Of Guns and Gods

Since historians scribbled notes, religious prosecution and aggrandizement have been tied to the expansion and consolidation of power and economic gain. In each instance, the promotion of a single, religious belief has doomed countries to bloodshed, political chaos and war.

Atheism is a lowercase religion, or sect, whose adherents believe all power resides in man and the state. It offers a unique way of looking at the universe. It’s neither good nor bad, and is technically defensible.

Communism is the blend of atheism and socialism. Socialism is uppercase religion-intolerant. The first of the Ten Commandments (Thou shall not have strange Gods before Me.) conflicts with the first axiom of socialism—all power resides in the state. Socialists find the remaining nine Commandments good to go. They do reserve the right to interpret them. That right led to the death of about 20 million reluctant central and eastern Europeans and Russians, the creation of the Soviet Union and the Cold War.

The annals of Christianity, Judaism and Muslimism are replete with equally unsavory episodes in mankind’s abuse of religious tolerance for the sake of state hegemony. Many graveyards in Ireland attest to the consequences of religious intolerance. Now, each day new families are standing over fresh graves wreaked by the havoc of guns and gods.

Religion is an excellent pretext for rallying support. It’s a tried and true methodology, capable of inciting its disciples to commit atrocities that require no atonement. The Islamic jihad against infidels is a pretext, unless one believes Iran’s President and mullahs, or Iraq’s al-Sadr, or al-Asad of Syria aren’t motivated by expansion, power and treasure.

Westerners who espouse the idea that democracies brought this terrorism upon themselves are delusional. They site the creation of Israel and the West’s interference in the Middle East as the cause. That’s propaganda straight from the Marketing-A-War handbook of Muslim leaders. The jihad was born of the ambitions of Arab and Persian princes seeking to dominate their neighbors and the oil fields.

As it happens, the United States and its allies are standing between them and their goals—and $10 a gallon gasoline.

That was Saddam Hussein’s objective. He used the animosity between Sunnis and Shiites to consolidate his control of Iraq. It’s difficult to believe that the “Butcher of Bagdad” cared about which descendents of Mohammad were worthiest to carry the mantle of the Islamic faith. Empire builders use the tools at hand. He leveraged their hatred.

Saddam’s termination and the destruction of the Iraqi military enhanced Iran’s prospects to dominate the oil rich Arabian peninsula. A US withdrawal from Iraq coupled with a nuclear arsenal exponentially increases its potential for a successful conquest.

A strong Iraq, democratic or not, is an unwanted barrier to Iran’s ambitions. Iran is not about to commit any overt act which will place it in the sights of the US military. It does understand that the death of American soldiers and Iraqi citizens solidifies the political opposition to the US presence in Iraq.

Iran will continue to exploit this ambivalence by supplying their al-Qaeda proxies. Certainly, the proxies will continue to leverage the hatred between Sunnis and Shiites to keep the death toll climbing. The stakes are high in Iraq and the outcome is open to conjecture. The only thing Americans can be certain of is that Allah is hearing a lot of good things about Democratic candidates.