On The Nightstand This Week

This week's nightstand book is The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide And America's Response by Peter Balakian. I'm finding out some very interesting things about the history of the Middle East. For one thing, this "jihad" by Muslim extremists against Christians predates World Wars I and II. So everyone who still believes that it is just us who have offended the Muslim extremists needs to get a reality smack from this book. Read it and find out what they really want from us. Hint: it's the same thing they wanted from the Armenians.

Also, if any war protestors out there would like a different, non-Hitler bad person to compare Bush to, they might try Sultan Abdul Hamid of Turkey. Unfortunately, I don't think most of them know enough history to understand that Hitler was neither the first nor the last nor the worst of the genocidal maniacs of world history, although he does rank pretty far up (down?) on the scale of badness.