Aren't we willing to kill innocent people too? Don't we defile a great

[cantstandbush]

religion (Christianity) with "shock and awe" and bombs from afar into civilian villages, arrests of innocents who are held without charges, torture and all the rest? How is it that people cannot see how hypocritical we are in almost every aspect of our foreign and domestic policies?

What is it about most US people that think they have a right to invade, conquer, kill, maime, take resources and call it freedom and democracy?

Viet Nam was only able to unify and thrive AFTER we pulled out and left the people to resolve their own problems. We now deal with the communists in Viet Nam just like we deal with the communists in China and Russia. WTF is wrong with people?

[jobycom]

1. Notice he was especially upset that they bombed a wedding celebration

Bush condemned them because they were "willing to bomb a wedding celebration in order to advance their cause."

How many wedding celebrations did we bomb in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now, suddenly, Bush has a problem with it?

There is no hell deep or painful enough for Bush and his supporters.

[mattclearing]

2. Are our soldiers Christian?

Last I checked, this government was not overtly religious, despite various attempts to change that.

What does Christianity have to do with it?

We have Muslims, Hindu, Buddhist, Atheist, and Agnostic soldiers.

[Bill McBlueState]

3. probably many of them

Christianity has a long history of violent excursions into the Middle East. The best we can hope for is to move beyond the divisions religion causes and acknowledge our common humanity. This life and this planet are the only ones we have.

[mattclearing]

4. My point is that our soldiers represent a multicultural, religiously

diverse country.

Saying that we shame Christianity when we kill people strikes me as missing the point. Our violent conduct happens outside the bounds of religion.

Indeed, show me the religion where God says to bomb innocent people into oblivion.

Christianity has little to do with it.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

10. Agreed n/t

[Bill McBlueState]

12. well, since you asked

"When the LORD your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations—the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger than you- and when the LORD your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally..."

Deuteronomy 7:1-2

I guess their god isn't ordering bombs, but rather whatever means of total destruction were available to the invaders.

There's a lot of this in the Bible (both testaments of which are considered sacred texts by Christians), so one could argue that Christianity has a *lot* to do with our nation's violent tendencies.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

9. What's funny about the Crusades

is that, many times, the Crusaders would sack and loot any city they came by, even if they were Christian.

[jobycom]

13. The Crusades are taught poorly in college these days

They were very similar to what's happening now. The Middle East was the center of all major trade routes to the East, and Europe was just beginning to have a thriving monetary economy that wanted to trade with the East. Byzantium was being overrun, and we were losing our foothold for the trade routes.

When Byzantium asked Pope Urban II for troops to help him defend the trade routes, Urban was the strongest leader in the West. He was the one who could organize the troops and leaders for a war. Urban, rather than requesting troops, preached his crusade, and gave a number of reasons why we should go. Many of them involved trade and money, many involved religion, most were a combination of both, since at the time religion was the dominant ideal system. We say we are fighting for freedom, they claimed they were fighting for Jesus. Same thing--sort of ideological nationalism.

History professors find it cool to preach the Crusades as a religious war, because that illustrates the differences between our time and the Middle Ages. Also, it's an easier lesson, since the people writing about the Crusades in the west were clergy, and focused on religion. But analyzing the actions of the Crusaders, the records of the Arabs at the time, and even some of the more informed religious writers of the time, the leaders were clearly out for material as much as, if not more than, spiritual gain. That's why they attacked Christians and Jews and Muslims indescriminately. They even attacked Byzantium, when they were supposed to be there to fight for Byzantium. And they often formed alliances with other Muslim leaders against local Christian leaders.

Through it all, the clergy and the kings sold the wars to the public as religious wars, the same way BushCo sells us this war as national security. But it was a more complex phemonenum than that.

[rkc3]

5. You're right, but our leaders, esp. Bush, proclaims to be one.

And he stands on high moral ground, in his mind anyway, and tells us how we are better than the murderers over there.

When you take those two stands, you have a responsbility to your victims - and especially your POWs. You can't take the high moral and Christian stand while torturing people.

[jobycom]

11. Officially or in reality?

BushCo has called this a crusade, generals have called this a religious war against evil, Congresspeople have threatened to bomb Islam's holy sites, and there has been a definite undercurrent of religious warfare from the party in charge. BushCo speaks out of both sides of its mouth on this one, and you know which side the terrorists hear.

Then there are his actions. We invaded Iraq. We invaded Afghanistan. We have been slow on aid to Pakistan.

The party in charge might not call it a religious war, but I doubt our enemies believe it. I don't, either.

[pauldp]

6. the difference they claim is always the "targeting"

If we use a daisy cutter bomb going after jihadis that just happens to kill 100 people at a wedding it's collateral damage - somehow more acceptable then "targeting" 10 people at a wedding.

:shrug:

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

7. but they don't count. They aren't white.

Somehow, only the melatonally challenged people seem to count, at least with policy makers. It amazes and sickens me to realize how ignorant many Americans are, and think that people of other countries are "all alike". That's one reason Bush got away with invading Iraq. Too many Americans figured Iraqis were the same as the Saudis-after all, they are all brown skinned Muslims to them.

[leftchick]

8. The US Slaughtered MANY Women and Children in Iraq this week

http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/11/10/iraq.husayba/

<snip>
At least 24 civilians from four families died in air strikes Monday in a neighborhood even the residents admit has been a haven for insurgents.

"But why did they have to drop the bombs?" they asked, almost to a man -- although not on camera, fearing reprisals by the insurgents.

"I know what warfare is, and I don't understand why they had to launch so many airstrikes," said a veteran of the Iraqi army from the Saddam Hussein era, a man in a wheelchair.

<snip>

But there apparently were civilians in at least two of the homes that took direct hits, and neighborhood residents say there was no insurgent fighting from either of them.

The residents took a CNN crew Wednesday to both houses. In one, they saw the bodies of seven people -- including a 3- and 5-year-old sister and brother and their parents. The Iraqi army helped carry the bodies of the dead to the cemetery and dug the graves.