Religion, Nationalism, and Terror

U.N.: Violence in Afghanistan up almost 25 percent in ‘07, McClatchy, October 1, 2007

WASHINGTON — Afghanistan is currently suffering its most violent year since the 2001 U.S.-led intervention, according to an internal United Nations report that sharply contrasts with recent upbeat appraisals by President Bush and his Afghan counterpart, Hamid Karzai.

“The security situation in Afghanistan is assessed by most analysts as having deteriorated at a constant rate through 2007,” said the report compiled by the Kabul office of the U.N. Department of Safety and Security.

There were 525 security incidents — attacks by the Taliban and other violent groups, bombings, terrorism of other kinds, and abductions — on average every month during the first half of this year, up from an average of 425 incidents per month in 2006.

Last year was the most violent since the U.S. post-September 11 offensive that ousted the hard-line Taliban Islamic militia from power and drove Osama bin Laden and his al Qaida terrorists into neighboring Pakistan.

Uri Avnery, The Mother of all Pretexts - Gush Shalom, October 13, 2007

The salvation came from America: a professor named Samuel Huntington wrote a book about the “Clash of Civilizations”. And so we found the mother of all pretexts.

THE ARCH-ENEMY, according to this theory, is Islam. Western Civilization, Judeo-Christian, liberal, democratic, tolerant, is under attacked from the Islamic monster, fanatical, terrorist, murderous.

Islam is murderous by nature. Actually, “Muslim” and “terrorist” are synonymous. Every Muslim is a terrorist, every terrorist a Muslim.

A sceptic might ask: How did it happen that the wonderful Western culture gave birth to the Inquisition, the pogroms, the burning of witches, the annihilation of the Native Americans, the Holocaust, the ethnic cleansings and other atrocities without number - but that was in the past. Now Western culture is the embodiment of freedom and progress.

AlterNet: Rights and Liberties: Southern Baptists Seek Laws Making ‘Will Of Christ’ Supreme, October 13, 2007

The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), the nation’s largest Protestant denomination whose leadership is a bulwark of far-right fundamentalism, is ratcheting up its political operations.

The Christian Index, Georgia’s state Baptist newspaper, recently carried an interesting and unusually frank report on the SBC’s lobbying outpost in Washington, D.C., just four blocks from the Capitol.

“It is in this environment,” says the newspaper, “that Southern Baptists have a significant presence through the ministry of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC). Richard Land, president of the ERLC, visits Washington often from his primary office in Nashville and is wielding an ever-increasing influence in his efforts to make the will of Christ supreme in public affairs.”

Land then insists that all he seeks is “a level playing field.”

“Does that mean,” asks Land, “that false religions have the same rights to express their opinions and their beliefs as we do? Sure. Let them come. I never saw Elijah backing away from a confrontation with the prophets of Baal. He just showed them the power of the One True God!”

Dana Milbank - Guess Who Came to the Evangelicals’ Dinner - washingtonpost.com, October 12, 2007

In the wildly popular “Left Behind” series of evangelical Christian novels, the Antichrist takes the form of the secretary general of the United Nations, sets up an abortion-promoting world government and becomes the Global Community Supreme Potentate.Last night, the National Association of Evangelicals met for dinner at the Sheraton in Crystal City. The keynote speaker? Why, the Antichrist himself.

Actually, the NAE, the umbrella group for the nation’s evangelical denominations, brought in the real U.N. secretary general, Ban Ki-moon of South Korea, not his fictional satanic equivalent, Nicolae Carpathia of Romania. But for the Rev. Richard Cizik, the NAE official who invited Ban, it was just about as daring. Evangelical Christians regard the United Nations’ blue helmets with about as much enthusiasm as Satan’s red horns.

Georgie Anne Geyer, BRITISH EXPERIENCE IN IRAQ SHOULD HAVE TAUGHT US SOMETHING - Yahoo! News, October 11, 2007.

First, early last spring, the 5,000 troops remaining of the 45,000 original British contingent, which was the largest command outside of the American one, started pulling back. No more did they hold near-total sway over Basra, Iraq’s single maritime exit to the world.

Slowly they withdrew to a few select bases and the streets they had in the beginning so masterfully controlled, as Shiite Islamic militants took over the south. Then, this fall, the British announced that half of their troops would be removed by next spring and the other half would be stationed outside the city at the Basra Air Station.

In case anyone hadn’t noticed, this sad little military minuet means that there is no longer a major non-Iraqi force in the south. The highway between Baghdad and Kuwait, with its window on the Persian Gulf, is the only land bridge out of Iraq for American troops — and it has now virtually passed into hostile Shiite militia hands.

“We are not defeated,” a leading British commanding general huffed last week on CNN. “We pulled out. We could have stayed a long time.” (And I’ve got a bridge over the Tigris that I’d like to sell him.)