The Dragon.

I have another issue of Vanity Fair to share. Everyone who reads this blog regularly knows my love/hate relationship with this magazine. I love the in depth articles on politicians, the wealthy, and the infamous. But I hate the liberal elite slant and the anti-bush and anti-war rants of the editor. But I will admit he allows other point of views in.

This month is especially juicy though. Flip through with me. This is the first installment. The rest will follow tomorrow.

Christopher Hitchens has a fascinating article on Iran's brutish theocracy. Recently a 16 yr old girl was caught having had sex with a man. Usually this is punished by a hundred lashes, but the rebellious girl tore off her hijab (headscarf) and the judge decided she would hang for that and she did. From a crane for all to see.

It is something we cannot even imagine here. And that was but one example of many describing the sick backward mentality that prevails in the Middle East. Some might keep Iran in mind when they go throwing the word "theocracy" around.

Anyway, Hitchens met with Hossein Khomeini (the grandson of Ayatollah) Hossein tells how he is spending a great deal of time in Iraq. He is a strong supporter of the U.S. intervention. He favors the removal of the the regime established by his grandfather. He wants a complete separation of religion and state. He praises President Bush and says, "Only the Free World, led by America, can bring democracy to Iran."

Hitchens quotes a Muslim woman who although devout, tires of the brutal mullahs and wishes them to be overthrown. She says,"Do you think that the West could here and remove the rulers but only stay for a week and leave?"

A telling statement that reflects the belief of those who wish America to step in to save them, but sees us as too hedonistic too stay.

Hitchens is a brit and an atheist liberal, but has strongly supported this war because of what he sees as the danger of Islamic fundalmentalism. He does not paint a rosy picture of any near change in Iran, but there is a faint glimmer of hope that this democracy idea could spread and perhaps women could be treated as more than cattle and the U.S. would not always be referred to as "infidels."

The article is long and amazing, with so many things I wish I could touch upon, but I came away with this thought:

This far away region called the Middle East, that we never cared about or thought we could ever change with it's sadistic rules and backward thinking, might, just might, stand a chance of slaying the dragon of oppression and torture.

This dragon finally spewed his fire of death on us and now.......

We fight this dragon.