I've been trying to stay out of the whole Iraq/Afganistan/bin Laden thing. No matter what you think, it's a mess.
Having said that, I don't think it'll get better before it gets worse. Also, I think we should hand over Iraq to the Iraqis and butt out of the Middle East unless invited by a sovereign government to help. Then, oh, I don't know, maybe we should concentrate on finding the people who planned 9/11 and ensure that they do no further harm -- and do so swiftly and be done with it. Something like that sounds like a good course of action. Then moving forward, we as a nation should try to mind our own damn business. Whining about a problem without offering an alternative is pissing in the wind, but that's about all I can constructively think of to sort this mess out.
But will the aggression towards Western nations ever really stop? Even if we were to leave the Middle East completely? Even if Israel was somehow magically turned into Palestine? Even if another non-Muslim never again sets so much as a single foot in any Arab nation? Would that help? I don't think anything would change. It just seems to me that the average Arab "community" (for lack of a better word) holds a grudge for a long, long time. Seriously, the U.S. as a nation could bugger off and leave the Middle East completely alone and in 50 years we won't be thinking aggressively towards Muslims. But they'll still hate us.
I just recently came across a very interesting editorial about this topic. If you don't agree with the article's point, at least you're thinking about it. It got me thinking. Thinking in a more "equal opportunity" sort of way.
I can't stand any religious intolerance, regardless of who it's coming from. Mormons don't condone coffee, Catholics have a thing about birth control, Jews won't eat shelfish, Muslims would kill me for my apostasy, yada yada yada. I find it all vaguely annoying. It's not religion, per se, that offends some sensible part of me. Being a fairly staunch Apatheist, I really shouldn't care which way one bends religiously -- and I don't. I don't think less of my mother or my in-laws or my brother or anyone else for their religious beliefs.
No, it's that sense of exclusivity that most religions foster which bugs me; it's what "religion" does to a group of people more than what it does to just one person. It's too easy to manipulate people with religion. It's too easy to create religious fanatics, so altered by a warped sense of superiority and self-righteousness that they can be bent to cause unspeakable acts towards their fellow man. I'm not saying that all religion is bad. Honestly, I think belief in a supreme being does a lot of positive things for some people. I just think that religion, while possibly being good for the individual, is horrible for the society.
Most religions seem to create this powerful notion of us vs. them. Everone thinks their way is the only right way, and everyone else who doesn't believe what you believe is not going to heaven, a heathen, soulless, an infidel, whatever. Taken to its logical extreme, that notion sometimes leads to Christains persecuting Jews. Sometimes it means Catholics questioning heretics on the rack. Sometimes it leads to Puritans burning suspected witches at the stake. And sometimes it causes Muslims to shout "god is great" while . It's all the same thing. Really.
Every once in a while it seems like religion hasn't done the world as a whole all that much good.
Couldn't agree more. We're in Iraq because of neoconservative grudges dating back to 1991 which political circumstances permitted them to justify pursuing, and because Iraq represented an easier, more manageable target than a bunch of towelheads living in mountain caves in the 'Stans. The Administration can say that they're "getting tough on terrorists", and all of a sudden no one cares about the fact that we've utterly failed to take Bin Laden "dead or alive" as promised.
I swear, some days I'm tempted to make like Osama and go live in a fuckin' cave somewhere. Except, you know, with plumbing. And TiVo.
Posted by Tess at May 13, 2004 8:59 AMSadly, I had a friend who held out that anyone who was religious was to be pitied for lack of intelligence. He's a tithing mormon now.
Posted by E at May 13, 2004 10:18 PMThat is kind of sad, E. There's no inverse relationship between intelligence and spirituality. The one has nothing to do with the other. Some people need the solace. That's cool. As long as they don't bug me about it.
I'm just happy I live in an age where I won't get burned at the stake for heresy os something.
I've always thought that religion was a sort of sanctified insanity. Complete belief in someone/thing you can't see, hear or touch, talking to beings who don't possess human form- don't people get locked up for that sort of thing?
I guess when I think about religion, I see it as sort of a lot of things that all boil down to people wanting to believe that they have options that extend beyond the limits of reality (i.e. having to die, wanting something but not being able to guarantee that it'll happen, etc.), and/or someone other than themselves protecting them even when they're grown up. I think religion gives people both comfort (death isn't really the end of my existence, God will protect me when I'm in trouble), and an all-powerful alliance (if I pray about this thing I want to happen and am worthy, God will help me make it happen). I guess I'm too much of a pragmatist to buy into something that can't be proven.
I don't have a problem with people gaining comfort through religion - find it where you can, I say - but I have a big problem when the religious try to convince/force others to believe the same thing, and I have an even bigger problem with how organized religion plays on people's beliefs toward the realization of secular goals that don't have as much to do with "saving souls" as with increasing the power and/or the coffers of the church in question and its leaders. At the extreme of that is people who are willing to subjugate or even kill other people in the name of their version of The True Path. But Suzi's right - it's just amazing that this all happens based on "faith" in some higher Power that offers up no solid proof of its own existence in physical reality (unless you count things like statues that cry tears of blood, tree trunks with Jesus' face in them, lambs born with a spot shaped like the name of Allah, etc... All VERY convincing signs. Really, can't an omnipotent being do better? Like skywriting "Yo, God here. Repent or die!" in neon green blinking clouds or something?)
Posted by Tess at May 20, 2004 12:09 PMUm, that last post was me, by the way.
Posted by Tess at May 20, 2004 12:09 PME: ha ha... just gotta laugh at that end result.
My sister can be pretty relgious at times, and she used to try to get me to go to their bibile studies and all... she finally learned to just leave me alone.
As for the whole religion/faith thing... religion usually ends up being bad. Too much control over people. Faith on the other hand seems to usually be a good thing. A lot of people have faith in something that helps to get through how horrible life can be.
Hell, I have faith.. it just happens to be in science. I sure don't fully understand things like quantum physics and string theory.. but I have faith in them, especially since tests have been done to help show the theories true.
I like god just fine, its his fan club I have issues with.
Posted by toddler at May 24, 2004 5:51 PMHow is it that I'm just now appreciating how forking funny toddler is?
Posted by E at May 24, 2004 6:48 PMAw, man... now he's going to get a big head and all...
Posted by wee at May 25, 2004 12:03 AMOh no, Bobble-Head Toddler!
Posted by Tess at May 25, 2004 3:52 PMLike a toddler holding an orange...
Posted by wee at May 27, 2004 11:21 AMThe only, but real advantage of pulling out of Muslim countries for the West would be that we, when attacked could declare war upon them and be done with it instead, (as we do now in the name of P.C.) just whine about the inability to hit back at "non-nation-entities".