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the killing? The odd thing about the conversation is that I could tell it was the first time he had even heard the alternative argument.
This extremism can be defeated. But it will be defeated only by recognising that we have not created it; it cannot be negotiated with; pandering to its sense of grievance will only encourage it; and only by confronting it, the methods and the ideas, will we win.
“The odd thing about the conversation is that I could tell it was the first time he had even heard the alternative argument.”
Clearly an avid Radio 4 listener then.
dam Hussein’s invasion of Iran in 1980, killing hundreds of thousands of Iranians, a figure comparable to millions of Americans). Would we watch quietly?”
And the alternative:
“Imagine if America had elected a rogue president, who wanted to convert the country to communism, starting with forced nationalisation of major industries, imagine the rogue president was dallying with religious extremists. Imagine if the Iranian secret service had invoked a coup to remove the rogue president and prevented America from becoming another failed Soviet state.
Imagine if fundemental Christians had taken over Mexico, enforcing draconian dark age laws based on Levaticus to the population, destroying the Mayan and Aztec heritage based on anti-paganism, and harboured terrorists who had launched attacks on Iran killing significant numbers of civilians. Imagine Iran invaded Mexico, removed the religious extremists, neutralised the terrorist threat installed a democratically elected government.
Imagine if Canada had a brutal tyrant who’d raised the world’s forth largest army and invaded America over the Saint Lawrence River using chemical munitions and resulting in the deaths of over a million Americans and injuring tens of millions more. Imagine if Iran had invaded Canada, destroyed the army, and replaced the tyrant with a democratically elected government.
Don’t you think America actually might be grateful to Iran ?
Assuming America loves personal freedoms, liberty and democracy that is.”
And imagine if, in Iran, there was an over-rated, over-paid, tenured professor (of something irrelevant, like linguistics) who kept arguing against the overthrow of Canada’s tyrant because he thought Iran’s motives weren’t pure enough.
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