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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: neolib who wrote (182325)	2/22/2006 6:44:15 PM
From: michael97123	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 281500

Bob Shieffer led tonite with "Civil War in Iraq" and it sure looks like it to me. American troops need to be kept out of the fight between shiaa and sunni. It would be the hight of stupidity to get involved. We broke humpty dumpty and humpty may have been worth breaking but now it becomes clear that we just cant put it back together. I am not naive to think that we can exit immediately or avoid all american casualties from this day on, but it should be the prime directive of our policy. I cant find a reason to be on either side in this fight---al quaeda backed sunni baathists against iranian backed shiaa & the military arm of al saders army. Help the Kurds and try to seal the borders as best we can and let them go at it.

To: neolib who wrote (182325)	2/22/2006 10:23:22 PM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Of course you are born into religion. Simply look at the fractional members of any religion which convert to it vs those born into it which convert to other religions. No.. This is just the predominant perception today.. that somehow being born Catholic, or Baptist, or Mormon suggests that you have some elitist status as a believer. And it's WRONG!! I don't care what god you believe in, it would strike me as rather hypocritical for people to claim "I was born into this religion so I was born a believer of this particular faith". It's like being "born" Republican, or Democrat, or for that matter, being born a Satanist because your parents are... People eventually must assume responsibility for deciding what they want to believe, whether spiritually or politically. But yes.. most people just continue to adher to the beliefs that they were taught by their parents, so in that respect, they were "born" into a particular faith. And isn't that part of the problem? Their parents are conservative and intolerant and then the children adopt the same attitude. And it's this same "head in the sand" dogmatism that creates that situation you mentioned related to women in conservative American religion. It's the same head in the sand mentality that prevented Women from having the right to vote for the first 130 years of this country's history. But think about it.. somewhere along the way women chose to disobey and NOT follow the wrong-headed beliefs of their predecessors. And the same thing is what will eventually happen in Iraq and the Middle East as moderate and progressive Muslims fight against the wrong-headed and violent beliefs of the ultra-conservative and militant beliefs of certain Islamic sects. The human yearning for freedom, dignity and peace will insure it, IMO. The question is how long it will take, and how many bloody setbacks will occur along the way. Our responsibility should be to do what is possible to insure that the parochial interests in Iraq between Sunni and Shi'a are not permitted to dominate the individual rights of all of the other Iraqis who wish not to be dominated and oppressed. Anyway.. that's my opinion on the matter. Hawk