When I referred to the current Iraq situation as “the new Vietnam,” that seemed to spur a discussion as to how it couldn’t possibly be, because the casualty numbers don’t match up. This is, of course, ridiculous. Vietnam didn’t have 50,000 dead in the first few months. These things take time. But the point is, comparing it to Vietnam has nothing to do with the total number dead. It has to do with the fact that the military is sent into a situation for an indefinite period of time with only the vaguest of ideas of what they’re supposed to be doing there or how they’re supposed to go about it.
From the get-go, the Administration has been hazy on what was to happen after Saddam was deposed. The idea of the natives shooting at us for an extended period of time was never addressed. When one military advisor stated that several hundred thousands troops would be required indefinitely to maintain order, the upper echelon shouted the notion down. Except that’s exactly where we are.
And when I said Saddam is fine, thanks, I thought the meaning was clear: He’s alive. And he’s planning. And he’s waiting. And bin Laden still isn’t caught (remember “dead or alive?” Remember that promise?) And soldiers are being picked off. And there’s no end in sight.
We should never have gone in without, at the very least, a clear idea of a long term plan. We didn’t. And now we’re stuck.
And all the responses that are essentially name calling aren’t doing diddly to change that.
PAD
• 
Den: “Tenet warned against using it because it came from one single unverified source and Bush used it anyway. It’s a lie.”
Again, I’ll agree to disagree with you if you like, but I think it’s worse than a lie, but not a lie. I think it’s a failure to thoroughly do the job that we pay there (hundreds?) of tax dollars to do. They didn’t fail in execution, they failed in effort. And that, if you ask me, is much worse.
…
And if you can tell me how to read articles like this without paying, you’ll save me about $20/month. Honestly 🙂
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30D12F7355E0C758CDDAE0894DB404482
Richard wrote:
Americans have died and continue to die for our country as well as the freedom that is coming to the Iraqi people. How can any of you be against this?
Then Frank asked:
Did I just respond to a great big parody?
So den I sez::
That was my thought, too. That line, in particular, at first read to me like it was dripping with sarcasm. But the rest of it sounds so sincere…
You just gotta wonder…
Rob
First of all I want to tell you, PAD, that I completely agree with you. Unfortunately what is going on now doesn`t surprise me, I expected that to happen (and, no, (referring to an earlier thread here), I definitely don`t say this with Schadenfreude in mind).
Yes, I have been against the war from the very beginning. This doesn`t mean that I am anti-USA, a traitor (as some papers in Britain labelled Germans) or that people like us should be dismissed as being uninformed and that we should really see now that the war was right. As seen here but also during a discussion between journalists here on TV, which was very interesting, I find it annoying that instead of arguments the pro-war side often accuses people who think differently to be unpatriotic, that they don`t support the soldiers serving there and risking their lives, that everything is getting better now thanks to them over there. And seeing one posting here even mentioning God and that it seems to be the “duty” of the USA to go around and play policeman, it makes me sick.
The USA is the only super power left on this world but that also means to handle this position responsibly. Unfortunately, after the Sept. 11 atrocities the USA lost a lot of sympathies in the world because of this kind of arrogance.
I am not sad that Saddam is gone. He needed to be stopped – but by Iraq`s people, not the USA who did so without being invited, without being asked to help by invading them. I listened to the parts of the intelligence reports published on British TV and found them to be very dubious indeed. No WMDs haven`t been found to date, various intelligence reports circulating in Britain had been “dramatized” in order to convince more members of parliament to support the war when it was time to decide. As it happened today, all this pressure and ugliness going on to find out who exactly changed what cost one well known British scientist his life and I am afraid, it will continue to be a very ugly story indeed.
What also amazed me is the conviction the USA voiced when the war is going on, that in essence people will welcome them with open arms, that they will do the work for him to get rid of Saddam`s men, that after Saddam is gone also the problems are gone. The extent of the looting surprised me too but it is not difficult to guess that befriending civilians who aren`t paid, who have no water, no electricity and poor health care is a difficult task indeed.
On top of that tensions, misunderstandings and some incidents that are difficult for me to judge what they were cost lives of Iraqi civilians. Unfortunately it is obvious what the consequences are: Soldies die during attacks. Which means they are even more strict now, which means more people see them as invaders instead of liberators… Now I have heard that more US soldiers died AFTER the war than during. And I also heard that these soldiers have been told they can`t come back in September but have to stay indefinitely.
What will that do for their morale? Being stuck there in a country where they arrived as liberators but are less and less wanted, where nearly each day another soldier is killed in an ambush, where there is little progress to enhance the living standard back to before they entered and they have to wonder when they will finally see their families again?
I feel sorry for these soldiers and find it disgraceful how they are treated. On the one hand, they are called heros. On the other, I can`t shake the feeling, they are more and more becoming victims of politics and are stuck where they are because nobody wants to lose “face”.
This is not a situation to be proud of and it also smells to me like a kind of Vietnam.
“PAD, while I appreciate your right to your opinion I would like to say I vehemently disagree with you. However I do enjoy your books and will most certainly continue reading them so long as they entertain me.”
I wish I could say the same….. sadly he hasn’t done a good book in so long that it is very sad.
How can one do such great work and now do such pathetic work is ….. I can’t find the words.
I would give my left lung to have PAD return to greatness, but all the wishing in the world won’t make that happen.
How sorry.
Gøddámņ.
A Fat Fûçk works on a successfull comic many a year ago (yes I mean the Hulk) and now he thinks he is an expert concerning world politics??
Gimme a break.
So I guess all that fat was actually the swelling of his head spreading to the rest of him.
What a freak.
Way to go on proving youve just reached the age of 5 Johnny Boy (boy being appropiate in your name). Very mature arguement there.. except there was no arguement..
Just name calling by a little baby
I think its time PAD started hitting the ban button
TO: Johnny Boy
FROM: Josh
Re: your post
Y’know, last I recall, no one makes you come to this weblog and read it. If you don’t like what Peter has to say (well, write in this case), then go elsewhere and leave the man–and the rest of us–alone.
Maybe you’d be better off at Bill O’Reilly’s site. Here’s the link: http://billoreilly.com
I swear. Some people…
“The president of the United States is not a fact-checker.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13744-2003Jul18.html?nav=hptop_tb
“A key Iraqi scientist recently told the CIA that high-strength aluminum tubes bought by Baghdad weren’t meant for nuclear bomb production, as President Bush suggested in his State of the Union address, two experts on Iraq’s nuclear program say.”
http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/ap/ap_story.html/Intl/AP.V9135.AP-Iraq-Aluminum-T.html
I think Bush did lie, on purpose of not, his claims about Iraq were at best overstate and at worst bald face lies.
The President included the information about Nigerian/Iraq nuclear sales despite being warned not to because he did not bother to read them.
Am I reading this? Is this actually the excuse that’s being trotted out? He didn’t read that section? The President of the United States, the most powerful military power in the world, decided to use that awesome power without even bothering to read the documentation he would use to justify that use of force to the people of the nation?
Okay, seriously, I think I’d like it better if he had lied. Say whatever you like about Clinton, about Nixon, about any President, but at least it was generally accepted that they would bother to read the intelligence.
He didn’t read it. That’s the justification. “Well, we may have used faulty information, but that’s not our fault because we didn’t read all of the stuff we collected anyway.” I realize that the reason we have an intelligence service to collect data and then sort it for patterns is because the President can’t read everything (unless we somehow elect Reed Richards President sometime soon…and yeah, I guess President Luthor could swing it), but still:
The official said Bush was “briefed” on the NIE’s contents, but “I don’t think he sat down over a long weekend and read every word of it.” Asked whether Bush was aware the State Department called the Africa-uranium claim “highly dubious,” the official, who coordinated Bush’s State of the Union address, said: “He did not know that.”
Is it too much to ask the President to, in fact, sit down and read a ninety page document in its entirety before making a speech based on it? Is 90 pages really all that much to read? Most college textbooks are hundreds of pages long…most novels exceed this page count…hëll, a good trade paperback collection of a comic book can be hundreds of pages long. My copy of Yuri Stoyanov’s The Other God, a reasonably dense book on the nature of religious dualism, is 476 pages long counting footnotes and index, and I read that…and I’m not expecting to have to apply the knowledge anytime soon. I’m not trying to brag here, either…I’d bet almost every single person who commented on this thread or the previous one could match or exceed that, and I’d be willing to put a lot of money that they could read a 90 page document if they were going to be going to war based on its contents.
He didn’t even read it.
People read more than 90 pages in a weekend for fun.
Excuse me to introduce myself a moment.
I’m from Argentina (that, and the Office spell checker working bad, are the reasons of this not so good english) and I’ve been a fan of Peter David work for many years, buying things even quite awfull just because they had his name on it (I hope nobody will come to defend Wolverine in Global Jeopardy).
I had to quit many things during the recent economic crisis that jumped exported comic books and novels to ridiculous prices.
I usually read PAD page, and usually don’t read the comments, but I was curious to read the opinion of readers about the topic.
Well, I’m glad to know that, even against 70% of the United States public opinion (at least, that’s what the numbers they gave us says), one of my favourite authors is with 90% of the rest of the world opinion.
Outside the United States the people of this and (we know thanks to internet and cable tv) other countries see this war as false, hypocritical, dangerous and bully.
False, because those famous “chemical weapons” were never found (and, most important, never used, I cannot immagine a terrible dictator who has them and not use them when in a such situation), because the intelligence reports were proved fake and because even people in the government declared that the weapons were just an excuse (and I saw it in the CNN).
Hypocritical, because Saddam reached his power with the help and the blessing of United States. It’s not an X-File conspiracy theory, it’s a well known fact to those who have memory that Irak regime was financied to oppose to the Iran’s one twenty years ago, as well that Talibans were financied and helped by CIA when it was directed by Bush sr. (Rambo 3 anybody?).
Dangerous, because if terrorist were a real threat before when they had only ideological reasons, now that they bombed one of the most important cities in the islamic culture (Bagdad) they have real reason to be angry.
And bully, because who the heck give United States the right to invide an outside country without any kind of aprovation by ONU or anyone?
Even if Saddam was not a nice person (to put it in a way), he was the leader of a country and the only people who had the right to put him down were his own citizens.
If the United States takes this right as his own, who assures that they will not do the same with any other country they decide they don’t like their government.
What gets to me is the assumption that “Well, we haven’t found the weapons, so they must never have existed”. Remember, no one – not even the UN inspectors – disputed the weapons. The real question that should be asked is “Well, we haven’t found the weapons, so where could they have gone?”
Iran? Not likely. Iraq didn’t get along well with them. They’ve likely been moved to Syria. The traffic (both physical and communication channels) between Iraq and Syria was increasing once the US troop buildup started. They are on our list of terrorist states, but we still have relations with them, which I think is a mistake.
The Syrian government has the distinction of being the author of much of the anti-US/anti-Israel school programs that have since been exported to Saudi Arabia and other countries. They host terror groups in their capital – no matter what they told Colin Powell. Frankly, I’m convinced that Syria is a larger threat to us than Iran.
Okay… this is slightly off topic, but I feel the need to address this nonetheless. It always irks me whenever I check on a message board that addresses political topics there will inevitably be one person who will start the “religion ball” rolling along. And roll along it does… filled with many useless and hateful posts that usually insult both the readers and the posters. I’m a Christian and proud of it… and yet that somehow seems to make me an idiot, a sociopath, and a trilobite in eyes of the media, hollywood, and mainstream America in general. How is this possible?
Let me ask this question: how many of you have actually read the Bible? Now, after you’ve raised your hands and rolled your eyes at me, let me say that it doesn’t count if you’ve simply read “some of it”, “a few books here and there”, or “I know enough.” I mean read the whole thing… cover to cover. Yep, I probably have only three people now left in the whole category. And yet, since the majority of America is so utterly misinformed on this book, how is it possible for so many people to have such a negative opinion of it and its contents? Have any of you ever read the Bhagavad Gita? The Rg Veda? The Koran? And yet none of these religions have even half the stigma associated with them that Christianity has. Now why is that?
I’m not going to get into a long-winded discussion here about that, I just want you all to think about it a moment before you jump on the “Christians are all stupid” bandwagon that seems to be so popular in America. I mean, Pat Robertson makes a comment that he wants his supporters to pray to God to incline a few judges to retire and all of a sudden all of Christianity is to blame. We have a few Islamic fundamentalists hijack some planes and kill over two thousand people and everybody’s quick to dismiss it as the work of a “few fanatics.” How is it possible that we could be so skewed against Christianity like this? Sure, many folks may say, “Well, I’ve had bad experiences with Christians in the past.” And your point is? I’ve had bad experiences at McDonald’s before but that doesn’t mean that I’m going to assume that the entire corporation is filled with stoned sixteen year olds, am I? I don’t remember there ever being an election held that suddenly placed Pat Robertson in the position of Christian Spokesperson. But everybody is automatically reacting like he is and begin attacking, not his position, but his religion. Yeesh! If I were to believe the postings and opinions of the internet, news media, etc. I would have to draw the conclusion that the majority are atheist (if not agnostic). This leads me to ask: why does it matter to you? If you don’t believe in God and think it’s just a big fabrication, why let it bother you one more second? If I were to tell the mass media that I pray to my favorite pillow about the President’s foreign policies, nobody would even give me a second thought. Yet, if I say I pray to the Almighty and am a Christian- well, watch out!! That’s a double-standard folks…
Let me finish up here with a last comment about Pat Robertson. So what if he wants a couple of Supreme Court Justices to stand down? He isn’t calling for assasination, murder, kidnapping, or death by hijacked airline jets is he? No, he’s calling for prayer to God to have these men feel that maybe they need to retire. It’s his opinion. He’s entitled to have one folks- that’s what America’s all about. And he’s free to call upon God for his prayer requests- that’s what He’s there for. And God will ultimately decide what to do about Robertson’s prayer- either move the hearts of the judges, or Pat Robertson’s heart- that’s for Him to decide.
Oh man, here we go. But you make a good point.
Yet, if I say I pray to the Almighty and am a Christian- well, watch out!! That’s a double-standard folks…
No, it just shows you’re ignorant and silly. Just like the Moslems or any other foolish religion… The religious just use gods as an excuse for their own fooliness and their incompetence.
Let me finish up here with a last comment about Pat Robertson. So what if he wants a couple of Supreme Court Justices to stand down? He isn’t calling for assasination, murder, kidnapping, or death by hijacked airline jets is he? No, he’s calling for prayer to God to have these men feel that maybe they need to retire. It’s his opinion. He’s entitled to have one folks- that’s what America’s all about. And he’s free to call upon God for his prayer requests- that’s what He’s there for. And God will ultimately decide what to do about Robertson’s prayer- either move the hearts of the judges, or Pat Robertson’s heart- that’s for Him to decide.
Hey, the best thing would be if Pthe evil cowardly (see his Korean War hiding, for example) Pat Roberson drops dead in the next twenty-one days. Then we’d know that, if there is a god, he has a sense of decency and humor.
No, it just shows you’re ignorant and silly. Just like the Moslems or any other foolish religion… The religious just use gods as an excuse for their own fooliness and their incompetence.
Hey, the best thing would be if Pthe evil cowardly (see his Korean War hiding, for example) Pat Roberson drops dead in the next twenty-one days. Then we’d know that, if there is a god, he has a sense of decency and humor.
Yep… knew it would eventually come to this. Rather than attack my position using logic and reasoning, there will always be people who resort to name calling instead. Thanks for showing what a truly “big” person you are and revealing the expanses of your wonderfully “enlightened” mind. I defer to your “greater” wisdom, logic, and intelligence in the debate.
First, I agree with Peter David’s comments on the war. To me, this is just the latest incompetence shown by the Bush administration since they took over.
It’s been two months since “active fighting” ended and the Iraqi capital still doesn’t even have reliable running water or electricity?! The US troops should leave Iraq, not for safety reasons, but because their leaders are proving to be grossly incompetent. Get some UN people in there whose agenda will be to help the Iraqi’s, because nobody from the US is getting the job done unfortunately.
And yes, Saddam was horrible and should be removed from power- but there is a right way and a wrong way to do things like this. And we did it the wrong way, against the wishes of everybody else in the world. For the wrong reasons, which turned out to be fictional reasons on top of everything else.
Oh, and to touch briefly on the religion undercurrent running through this thread-
I’m Catholic (with a distinctly Taoist bent). And still as liberal as they come.
The God I believe in has two basic rule (which I was taught in Catechism as a child). 1. Love God. 2. Love all people.
Number Two includes Everyone. Iraqis, Americans, Israelis, Palestanians, Russians, everyone. Which is among the reasons that I believe in trying to find peaceful solutions that will work for a common good (common good, unfortunately, will not satisfy many people, I’ve found). So my religious beliefs do influence my feelings on the war, but they do not inform my understanding of the faulty tenets that the war and its aftermath have been based on.
Religion, like almost anything else, money, love, etc, can inspire some horrible actions. It can also inspire some amazingly wonderful things. Faith isn’t a bad thing in and of itself, it’s just as suceptable to personal interpretation (read, free will for the more religious among you) as every other philosophy and driving influence in the world.
And if you can tell me how to read articles like this without paying, you’ll save me about $20/month. Honestly 🙂
To Clarify: You don’t need to pay to read recent articles. It’s only the archived ones that they charge.
“Bush has lied–although whether it was truly his fault or not is still up for debate. Remember, in his State of Union address, he told us that Saddam had tried to buy uranium from Africa. So he has lied.”
Correct usage of words is important. That way, the meaning doesn’t get tangled up somewhere along the way.
In this instance, the words “his fault or not” suggest that maybe Bush Jr. DIDN’T lie. Because one can unwittingly pass on erroneous information, but how can it be a “lie” if one doesn’t KNOW the information is incorrect?
No, I don’t trust him. But let’s be careful in how we put things, shall we?
PAD said:
When I referred to the current Iraq situation as “the new Vietnam,” that seemed to spur a discussion as to how it couldn’t possibly be, because the casualty numbers don’t match up. This is, of course, ridiculous. Vietnam didn’t have 50,000 dead in the first few months. These things take time. But the point is, comparing it to Vietnam has nothing to do with the total number dead. It has to do with the fact that the military is sent into a situation for an indefinite period of time with only the vaguest of ideas of what they’re supposed to be doing there or how they’re supposed to go about it.
First of all, thank you Peter for addressing my post point-by-point. What other widely published writer gives you service like that?
Still, I do think comparing something to Vietnam without taking into account the number of dead comes way too close to ‘having it both ways’. Also, I think it’s way too early to be throwing loaded terms like that into the mix.
But at least you explained yourself. Better late than never, and more than I was expecting from a piece of “toxic waste”.
As for bin Laden, he’s still a whipped dog. If we catch him, that’s great, but his power base had been seriously weakened, and I can’t imagine many Muslims having respect for someone who has been humiliated like that. I don’t think he has any power within the Arab world unless we give him power by characterizing him as a person who still has the same capabilities as before.
David O’Connell
PAD said:
When I referred to the current Iraq situation as “the new Vietnam,” that seemed to spur a discussion as to how it couldn’t possibly be, because the casualty numbers don’t match up. This is, of course, ridiculous. Vietnam didn’t have 50,000 dead in the first few months. These things take time. But the point is, comparing it to Vietnam has nothing to do with the total number dead. It has to do with the fact that the military is sent into a situation for an indefinite period of time with only the vaguest of ideas of what they’re supposed to be doing there or how they’re supposed to go about it.
First of all, thank you Peter for addressing my post point-by-point. What other widely published writer gives you service like that?
Still, I do think comparing something to Vietnam without taking into account the number of dead comes way too close to ‘having it both ways’. Also, I think it’s way too early to be throwing loaded terms like that into the mix.
But at least you explained yourself. Better late than never, and more than I was expecting from a piece of “toxic waste”.
As for bin Laden, he’s still a whipped dog. If we catch him, that’s great, but his power base had been seriously weakened, and I can’t imagine many Muslims having respect for someone who has been humiliated like that. I don’t think he has any power within the Arab world unless we give him power by characterizing him as a person who still has the same capabilities as before.
David O’Connell
“I can’t stand the politics, but I love the writing. Sayonara, y’all.
Posted by Rob Thornton”
Dont let the door hit ya on the ášš on the way out.
I’m fully willing to discuss religious issues calmly and logically. The problem tends to be that most religious belief isn’t necessarily based on logic. That’s not intended as an insult, but rather that most religious belief requires faith which may or may not be based on logic.
>>>I’m a Christian and proud of it… and yet that somehow seems to make me an idiot, a sociopath, and a trilobite in eyes of the media, hollywood, and mainstream America in general. How is this possible?<<<
I’ll admit, this is a statement that gets under my skin. This sort of statement is used time and time again to demonstrate that Christians are picked on and belittled for their beliefs. The reality is quite the contrary. The vast majority of citizens in the US is Christian. Christianity IS mainstream. It’s by no means a minority.
For that reason, I believe, it is ‘picked on.’ When you make a movie or comedy that mocks society in general, it’s going to mock the primary elements of that society. Christianity is the major religion, and is therefore a target of that mockery. I’m not saying it’s right or wrong. I’m saying WHY it’s there.
>>>Let me ask this question: how many of you have actually read the Bible? Now, after you’ve raised your hands and rolled your eyes at me, let me say that it doesn’t count if you’ve simply read “some of it”, “a few books here and there”, or “I know enough.” I mean read the whole thing… cover to cover. Yep, I probably have only three people now left in the whole category.<<<
I have. Over a dozen times. In multiple versions and translations. I was a lay minister in a second reformation protestant church. I had a full scholarship to a seminary. I’m quite well versed in the Bible. To finish the statement and my point of view: I’m an atheist today. An atheist attorney—the ultimate evil, pretty much.
There is an additional question I would ask: how many Christians actually know the history surrounding the Bible as well as the book itself. Even if you read it cover to cover, you still only have a part of the story. There is a greater history to the book than just that. The actual creation of the New Testament by the early Church is something that should be taught and understood by all Christians, but the vast majority of believers have the impression that the Bible was passed from writer to writer and everyone took their turn in writing their book. The truth is vastly different.
>>>And yet, since the majority of America is so utterly misinformed on this book, how is it possible for so many people to have such a negative opinion of it and its contents? Have any of you ever read the Bhagavad Gita? The Rg Veda? The Koran? And yet none of these religions have even half the stigma associated with them that Christianity has. Now why is that?<<<
I have two feelings on this. First of all, it’s the most misunderstood Bible because there are so many followers of it that have not read it. You ask this board how many people have REALLY read the Bible. I’d ask the same of Christianity. The vast majority of believers only crack the book when they’re told to in worship services to read along with the minister/preacher/priest reading it to them.
I’ll stand by my argument that it has the most stigma associated with it because it is the book that most people in the US have access to and THINK they understand: both believers and unbelievers. I agree that there is some very invalid criticism of the religion by people that don’t understand it. The flip side is there are many believers that misunderstand the Bible just as badly and use it to justify all sorts of behaviors.
>>>I’m not going to get into a long-winded discussion here about that, I just want you all to think about it a moment before you jump on the “Christians are all stupid” bandwagon that seems to be so popular in America. I mean, Pat Robertson makes a comment that he wants his supporters to pray to God to incline a few judges to retire and all of a sudden all of Christianity is to blame. We have a few Islamic fundamentalists hijack some planes and kill over two thousand people and everybody’s quick to dismiss it as the work of a “few fanatics.” How is it possible that we could be so skewed against Christianity like this?<<<
I think this is a vast overstatement of the case. When the scandal involving some Catholic priests was revealed, there was not a witch-hunt for all Catholics. All Catholics were not painted with the same brush. The problem you run into with someone like Pat Robertson is that he has appointed himself the public leader of protestant Christianity. Whether or not you want that, he has done it. As such a ‘leader,’ valid or not, he is going to be the target of attention. When he makes a statement, he seems to be speaking for all of protestant Christianity. No other leader will make a stand against him,.
>>>I don’t remember there ever being an election held that suddenly placed Pat Robertson in the position of Christian Spokesperson. But everybody is automatically reacting like he is and begin attacking, not his position, but his religion.<<<
Very true. I agree. He has marketed himself as such, however. He has made himself the public target. No voice stands against, him, though.
>>>eesh! If I were to believe the postings and opinions of the internet, news media, etc. I would have to draw the conclusion that the majority are atheist (if not agnostic). This leads me to ask: why does it matter to you? If you don’t believe in God and think it’s just a big fabrication, why let it bother you one more second?<<<
I am an atheist. And religion doesn’t bother me. This will sound pretentious and patronizing, but my personal view is that people should be entitled to whatever support they need to make it in the world. I’m not anti-religion in the least.
What does bother me is when presidential candidates (and later presidents) makes statements like “atheists cannot be considered citizens.” That was George Bush Sr. When they single me out because of my lack of belief, then I have a problem. When the government decides that the best way to provide social assistance in through churches (the ‘faith based initiatives’), then I have a problem. When religion is made an issue, I have a problem with it.
>>>If I were to tell the mass media that I pray to my favorite pillow about the President’s foreign policies, nobody would even give me a second thought. Yet, if I say I pray to the Almighty and am a Christian- well, watch out!! That’s a double-standard folks…<<<
It depends on the circumstances you’re in. There aren’t many catcalls when state and national legislatures open with a prayer everyday. There weren’t protests during the post 9/11 remembrance observances. There aren’t protest lines in front of churches on Sunday mornings. Christianity and churches are alive and well. Most are fairly public and don’t really have much problem with the community. I’ve got a church on my block, and I find better things to do than mock people as they head in for worship.
>>>Let me finish up here with a last comment about Pat Robertson. So what if he wants a couple of Supreme Court Justices to stand down? He isn’t calling for assasination, murder, kidnapping, or death by hijacked airline jets is he? No, he’s calling for prayer to God to have these men feel that maybe they need to retire. It’s his opinion. He’s entitled to have one folks- that’s what America’s all about. And he’s free to call upon God for his prayer requests- that’s what He’s there for. And God will ultimately decide what to do about Robertson’s prayer- either move the hearts of the judges, or Pat Robertson’s heart- that’s for Him to decide. <<<
It’s one thing to do that in his own house. It’s another to do it on broadcast television. Then it becomes more than an opinion—it becomes a call to action. I’d love to remind him of the Pharisees praying on street corners and what Jesus had to say about them.
Whether you want it or not, the man is the media leader of protestant Christianity. Anything he says or does on his television show (broadcast in nearly all major markets and twice daily on ABC/Family basic cable channel) is more than a personal opinion.