Richard Dawkins on Iraq and Afghanistan
December 4th, 2006 by Stephen
The Independent put reader’s questions to Richard Dawkins. Predictably they were skewed heavily towards Dawkins’ militant atheism. But amidst the predictable and sometimes witty responses, there was this real gem:
You backed an anti-war candidate in the last election. Would you be happier if Saddam Hussein were still in power?
Oh, how silly of me. You see, I had this foolish memory that Saddam Hussein was given an ultimatum on the eve of war that if he surrendered his weapons of mass destruction war would be averted. Silly me, I thought that meant the purpose of the war was to remove his WMD. Oh, so now I understand. All along, the purpose of the war to to remove Saddam Hussein. Oh, I see (copyright: J Cleese). Now the Taliban are coming back to power, because Bush and Blair took their eye off Afghanistan and charged into Iraq instead. You know, horrible as Saddam Hussein was, I believe I’d rather have him than the Taliban. Last week in Afghanistan, a teacher was disembowelled and torn to pieces by four motorbikes pulling in opposite directions, for the religious crime of teaching girls algebra. I don’t think even Saddam Hussein executed people for teaching girls algebra.
