States has a history of making bad decisions concerning the rulers of other countries. Who helped Castro, our mortal enemy in Cuba for the past 50 years overthrow the Cuban government? The United States. Who aided Saddam in gaining power in Iraq? The United States. Now, I am the first to agree Saddam is a mad man, and is guilty of many crimes toward his own people, but the world is full of mad men ruling countries. Also, the war in Iraq has brought awareness to us the people there live by a different set of values. That is most obvious when you see buildings on fire from bombs, while a few blocks away children are out playing in the street as if nothing had happened. In Afghanistan, for instance, we have seen video of their favorite sport: Slaughtering a goat and then playing keep-a-way on horseback with its decaying carcass for two of three days. As I said, those people live by a totally different set of values than ours, and I feel our leaders have made a very big mistake by thinking we can go over there and convert them to live by our values.

If the United States is so interested in taking down mad men, where were we when Edi Amin slaughtered 300,000 people in Uganda? Furthermore, in 1976, Edi Amin offered asylum to Palestinian highjackers of an Israeli passenger jet. When Edi Amin was finally overthrown, our "good friends", Saudi, Arabia, offered him exile. Where were we then?

Please do not get me wrong. I do not think our invasion of Iraq was wrong, and I have nothing but support for our troops there. What I am saying, is, our most imminent threat is Al -Qaeda, and Iraq has never been a strong hold for them. From the best intelligence reports, Osama Bin Laden is still thought to be somewhere in Afghanistan, and the 911 hijackers were still all

Saudi nationals, not Iraqis. Why are we in Iraq instead of Afghanistan? One of the reasons I heard President Bush give, while talking about Saddam, said, "he's the man who wanted to kill my daddy." Now that really sounded presidential!

The President also was advised, not only by the United Nations, but Colin Powell as well, there just was not enough evidence of weapons of mass destruction to warrant the invasion. Despite their advice, he went ahead anyway. In the meantime, we have spent over $900 billion and lost over 2000 lives, and the threat of terrorism on US soil is as strong now as it was before, if not greater.

The solution? There is no logical one. The insurgents have been slowed down, but now a virtual "Holy War" has emerged between the Sunnis and Shi'ites. Oddly enough, both groups are Muslim, but seem to despise each other. Before Saddam was overthrown, he kept both groups oppressed, keeping their violence against each other somewhat minimal. Now that he is no longer in power, and a so called democracy has been put in place, they can now resume killing each other.

The problem is there is not a logical solution. We can stay there, and referee civil war from now on or, we can pack up and leave, leaving the country in total disarray.

What's next - Iran? North Korea? It's time we center on taking care of our problems at home, rather than taking on the rest of the world's problems at our expense.
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