Oh, indeed, and I tend not to offer opinions on World or American History at all, but as a youngster growing up in the UK, I certainly found the above mentioned games more interesting and memorable than anything going on in history classrooms, and I guess was tricked into learning a bit more about the background of both than I otherwise would have, by clicking into the ‘Civilopedia’ help menus of each.

I doubt I was that unique a child.

Peace dude! It’s all about, like, the love dude. Those terrorist dudes are just harshing each others’ mellow.

With any significant change there will be conflict. You might find yourself agreeing with me (or at least disagreeing less) if you didn’t take everything I said to its extreme possible meaning. I don’t think it’s going to be WW3, but if the Middle East were to begin westernizing, you will see Islamic progressives getting violent with fundamentalists and conservatives.

Anyway, your argument and reasoning are going in a circle. You’re saying that in order teach them western values you need to give them western freedoms which require western values to work. Their values/culture must change before there can be meaningful political freedom. That sort of the nature of revolution.

“I think that given access to some meaningful political and economic freedom, the ‘culture’ problem in the region takes care of itself. iPods > imams.”

Just curious, do you agree with the invasion of Iraq? Iraqis now have access to political and economic freedoms, but it’s not really working yet, is it? The country is on the verge of civil war to determine which Imam will be the next dictator. Your arguments are empirically denied, unless you are predicting some major turnaround and success story in Iraq.

I can’t seem to find it, but it certainly highlights a basic problem,

(For those looking to search, note that ehowa is nsfw)

I would hardly contest that the Middle East suffers from an acute surplus of jerks in power, or that the media prints ridiculous articles to sell papers, or that blowing up civvies to make political points is completely wrong and unacceptable.

But getting from there to stuff like “Eventually, one will change or cease to exist. Will the entire world change in a bloody confrontation, or will the Middle East?” strikes me as a bozo statistical argument at best and more than a little bit of apocalyptic fanwanking. The entire world changes every freakin’ day, dude. Some people are always going to hit the ominous minor chords on the Wurlitzer about it.

Anyway, to offer my non-doomy-doom-doom prognosticaion, I think that given access to some meaningful political and economic freedom, the ‘culture’ problem in the region takes care of itself. iPods > imams. Capitalism FTW!

Just because Judy in the corner cubicle doesn’t understand basic facts about the middle east, doesn’t mean you’re the only one that does. I did spend several years of my life in Bahrain and Kuwait, as well as a memorable 6 months in Iraq. My impressions and opinions don’t come merely from books, computer games, and what the media tells me I should think.

Thus the reaction when you conflated the two.

Sorry, I don’t follow you. Tell us what you think you know, so I can help you.

Maybe my use of the ‘/’ confused you. I suppose it was my shorthand way of typing ‘Arab and Persian’.