another question..

Submitted by J.S. (Canada), Oct 17, 2006 at 15:29

Are Europeans and Canadians prepared for what a loss in Iraq might mean? Among other entailments, it could end the attempt at the democratization of Arab/Islamic states.

But perhaps that's what Muslims want. Maybe the majority of Muslims want a command and control, authoritative, central-Imam, Shariah-controled state. In other words, a tyrannical but Koranic dictatorship. Thus another casualty of this war could be the notion of "universality" or what the UN was founded upon (that so-called Universal Declaration of Human Rights).

Such "universalist" doctrines may be a thing of the past. I think the biggest mistake the U.S. made was this – it was to project a uniquely American experience onto an alien, foreign culture. Many Americans believe that everyone in the world yearns to be free or to throw off the yoke of oppressive tyranny (as did the American founders in 1776 to the despised British). The Iraq war has proven that this is not the case -- and Americans are not viewed as liberators.

Perhaps many "domestic" Muslims living in Canada also desire to live under Shariah law. The West (if the West, as we know it, is to survive) must wake up to the reality (not everyone is a huge fan of secular democracy). No nation can survive diametrically opposed – fundamentally contradictory -- value systems without some sort of clash or civil discord. If Canada keeps allowing in thousands upon thousands of Muslims (many I presume to be backward fundamentalists or right-wing religious fanatics), the way Iraq looks now may be Canada's future.

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