> >What's your evaluation of the war? You've been away a long time;
> >bring us up to date.
> >
> >Doug
>
> Look:
.
Brad, I read your website piece on the parallels between the Christian and
Islamic reformations and I thought it was incredibly perceptive. I had
exactly the same thought when I read Mahmoun Fandy's book on the politics of
dissent in Saudi Arabia.
He describes all these underground ultra-fundamentalist Saudi dissidents and analyzes their sermons and political tracts and they are amazingly similar to the weird underground English religious dissidents from the Civil War era -- diggers, ranters, etc. -- all with these bizarre theological ideas and conspiracy theories about the local political scene.
Having said that...
> The only thing I would disagree with is (4): that on balance it seems
> to me that the situations in Bosnia, in Serbia, and in the Persian
> Gulf are considerably better than if the U.S. had not intervened
> against Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam Hussein.
.
...you've seen the UNICEF, WHO reports, etc. about the apocalyptic rise in
child and maternal mortality, malnutrition, water-borne illnesses,
educational breakdown and social dislocation in Iraq. As a rare economist
who gives weight to such indices, how can you say the situation in the
Persian Gulf is better now than if the war and embargo hadn't happened?
Seth