What's really needed in Iraq, Afghanistan and the whole world

Plato had it right, of course:  "Ignorance, the root and the stem of every evil."

Whether the topic is Iraq or Iran or Afghanistan or Christine O'Donnell or Sarah Palin or the Tea Party or the Democrats or Republicans or whatever or whomever, what we need is awareness and information.  And I'm not talking Western indoctrination or influence.  I'm talking broad, intelligent, non-biased information and hard data.

Instead, we get this, today:

Iran has imposed new restrictions on 12 university social sciences deemed to be based on Western schools of thought and therefore incompatible with Islamic teachings, state radio reported Sunday.

The list includes law, philosophy, management, psychology, political science and the two subjects that appear to cause the most concern among Iran's conservative leadership — women's studies and human rights.

So this is what our American soldiers have died for and what our money is paying for--ignorance in Iran.  Terrific.