I have re-emerged from the comfortable recluse of my winter break frivolity to reflect upon the death of one of the most insipid fascist maggots ever to drench the Middle-East with his toxic slime, the former Dicator in Chief of Iraq, Saddam Insane. A life not so much lost, but expired, as Saddam wasn’t really a man. No, he was more of an insentient puppet of other, shrewder men. A deplorable little creature who tried to prove his might and magnitude to the world by executing unimaginable atrocities upon his own people and his neighbors, but ultimately failed. He was an insect till the end, he wasn’t even intrepid enough to take his own life, he was fittingly found reeking in a spider-hole where he belonged.

Saddam was amusingly used and abused for his entire political career. The weapons he used to massacre millions of Iranians, Kurds, and Shi’ites were sold knowingly and for that purpose by the US. And then, just over a dcade later, long after his usefullness had expired, the same crowd that supplied Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction used the threat of those same weapons as a pretext for war with Iraq to a ameniac, or perhaps apathetic, American populous; all the while knowing that the weapons were dismantled in the early 90s. Oh the irony…

One has to wonder, did Rummy know what was going to become of Saddam when he was shaking hands with him? One can only wonder, and unfortunately we will never know.

The fall of a tyrant and the end of an era, as well as the beginning. There should be much jubilation all over the Middle-East, as well as anywhere in the world where a basic code of ethics exists. But this is hardly the end, certainly the new invasion of Iraq was not necessarily worth it. At the rate things are going, it will have cost more lives than Saddam was ever responsible for. He was a horrendous, completely inhuman manifestation of evil, but was this the only way to kill him?

Certainly not, had we been more cunning we could have built up enough allies in the region to neutralize Hussein, rather than the foolhardy invasion of 03. Hell, sending more troops initially than the number employed for Iwo Jima would have likely increased prospects for victory as well.

Alas, “cunning” is an attribute the Bush clan is desperately in need of.

Who knows what the next twist will be in the engaging chronicles of Iraq. But if history is any indication, objectivity is a supreme must in examining politics. Today’s status-quo hero could be hanging on a noose tomorrow.

Who’s next?

I just finished watching Jesus Camp, a truly intriguing, and at many times incredibly disturbing analysis of the bizarre, nihilistic doomsday cult that is fundamentalist Christian evangelicalism; no doubt the scariest film of 2006. Of the appalling values that are seen being fanatically indoctrinated into children in the movie are the lies of science, the heresy of abortion, and most shockingly of all, an advocacy of mlitant martyrdom. So its not only happening in Palestine after all. And for those theologians who argue that fundamentalism only arises in areas on economic squalor, there is no more perfect a refutation than this film; religious zealotry right here in middle-class American suburbia.

Please don’t think I’m singling Christianity out, the very concept of religion in general is utterly distasteflu to me. And I’m not criticizing religion as an atheist. People often confuse religiosity with faith, which simply isn’t a fair assessment. Faith is something personal and deep, more of a philosophy and something that cannot be replicated or enstilled into others, it is something pure and beautiful that people must find on their own.Religion, on the other hand, is a man-made construction, a deceptive instrument of fascism, a convenient apparatus by which the power-hungry can manipulate the simple-minded and the desperate. It is religion that ruined my ancestral home of Iran, that brought the once magnificent Persian civillization to a state of desolation and hopelessly impoverished fascism.

And it is religion that is now corrupting my home country of America, slowly but surely fostering a seemingly impossible Age of Anti-Enlightenment, where intellectualism, science, and debate are scoffed as heretical and regression and collectivism are praised.

I don’t give a damn if its fundamentalist Christian, Muslim, or fucking Buddhist, if films like this are any indication, religion is vile. It is the abandonment of reason and the subscription to a completely baseless ideal simply because authority demanded it. It is the trumpet by which these Soldiers of God march, whether if its marching to the tune of anti-evolution laws or in support of the Islamic Republic, the Medley of Religion is a cacophonic song of disorder.

Unfortunately, these kids are being subjected to this mind-rape at such an early age, and nothing can be done about it. They’ll eventually grow up to be voters and politicians, with an ideology that has the potential of making the current religious right look tame by comparison… I mean, if we consider that wackos like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell didn’t even have these crazy organized-brainwashing sessions when they were growing up, imagine how these kids will be when they grow up?
God help us all.