Chris Hedges isn't a bad guy, really.

Anyone who may actually read this probably already heard my feelings about Chris Hedges and his bias towards "Americentrism," or as a friend calls it "living in the shadow of Vietnam."

Now I want to touch on a completely different subject, a subject he neglected to mention during his Ithaca speech: the war in Iraq.

In his famous Rockford College speech, the one where he was booed off the stage, he siad "We are trying to transplant a modern system of politics invented in Europe characterized, among other things, by the division of earth into independent secular states based on national citizenship in a land where the belief in a secular civil government is an alien creed."

Profound. The best point anyone can make about this war. It's the very reason as to why Turkey is such an unstable nation. Despite being almost entirely Islamic, Turkey stuggles with secularism. It's speculated that the very reason they hope to join the European Union is for the stability it could provide them.

Actions like the war in Iraq are reminiscent of the founding days of the American republic. Thomas Jefferson speculated the Native Americans who lived beyond the frontier were lacking "letters," a poor way of saying that they had no written language. To Jefferson, the written language meant the education of Western Civilization that evolved over centuries. If they understand "letters" soon they could be assimilated into our culture.

Well, that wasn't how it ended, the Native American tribal system was a rock solid institution. What incentive other than desperation did they have to join the Anglo world? Desperation eventually took hold, and I think we know how it went.

Saddam was able to hold a quasi-secular government only because of the iron girp in his hands. We cannot go into Iraq thinking that Western Civilization is more just than Islam, or a culture deeply rooted in the Iraqi mind can change during our short occupation.