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On the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, Christians, America etc.
Firstly, I don’t recall any of the Americans involved in
that episode claiming to be Christians.
Secondly, those involved are being punished. Lynndie England, the
cigarette dangling, prisoner-humiliating, kinda butch-type female that is in
many of the pictures, pointing at naked prisoners private parts, is in prison
for at least 3 years. You don’t hear about that part.
Thirdly, America is NOT a Christian nation, and never has
been. True, many of the founding fathers were Christians. Many were not.
Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Paine, among
others, were Deists.
(http://www.deism.com/).
Thomas Paine (“Give me liberty or
give me death!”) was vehemently anti-Christian. So was Thomas Jefferson. These
men did not believe in “revealed religion” (read: the Bible). There is a
version of the Bible called the Jefferson Bible. Jefferson literally took a
razor blade to the New Testament and cut out all references to miracles, the
miraculous, men “hearing” from God, the incarnation, the divinity of Christ,
etc, because he didn’t believe it, and kept what was left – the philosophy,
some of the morality and so on. Philosophically, the founding fathers were
drawing from John Locke among others.
America is not Christian. What is it? Free. THAT is the
difference between America (and also Europe, to one degree or another) and Iran,
Saudi Arabia, Syria, etc. In America, you are free to be a Muslim. In extremist Muslim
countries, you are NOT free to be a Christian. In America, you can be a
Satanist if you want to. Or an Atheist. In America, if you say, “God does not
exist, and Jesus was insane” what will happen? Nothing. In Iran, if you say,
“Allah is bogus” what will happen? You’ll lose your head.
This is THE issue that this war is being fought
over.
Freedom. The issue is NOT “invading Iraq” or Afghanistan, or the
possible
future invasions of Iran, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, etc. Neither is the
issue the
imposition of “western values and culture” nor is it about oil. (I
would say that it IS about oil insofar as oil represents freedom) The
issue is
freedom. Which side are you on? In what kind of society would you
rather live?
No matter what Iraq winds up looking like, if an Iraqi can say, “I
believe
______(fill in the blank) and nothing bad happens to them we will have
won that
battle. Then it SHOULD be on to the next one.
The Muslim Extremists/Terrorists have said, “I am going to
kill you or die trying!”
What is it about that that is so hard to understand?
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