Time to stop arguing and just knock Saddam off

Saddam Hussein is the sort of man you rather wish had never
survived being born, the sort of man - like Hitler and Stalin - whom this world
could well have done without, an utterly evil psychopath who has been allowed to
enslave a nation.

Another is that mentally retarded little nasty who rules in
comfort and plenty over North Korea while millions of his people starve to
death.

And Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, and for that matter any number
of other tinpot African dictators, simply reveal that the "civilising"
influence of colonisation was superficial to say the least.

But there's no need to worry about dear old Fidel Castro in
Cuba, who has been a thorn in the United States' side for long enough and who
has helped to keep the Americans honest by being a perceived threat right in
their own backyard.

Putting him in the so-called "axis of evil" was a
bit petty of the Yanks, I thought. He is a problem that will solve itself sooner
or later. Although he gives the impression he wants to, he can't live forever
and when he goes his doctrine will go with him quicker than the Berlin Wall came
down. Meanwhile, alongside those others he's a gentleman and a scholar.

It makes you think, though, when you look at the world in the
21st century and see how so much of it is still stuck in the 16th and how little
ultimate effect the colonisation of Africa and the Middle East by British,
French, Dutch, Belgians, Portuguese and others really had.

And it's going to get worse. The vituperation spewing from
the pulpits of Islam throughout the Middle East and much of Africa is designed
to stir up even more hatred in Muslims for Jews and Christians.

Almost daily on television stations throughout those regions
mullahs or imams or ayatollahs scream prayers calling on Allah to kill every Jew
and every Christian until there are none left on the Earth.

All we can hope is that most Muslims treat those Islamic
fundamentalists with the same sort of contempt with which most Christians treat
their fundamentalist and mercenary television preachers.

It's all a bit sad, really. The first years of my life were
lived while the forces of freedom put down Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo and co; then
for most of the rest of it I lived in the chill of the Cold War with communism;
now the world is riven by the heating up war between Islam and the rest.

I'm not surprised, though. The Bible tells me that the heart
of man is evil continually and is desperately sick. Heaven knows I've seen
plenty of evidence of that in my lifetime and am still seeing it in full force
and effect today.

So much, then, for those new agers and politically correct
crackpots who try to tell us that man is inherently good. It seems as if they
are blind to what's going on in their neighbourhoods, their communities, their
nations, let alone the world.

But to get back to Saddam. There is no doubt that he should
be done away with and I find it puzzling that with all the sophisticated
electronic surveillance equipment and weaponry available today to, for instance,
the United States, Britain and Israel, the Iraqi dictator hasn't been topped
already.

What with satellites that can read a car number plate from
way out in space and smart bombs and missiles accurate to within centimetres,
you would think this demonic thug would have been blasted into little pieces
long ago.

But what we are confronted with is a United States trying to
talk the world into letting it invade Iraq to overthrow him and his power elite
and, I suspect, make an effort to turn Iraq into a democracy, which makes as
much sense as trying to turn the US into a dictatorship.

I wonder about those who insist - as this newspaper has done
- that more "evidence" is needed before action is taken of Saddam's
nuclear programme or ability to deliver the just as horrific and terrifying
biological weapons. Or that "diplomacy" might solve the problem.

That's nonsense. You can't negotiate with a psychopath.
Saddam and his henchmen see the world through eyes distorted by a supreme
egotism that insists that only they are right; they don't know what compromise
means.

We can take it as read that Saddam will go to any lengths to
manufacture and mount weapons of mass destruction because that's the sort of
creature he is. I have little doubt that he does see himself as a modern-day
Saladin and he will sacrifice everything (and everybody) that stands in his path
to achieve his insane ambitions.

What makes me just a little uneasy, however, is that George
Bush is not the sort of man I would elect as sheriff of a village, let alone the
world, particularly since he brings with him redneck deputies like Dick Cheney
and Donald Rumsfeld.

But since the United Nations (never have so many spent so
much for so long to achieve so little) is not even an alternative, I guess we'll
have to let George Dubya front up to the gunfight at Baghdad Corral. And the
sooner the better.