuase something real has finally been accomplished. So, instead, let's just pick them apart because a bunch of religious clerics -- before the government has even been formed -- reportedly want a Shariah-friendly government."

The only issue I had with his post was the intellectual elitism. It's not about whether he was right or wrong, because in fact I agree with much of what he said. In fact, even that is an exaggeration. My real problem was the lack of humility. I was being literal: it bugged me that he was claimed the whole twenty-first century for America and/or "the West."

Who cares what century it is? Why is Shariah any less (or more) appropriate now than it was a couple-few hundred years ago? A huge number of people are under Shariah law now, far more than there were in the 15th century. That's tragic and sick, though my pointing that out has nothing at all to do with Mr. Negrino's pitiful attempts at character assassination.

You've confused a mildly-annoyed, half-hearted response to part of one of your paragraphs with nonsensical blather, as you put it. You wouldn't know nonsensical blather, Mr. Negrino, if it fell in your lap. Believe me, I know this to be true, as i've read a couple of your books. Also, you may not have liked the tone of my post, but it wasn't intended to be hostile. Can't say the same for this one, especially this paragraph. In case you were wondering.

(Mr. Negrino probably didn't see Brian Carnell's comment on Jim's site, either, although I linked to Jim's message for exactly that reason.)

Jim pointed to an article on Backup Brain about the Iraqi elections. Apparently the Shiites, who will have the majority in the new government (based on last month's elections), don't want the new constitution or any laws passed by the new state to violate Shariah (Islamic code of conduct).

The author of the piece, Tom Negrino, goes on to say:

So the US deposed a brutal (but rabidly secular and agressively modern) regime that was at best a theoretical threat to the US, and has created a new Islamic republic in the Middle East. Yes, the Iraqi people have now voted, and I guess that's a good thing. But it appears they have voted themselves back into the 15th Century. And it only took $400 billion and 1,500 American lives to achieve this triumphant result.

They voted themselves back into the 15th century, because The clerics generally agree that the constitution must ensure that no laws passed by the state contradict a basic understanding of Shariah? Does Mr. Negrino have any idea just how much of the world is living under Shariah today, in the 21st century? Or, is our Western civilization really the best definition of our century? Does that mean they voted themselves back into our 15th century?

Oh, wait... the United States didn't have a 15th century.

Have I mentioned, before, that intellectual elitism tends to grate on my nerves?

"We're liberal, democratic and secular, so we're also smarter and better than you. How stupid of you, therefore, at the dawn of your new civilization, to choose a government for yourselves that expresses beliefs which are so different from our own! (Nevermind the dawn of our own civilization[s], if you please.)"