Personal Narrarative -The Evils of the West

The title of my group's subject is also a lose synopsis of the article we were required to read (The Kindness of Strangers, among other articles of Harper's Magazine) The article starts with making a comparison of our involvement in Iran with the unheeded warnings of Laocoon to his fellow Trojans, and gives an alternate perspective to how and why we invaded and continued our presence in the middle east. According to the article, oil wasn't the largest reason for invading the middle east. In order to increase national security, it would be wise to at least plant the seed of liberal democracies in the heart of an otherwise Arab totalitarianism culture.
The author continues to talk about other reasons for the invasion of Iran other than the "weapons of mass destruction" such as the billions that stand to be made by the dealing of arms. She compares it to the initial desires of the Catholic Missionaries and their holy regime to "free the heathens from satin." It creates quite an interesting comparison as they can be directly related to one another. During the Spanish inquisition, thousands of priests and missionaries wandered the land attempting to gain knowledge, explore the land, convert the locals and spread the word of God. However they were also after spreading the catholic church as far as they could. This means obtaining power, wealth, and gold. Whether in the name of the church or not, Catholic missionaries went to many different parts of the world to do this very thing. When the United states invaded Iran, it was to stop nuclear weapons, but while we were there, it was simple to spread the word of liberal democracy, and why not secure our future in the oil industry as well?
The author uses a variety of poems and recent art and publishings to give a bit of background. In short I thoroughly enjoyed the article and the other perspective of the Iran Iraq conflict from something other than the media.

I am...

I am human. I am a 4th semester computer science major who neglected his general math and English courses until this year, and will be transferring next fall to Oregon State. Ive never been in a class that incorporates blogging and am excited to see how it plays out instead of the usual paper per week. I don't have any experience with it, however I have read many blogs, both personal and community based, and am looking forward to making my own. I'm looking forward to reading about the evil influences of the west (from the other perspective) and hope to bring a positive attitude to the group and the class. As far as skills that will be an asset to the class, I am a comp science major and hopefully my computer skills will help my group. I also have an uncanny ability to google things and select the best site from the top 3 that show up, making me a highly valuable research asset.

I have already read Persepolis in my last class (world history) so its all pretty fresh in my mind. I'm looking forward to hearing and reading about the other portrayals of the book. I enjoyed it because it was one of the first graphic novels that Ive ever read and I think it leaves the story more open to interpretation.

In short I'm looking forward to this class and creating a blog. I am looking forward to the discussion regarding the evils of west, along with some debate with my group and other students in the class.