[Peace-discuss] RE: Supporting the troops? Who's responsible?

[C. G. Estabrook]

You're surely right, Phil, about the sources of the war, 
altho' I might quibble about a "stable oil supply": the US has
insisted for years that it control Middle east energy
resources principally as a way to control its major economic
rivals, Europe and northeast Asia.

But that's not what's argued publicly.  In fact, the
administration has recently made an interesting rhetorical
shift from "the global war on terror" to the (somewhat less
euphonious) war against the "global extremist Islamic empire"
[sic] (which Rumsfeld specifically compared to the American
Cold War propaganda idea of the international Communist
conspiracy) or the war on "radical Islam," as Bush said in
Pakistan today. That is, they're insisting ever more on the
religious aspect of their propaganda.

Compare that with UK PM Tony Blair's proclamation this weekend
(http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article349125.ece)
"that God will judge whether he was right to send British
troops to Iraq, echoing statements from his ally George Bush,"
as the Independent/UK put it.  (I think that it's going to be
a difficult interview for Tony.)

I think it's not the case that the article is "trying to
drum up religious hatred (or more precisely, hatred of a
particular religion) to attack anyone and everyone who serves
our country."  In the contrary, the author's trying to point
out how hateful it is to "cover sin with smooth names" and
blasphemously invoke the name of God to justify mass murder.  

And it raises the difficult question of how we are to respond
to those who carried out the mass murder, coerced and misled
as they may have been.  We asked that question about the
Germans after WWII, but the Germans surely had less freedom
than we and our contemporaries do to find out what the
situation is and to act upon it -- and therefore perhaps
correspondingly less guilt. 

What would we say about a German in 1944 who said, "I support
our troops"?  We must say at least as much about an American
who says that today.  --CGE


---- Original message ----
>Date: Fri, 03 Mar 2006 18:19:33 -0600
>From: "Phil Stinard" <pstinard at hotmail.com>  
>Subject: [Peace-discuss] RE: Supporting the troops? Who's
responsible?  
>To: peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
>
>It's an interesting article, but its premise is flawed.  The
war in Iraq is 
>not about who's "God" is right or wrong, it's about economics
and ensuring a 
>stable oil supply.  To be sure, support for the war is being
garnered by 
>marketing it as a holy war to people with certain religious
views, but that 
>is a minority viewpoint.
>
>What's sad about the article is that the author is trying to
drum up 
>religious hatred (or more precisely, hatred of a particular
religion) to 
>attack anyone and everyone who serves our country.  Even
Ricky, in another 
>post to Peace-Discuss that I'll comment on later, says that
he has a veteran 
>friend who is troubled by this trend.
>
>--Phil
>
>
>>Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2006 16:59:37 -0600
>>From: "Morton K. Brussel" <brussel4 at insightbb.com>
>>Subject: [Peace-discuss] Supporting the troops?Who's
responsible?
>>To: Peace Discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
>>Message-ID: <ED3132A3-B280-46C0-914B-10C059559026 at insightbb.com>
>>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252"
>>
>>
>>   I agree with the thrust of the following article. The
author poses
>>some forceful questions: Are youth in Iraq responsible?  
Has the
>>fact that they may have been swindled remove their guilt?
Are we all
>>just pawns of our environment and upbringing? Was Ward
Churchill right?
>>
>>Of course, we all can't be put in the same basket, but are we
>>Americans, as a people, any different from the Good Germans
of WWII--mkb
>>
>>Published on Friday, March 3, 2006 by CommonDreams.org
>>Why I Cannot Support The Troops In Iraq
>>by Doug Soderstrom
>>
>
>
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