I found a great blog today via Peter Maass's column at MSN. I enjoyed reading about Iraq from the point of view of someone who is actually living through it. Salam Pax is not just going to pack his bags in a week or a month, and move back to his cushy condo, and onto the next news story of the day. His story is real, and doesn't have the anti or pro USA bullshit attached to it. He just tells it how he sees it.

He had a quote on his site that brings together everything I've always thought about the West.

      

     "the West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion

      but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often 

      forget this fact, non-Westerners never do."

      ----------



      Samuel P. Huntington

I've had conversations with friends on why the West (whites) came out on top of the East (everyone else). I've always said it's because they had the bigger stick. That was the only thing going for them. This quote just puts it into more academic terms.