Thanksgiving! (Page 2 of 2)

On the religion angle, I go along with y'all to the extent that we recognize religion as a set of rules contained within an organization and that faith is different from religion.   I also further differentiate, even on what may be obvious.  I do not think for a moment that the Crusades were fought to advance the Lord's will.  Not for a moment.  They had nothing to do with faith or pleasing God, but over someone who had replaced God with the gods of power and wealth.   

Also, I have always thought of politics as the means by which limited resources are allocated.  It's economics with guns instead of calculators. 

If you take my definition of religion above, and use it as a sauce to pour over the entree of my definition of politics and I think you'd see that 'religious' wars are just plain old armed political conflict.  Natural resources, technology, economic influence, land, all of these are the limited resources the political process of war are trying to allocate (or reallocate to be more accurate). 

Now to conflate the threads of this thread, on Thanksgiving, let's give thanks for our soldiers who are doing the fighting in the Middle East.  Regardless of the purposes of the war, and regardless of what I or others may think of those reasons, I am grateful to those young men and women risking their necks for my benefit.  I can sit here and think high minded thoughts, but must always remember that there's kids who won't be home this year and far, far, far too many who will never be home again.  Back to what I said to Doc, I do wish that the leaders had to put their own skin in the game rather than risking someone else's.  That goes for all sides of the current conflict.

- Zurf