<div><span class="gmail_quote">On 10/5/06, <b class="gmail_sendername">Melissa Hendrickson</b> <<a href="mailto:hend5953@uidaho.edu">hend5953@uidaho.edu</a>> wrote:</span></div>
<div><span class="gmail_quote"></span> </div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">How many centuries did Christians kill each other over "stupid"<br>sectarian violence? Christians may not resort to physical violence to
<br>settle differences between groups in our current era, </blockquote>
<div> </div>
<div>I'm not sure what you mean by "our era," but Germany, a mostly "Christian" nation, committed some of the most horrendous acts of violence in history during WWII, as we all know, and religious issues involving conflicts between Christians and Jews were certainly a factor. Catholics and protestants were "at war" in Northern Ireland during our life time, engaging in "terrorist" style attacks. Consider the willingness of the US, a mostly Christian nation, during the Vietnam war, to kill engage in mass killing of civilians, and though one can argue this was not a religious oriented conflict, the mass deaths that the US military inflicted in Southeast Asia during that war was in part made possible by religious and racial stereotyping of the mostly non-Christian population, just as the genocidal slaughter of Native Americans in the settling of North America was partly justified to bring the "Godless savages" to God, by the mostly Christian invaders. In the USA we have seen Christian religious extremists kill doctors over abortion issues. And there are many scholars who see elements of the same religious conflicts between Islam and Christianity that resulted in the Crusades, now being acted out again in the US invasion of Iraq.
</div>
<div> </div>
<div>It is astonishing to see some blame the violence in Iraq now entirely on conflicts within the world of Islam. The situation in Iraq is very complex, and religious conflicts within Islam are part of the motivation for the sectarian violence, but much of the killing is related to nationalistic Iraqis who want the US to cease the military occupation of their county, and a significant percentage of the civilian death toll has resulted directly from US military operations. Many Iraqis who have lost loved ones directly due to US military operations are motivated to attack US forces in Iraq for revenge.
</div>
<div> </div>
<div>One very good reason why the US should not have invaded Iraq was because of the potential for such an invasion to increase the sectarian religious conflicts. To not realize the USA's ill advised militaristic approach to solving Iraq's religious and social problems is a major cause of the current blood letting is to simply deny fact, a trend in the thinking of many who support the Bush administration that can be connected to the denial of fact common in the mindset of the Christian religious extremists who have supported the Bush administration, with the quite explicit goal of promoting their form of Christianity here in the USA and abroad.
</div>
<div> </div>
<div>I hope Christians in the USA who follow the message of tolerance, love and compassion that Christ represents, will vote next month against the Bush administrations policies of using violence and military power to force our will upon the people of Iraq, a policy that appears to be accomplishing nothing but endless violence, and to be an encouragement to the very Islamic extremists we are ostensibly trying to disarm in the "war on terror."
</div>
<div> </div>
<div>I don't claim to have the solution to the mess in Iraq, but it is clear the Bush administration has bungled this war in many ways. Those who led the US into this mess with half truths and distortions of fact should not be rewarded at the polls...
</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Ted Moffett</div><br>