Okay, I've got to confess something here. Actually, a number of things.
When 9/11 hit, I thought that it was caused by an aberrant splinter of Islam. The Taliban and suchlike - well, they were a small group within Islam, not to be confused with the greater mass of moderate Islam.
However, I must confess to wondering just why, if the Taliban were so radical, that the other Islamic states in that area weren't doing what they could to moderate things. Destruction of the ancient Bhuddas brought no note of censure, and the treatment of women under the Taliban was documented to be insanely mysoginistic. Yet - the silence was deafening from the Islamic nations, with platitudes about how women were respected and protected in Islam. Having worked for Muslims in the past, I thought that indeed the excesses of the Taliban and other groups like that were not emblematic of Islam in general.
I don't feel that way now. I'm starting to think that the folks I worked for, Muslims in the West in general (and not in Europe, I'm sorry to day) are the abberation - are the split off from the Islamic body. The Sunni branches, the Wahhabist versions - they may not be the norm, but they've got control of the religion and I can only hope the other branches can figure out how to release that control without causing millions of deaths in the process.
I sure hope I'm wrong, but I think we're going to see things get a lot worse before they get better on that subject.
I will confess that I at one time thought the UN was a useful body. I don't much think that anymore - I see it as a boys' club for dictatorships, a facade of legitimacy that's useful to keep their sorry carcasses propped up on top of the feudal states that support them. They know sanctions don't mean anything, and if you've got any sort of pull you can get damn near any sort of aid out of the UN you might want - and if that aid never reaches the intended beneficiaries... well, that's just too bad.
I will confess to a lack of surprise that Saddam was never publicly criticised by the local regimes. Saddam was, to them, a hero. He'd taken on the US/UN, and lived - though he lost Kuwait and a lot of autonomy in the process. He got himself into a war with Iran, and didn't QUITE lose. He had his sons all primed to inherit the family business, until it was forced into bankrupcy by Bush&Coalition.
I'm also not surprised at all that the local regimes didn't want Saddam to be taken out. Their little dictatorships are dependent on two things - the appearance of overwhelming force to keep the population in control, and a lack of hope for change in the population. Shake the table, and the house of cards that's been so carefully propped up starts to quiver... and fall it did in Lebanon while Syria's shakey and Libya just plain gave up any pretense of hiding their WMD programs. With elections in Afghanistan and Iraq, with FREQUENT elections, not the 'one man, one vote, one time' variety used to maintain the illusions of legitimacy that are a staple of voting in the ME, the dictators in that region are seeing a possible end to their free ride. Soon they won't be able to blame everything on the US any more - because Iraq and Afghanistan are starting to show what a free society and capitalistic economy can provide their people. They've tried the quaint ethnic tribal customs of never-ending warfare, and they just plain don't work for larger groups.
I will confess that we're further along than I thought we'd be. I didn't figure Iraq would be ready for elections until close to 5 years after our invasion. And Afghanistan's a lot further along than that. I'm glad to see it. Things aren't perfect - but for the vast majority of the people they're better than they were.
And I'll confess to disappointment in the UN. The UN thought that harshly worded sanctions would be a good substitute for actually doing something to remove Saddam from power. We were willing to go along with the status quo - until 9/11 showed us that the status quo wasn't going to cut it any more. And we had a lot of sympathy for the attack... until we stood up and said "Okay, that's all we're going to take of THAT." When we started actually DOING something, the sympathy evaporated pretty quick. We weren't being good victims. We fought back.
I'd sure like to believe in the UN again. I'd like to believe in Islam being the 'Religion of Peace' I thought it was. But there comes a time when you've got to face reality, and one of the sad things about reality is that it doesn't care one bit about what you want to believe. YOU have to come to grips with reality and cope with it.
And I confess, that's a hard thing to do.
J.