Religion Dispatches
…ng and militaristic country, but this last year’s continued involvement in Afghanistan marked the longest war in the nation’s history. What are the costs? Thousands of American lives lost, trillions of dollars spent, international reputation shot to hell, psychological instability of returning veterans with unprecedented numbers committing suicide, veteran services stretched thin—these are only a few items that come to mind though they only scratc…
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…s weak and the rest of the world knows it. Boykin cites US withdrawal from Afghanistan as the worst failure in US history which, as Chang confirms, encouraged Russia to invade Ukraine and has made China bolder in its threats to invade Taiwan. Youssef cheers the efforts of missionaries to convert Afghani civilians to Christianity in the two decades since the US invasion of Afghanistan, and argues forcefully for Christian Afghanis to be resettled an…
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…to Laura Bush’s 2001 radio address on the Taliban’s oppression of women in Afghanistan. In this famous speech, the First Lady contrasts the “brutal” Taliban with the distress and concern of “civilized people around the world,” ending with a call to Americans to be “especially thankful for all of the blessings of American life.” And yet, in one important way, Bush diverges from her Protestant forebears. Describing the Taliban as inimical not just t…
Read More…or the Qur’an-burning Terry Jones, the murders of UN workers and others in Afghanistan proves his point: that Islam is a violent religion. Jones apparently sought such a response. “There was somewhat of an awareness that there could be a violent reaction,” he told a British news service today. In a press release distributed through the Christian Newswire service, Jones issued a statement defending his Qur’an burning on the grounds that the resulti…
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…as an unexpected site of war, because it was “civilized,’’ unlike “Iraq or Afghanistan, that has seen conflict raging for decades.” Though D’Agata provided a formulaic apology soon thereafter, if not for the failure to recognize that the lack of “civility” in Iraq and Afghanistan could be attributed to US-led war, then because his choice of words revealed the mindset of many, from celebrities to individuals, who’ve converged to provide an outpouri…
Read More…e insist that it is. Terry Jones is a despicable man, and the marauders in Afghanistan who killed UN workers and others have committed unspeakable crimes. We can agree that both things are true, and also agree that Jones’ Qur’an burning was unpopular but protected free speech, and that the angry mobs in Afghanistan don’t represent all Muslims. If you want to game all the possible Constitution-threatening ramifications of the Obama administration’s…
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…ush for the wars. I heard a guy the other day say on NPR, “We will stay in Afghanistan until we can’t afford it anymore. We will never find a reason to leave, we will never arrive at a victory, but we will finally have to quit.” I think the judgment that we can’t afford it—we’re probably not very far from that. Dan: I think I saw the figure the other day that it costs us about a million dollars for every insurgent we’ve killed in Afghanistan. ** W…
Read More…istory of man.” The article argues that the Muslim invasion of present-day Afghanistan beginning in 1000 CE constituted a genocide of Hindus living there. A number of Vyas’ articles circulate on conservative Hindu websites and forums claiming various Hindu genocides at the hands of Muslims in different historical periods. For Breivik, Vyas provides an example of Muslim violence and imperial expansion. Breivik returns to South Asia again and again…
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…thought, I am now going to heaven. Pat Tillman, the footballer who died in Afghanistan, was both an atheist and very heroic. There are atheist heroes—people just aren’t exposed to them. Someone once referred to you as Darwin’s most dangerous descendant. Are you dangerous to religionists in America? Think back to the McCarthy witch hunt in the ’50s—this terror that America was going to turn communist. There was never any danger that America was goi…
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…of war. …All of us should live by his example. …Every American soldier in Afghanistan… can consider himself or herself a redeemer chosen to give women dignity and people freedom.” Yet it is “not man’s arms… but man’s attachment to a just and benevolent Creator” that brings victory. To be a redeemer is, apparently, to go to war without placing real value on war—to be a Jew or a good Christian, not a Roman or an “Islamist terrorist.” If all of this…
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