The Best Reason For Breaking Our Dependence On Foreign Oil

This is a Saudi woman after having been lashed 50 times for the mistake of being raped.

A streamer on CNN this morning tells us a 75 year old widow in Saudi Arabia has been sentenced to 40 lashes and four months in jail for having bread brought to her house. That in itself was not her crime, but the fact that it was delivered by two young men to whom she was not related. If her appeal is denied what are her chances of surviving?

I have never been an isolationist and I understand we do not understand many cultures other than those of the civilized western world, but to maintain relations with barbarians for the sake of - what? - is insane. Countries who employ "religious police" to enforce an ideology defy comprehension.

I'm sorry. This is the 21st century. There is no excuse, especially under the guise of "religion" or "Islamic law", to tolerate such behavior. We've found, over the past eight years, that not only do we not understand them, we cannot change them. It's time we stop trying.

Instead of trying to bring Islamic terror mongers to heel by bribing war lords, perhaps it's time to isolate them. Truly isolate them. Left to their own devices perhaps they will destroy one another. Without the West's money and trade they have little to sustain themselves. You can't grow enough food stuffs in the desert to feed entire nations. Western countries have oil reserves; Canada does - we have our own. We might consider mending bridges with the Venezuela's of the world. While their leadership is unsavory, it hasn't yet fallen to the depths of the Islamic countries.

If we still can't quell the urge to "change" the world, let's help the poor African nations that are being systematically starved and slain into oblivion. What? They don't have any oil?

We haven't been able to bring human rights to China, obviously not to the women in Islamic countries and for that I am truly sick because we can't get them out. Nor, however, do we have to enable those who oppress them and that is exactly what we are doing.

Perhaps our efforts would be better spent helping to overthrow two bit dictators like Mumgabi in Zimbabwe! What? They have no oil??

Seeing women being lashed for the sport of men is a deplorable reality. Seeing children with flies thick on open sores barely covering skeletal little bodies that are starving is an equally deplorable reality.

One is ethnic cleansing. One is called religion. If the latter be true it doesn't take much to see why so many are beginning to question if, indeed, there is a God.