Prop-a-gander

[kerravonsen]

Oh, that guy on the news! The US guy in charge of the US in Iraq. When he described the recent attacks on US soldiers as attacks against "democracy and freedom" he made me sick. What a load of arrogant self-important hypocritical propagandaistic bull!
Hey, wake up here, Mister!
(a) The USA does not equal "democracy and freedom". Hey, there's a rest-of-the-world that's got some good chunks of democracy and freedom (and there's even bits that have monarchies and freedom too...)
(b) You just invaded their country, buddy. Sure, it was a country led by an evil nutcase, but it was still their country. From their point of view, they're defending their country against invaders. Ah, yes, the old conundrum: Q: "What's the difference between a freedom fighter and a terrorist?" A: the side you're on.
Though, really, I'd say the difference was in the choice of targets: military versus civilian.
The sooner the USA get out of Iraq the better.

(sigh)

There are some who are trying to portray this conflict as a religious one: the Evil Muslims against the Good Christians, or, indeed, the Good Muslims against the Evil Infidels.
Crap.
That's just propaganda again. Trying to stir people up, trying to get them to kill each other.
There have been many people in this century and the last who've blamed all the ills of the world on religion. "If only everyone was an atheist like me, we'd have world peace!" (Arthur C. Clarke went so far as to write his own utopian novel along these lines, "The Songs of Distant Earth", where his space colony was spared the "disease" of religion by the method of extremely heavy censorship of the data in the colony ship's data-banks...)
It isn't religion that causes wars, it's politics. Politics driven, as often as not, by fear and greed. The religion in religious wars was just the propaganda-engine.

(sigh)

I was going to go on a nice logical reasoned ramble about this, but... the whole thing is just too dispiriting.

In the name of god
In the name of god
The fight for gold, these were the changes
Tell me, is it right, in the name of god
these kind of changes?
...
There's no god who ever tried
to change the world in this way
For the ones who abuse his name,
there'll be no chance to escape
on Judgement Day
-- "Silent Warrior" Cross of Changes, Enigma

Comments

[mistraltoes.livejournal.com]

Oh, that guy on the news! The US guy in charge of the US in Iraq. When he described the recent attacks on US soldiers as attacks against "democracy and freedom" he made me sick. What a load of arrogant self-important hypocritical propagandaistic bull!

It's just sound-byte rhetoric. Nothing to get yourself worked up over. I doubt anybody with an I.Q. over 60 and an age under 60 pays any attention to him.

Hey, wake up here, Mister!
(a) The USA does not equal "democracy and freedom". Hey, there's a rest-of-the-world that's got some good chunks of democracy and freedom (and there's even bits that have monarchies and freedom too...)

OTOH, I suspect your biases are coming into play here. I very seriously doubt that he was trying to marginalize the rest of the free world by *equating* the U.S. with freedom. He was probably referring to the official position that the U.S. is there to "liberate" Iraq and replace Saddam Hussein with a democratic government. By this logic (to which I do not particularly subscribe), an attack on somebody trying to bring democracy to the country is an attempt to prevent the country from becoming democratized, ergo, an attack on freedom and democracy.

The sooner the USA get out of Iraq the better.

Totally agree. Though if we pull out tomorrow, there will probably be decades of bloody civil wars, for which we will no doubt be blamed.

[hawkeye7.livejournal.com]

It isn't religion that causes wars, it's politics. Politics driven, as often as not, by fear and greed. The religion in religious wars was just the propaganda-engine.

When I look back at the religious conflicts of the 16th and 17th centuries, I tend to find that religious aspects were more than just propaganda. The fact is that people thought about things through a religious frame of reference. They tended to invoke the Almightly where we might appeal to certain abstract principles.

Which brings us to the first part. You are employing a frame of reference that permits you to differentiate between religion and politics. This was less clear in the 16th century. More importantly, such a distinction does not sit well with Islam.

The war in Iraq is not a religious war; Iraq was the most secular of the Middle Eastern states, and with a large Christian minority. But it does lie on one of the world's greatest religious fault lines. It was never going to be easy to keep religion out of this one.