Pray for Wisdom, Change

E Favorite:

My apologies for misreading your post. I totally agree with you although, I also believe in prayer.

So sorry for my previous rambling reply.

E favorite:
"I'll be glad when Christians stop making pronouncements like "For the Christian the main obligation must be to pray" and instead just get on with "help[ing] at whatever point in the forming of that wise public opinion which will inform the decision-makers. And help[ing] that same public opinion to learn from its mistakes."

First of all - why? Second of all - at least part B of Bishop Wright's answer is what all people should be doing (Christian & non-Christian alike) - "help[ing] at whatever point in the forming of that wise public opinion which will inform the decision-makers. And help[ing] that same public opinion to learn from its mistakes."

I just sent a letter to both of my Senators regarding my opinion based on my Christian faith about a pending bill on hate crime. Since opinions usually come out of peoples' worldviews, what about the Christian worldview that claims that we are to be good stewards of this earth is not worth hearing or sharing with public officials?

I'll be glad when Christians stop making pronouncements like "For the Christian the main obligation must be to pray" and instead just get on with "help[ing] at whatever point in the forming of that wise public opinion which will inform the decision-makers. And help[ing] that same public opinion to learn from its mistakes."

Condor old boy we were already at war with Iraq when Bush took office in fact Clinton had already resumed bombing them.

As for the rest thanks for the leftist statist talking points. And for what it is worth they are almost unifomly false, based upon half truths and whole lies.

California Condor,

Ahh, there you are again and still suffering from "Goritis".

Hang in there, Fred Thompson is on his way!!!

Reply to alleged "Concerned Christian"

1. Iraq is not "a major part of our War on Terror". In fact, generating wholly unnecessary conflict there has greatly impeded that "war on terror" by giving Islamists a proving ground for urban guerilla war, training and recruiting cadres; inflaming the Muslim world against us; and removing the tyrant Saddam who was a bulwark against Islamist terrorism and Iranian power. Bush gave Osama and the Iranian mullahs a splendid gift by invading the wrong country.

2. War is bad. Before Bush, the U.S. tried to confine it within the rules of the Geneva Conventions and the UN Charter. Now Bush has legitimized torture, naked aggression and a myriad of abuses. The end can never justify the means. The Iraq "war" can't be compared to previous "just" wars -- it is unjust on its face and the Iraq invasion was illegal, based on lies. As such, it can in no way advance the national security of the United States or the interests of our people or Middle East stability and peace.

3. Saddam is gone, true, in a farcical kangaroo court of Shiite executioners that, unlike Nuremburg, failed to credibly establish his criminality, notably his gassing of the Kurds for which the Bush 41 administration furnished intelligence and funding and afterwards covered up its role. Saddam never had WMDs after 1991, his defector-son=in-law, his weapons chief, told CIA that in 1995. In 2001 even Rice and Powell said publicly he was contained without threat of them.

4. Iran has been enormously empowered by the elimination of its chief regional counterweight and Bush's installation in Baghdad of a motley milita-backed crowd of pro-Iranian Shiite Islamists. This will only help Iran more as chaos unfolds and deepens in the region.

5. Libya has become civil, no thanks to Bush's invasion of Iraq. Libya's renunciation of its nuclear program culminated diplomacy begun years before by U.S. realists, including Clinton.

6. North Korea may or may not bel "uncivil but is contained thanks to the both the Clinton and Bush administrations". But if so, why could not the formula used with North Korea, after having been resisted for years by hardline neocons in the Bush Administration, have been used for Iran and Iraq?

7. Whatever does the Patriot Act have to do with Northern Ireland? The secret lies mostly hidden in the imagination of a demented few.

8. The "Jews and Palestinians are being separated by walls" but Israel, its leaders discredited, has never been less secure, with violence-prone Islamists now running southern Lebanon and Gaza, the U.S.-backed Palestinian authority in disarray, and an embittered, enraged, illegally occupied subject people aching for the chance to wreak revenge on the Jews. Bush's hands-off policy toward Palestine and his partisan stance favoring Israel has made things worse. No honest broker, he.

9. Bin Laden has never been brought to justice although he, not Saddam, authored 9/11. Bush abolished the CIA unit charged specifically to catch Bin Laden, whose presumed haven in Waziristan now has become a mini-state controlled by Taliban
terrorists eager to spread into shaky, occupied Afghanistan. Does the Bush clan's longstanding financial ties to the Bin Laden family come in here somewhere? Does Bin Laden have things to say that Bush can't afford being said? Or is Bin Laden's continued freedom convenient for Bush to monger as a threat? Why doesn't Bush want Bin Laden caught?

10. The CIA says "fanatical Islam" is gathering strength throughout the region, enlisting adherents and reconstituting itself in many places. Casualties from global terror have steadily increased, according to the Department of State's tallies. Every free election in the Middle East seems to register Islamist gains.

11. Stock markets and economies around the globe continue to show growth and opportunity but mostly for the "have mores", George W. Bush's base. But the rich-poor gap is widening, and unfettered globalization has been raping the world's resources and damaging the global environment at an increasingly unsustainable pace with no thought of what the morrow will bring.

So "George and his guys and gals have not only NOT been perfect" -- they have pressed a totalitarian project domestically and a a neoconservatively imperial agenda abroad with are not in accord with U.S. national interests or historical precepts.. Bush's tenure has been an unrelieved series of disasters and blunders broken only by comic interludes of bungling incompetence and stumbling malapropisms. Only those few true believers who remain outside the reality-based community maintain any faith whatever in this most unfortunate president.

I prayed very hard. I asked the Almighty, did you actually put George W. Bush in office? Did you empower him to invade Iraq? Is General Boykin right in saying "The enemy we are fighting in the Middle East is Satan"? "My God is bigger than your god?" And from a burning shrub, in a bolt of lightening, the Almighty answered me, "What rubbish! Do you think I have time to meddle with every crazy neoconservative that comes along every decade or so? I have the whole universe to attend to -- you think I've got time on my hands for Bush? Do you think I'm responsible for every little lunatic warmonger who is under delusions of grandeur and think he is fighting Evil by killing a half-million Iraqis and opening the door to chaos and ruin? What is it about love thy neighbor and turn the other cheek and do unto others as you would have them do unto you and the gate that's strait that he can't understand? What is it about awe, transcendence, sacredness, peace, love, hope and joy that Bush doesn't get? Who would Jesus bomb and strafe? Spread the word that Bush has absolutely nothing to do with Me and I with him."

Bgone religion real religion is simply about trying to comprehend God and make Him accessible to people who haven't the time or desire to study the subject.

By the way you might be suprised to know that I don't hold P. Robertson, J. Swaggart or the prosperity theology crowd in much better light than you do.

Oh and hoax buster is a joke and not a terrbly credible or well done one at that.

GARYD is so dumb he thinks no religion means no God. I believe in God. I don't believe in the pope, Pat Robertson, Billy or Jimmy, Rabbis or Ayatollahs. They're all just con men. Prove they're not.

RAY: We know which one GWB talked to. It's the same one Moses made the deal with, sold his soul to become the biggest shot that ever lived. It's Devil and not God that deliveres the wealth of earth.

http://www.hoax-buster.org/sellyoursoul Is this not what Moses did and the supernatural being Bush prayed to before Iraq?

Hmmm...

Let's all pray about it. Isn't that what the President did? As I recall, he prayed long and hard and the Lord told him to go in and "git 'em." I think that is the problem with prayer. When a voice talks back to you, do you know who it is?

Precisely why Bush's strategy to empoer the Iraqi people through democracy ther by limiting the numbers of the aggreived is probably the only real hope of eventually bringing this nonsense to an end.

"Winning the war on terror means giving up religion"???
Terrorism isn't about religion, it's about identity, politics and feelings of victimhood. The reason the wack-a-mole strategy (nice image) is flawed is because there will always be somebody with a grievance that wants the world's attention.

Actually no winning the war on terror does not mean we must all become atheist. In the long run winning the war on terror means that we must find a way to allow the people of the Middle East a chance at government by something other than theocrats and despots. That has been the only choices in the Middle East for going on 1.4 mellinia now.

One of the primary reasons for the war in Iraq was to discover if the paradigm of governance in the Middle East was a central to the problem as was Islam itself.

Islamic terror war is like the kid game where they bang heads that pop up through holes in the table top with mallets only to have another pop up somewhere else. No matter how many or how quickly they bang them they just keep popping up. The only thing we can say for sure is the terror gang will pop up somewhere. Where and when is the question. Banging them in the head has no effect at all just like the kid game. If we don't keep banging them we lose.

So the answer to the weeks question is: We elected a government that is supposed to do what is necessary to keep us from losing.

I don't think the present administration is qualified to do that but keep my fingers crossed hoping they know a few things that aren't in the news. If all they know is on the wire we're in trouble. That's a we and not just them. We hang together or someone will hang us all one at a time. Religion is a dividing force.

Winning the war on terror means giving up religion. We don't want to do that now do we? Think of all the poor ministers that would have to get regular jobs.

Viejita,

I am no longer in the USA military but the other hot spot potential terror locations I am sure are on the CIA/Defense Department/Homeland Security watch lists. I forgot to list Somalia as a terror area but the Ethiopians with our support appear to have quelled the area.

This column just seems like a fancy way of saying "I don't know." Then again, I don't know either, nor do many of those who claim to have solutions.
Concerned
What war on terror? Against all terrorists, or just those who are politically and economically inexpedient?
Have we taken on Sendero Luminoso or the Tamil Tigers? What's our position on Darfur and Zimbabwe?

Iraq is a major part of our War on Terror. War is not easy and things are done that typically violate human rights and basic morality. Without taking such actions, however, we would all be either saluting the Third Reich, marching in May Day celebrations, or bowing to Mecca five times a day, and have no human rights whatsoever.

As noted previously, the status of our War on Terror:

1. Saddam, his sons and major henchmen have been deleted. Saddam's bravado about WMD was one of his major mistakes.

2. Iran has been contained. (besides fighting the civil war in Bahgdad, that is the main reason we are in Iraq. And yes oil continues to flow from the region.)

3. Libya has become civil.

4. North Korea is still uncivil but is contained thanks to both the Bush and Clinton administrations.

5. Northern Ireland is finally at peace thanks to the Patriot Act that stopped the financing of the IRA also thanks to finally some pragmatic political leaders.

6. The Jews and Palestinians are being separated by walls (analogous to the two Czech republics). Hopefully the walls will follow the 1948 UN accords.

7. Bin Laden has been cornered under a rock in Western Pakistan since 9/11.

8. Fanatical Islam has basically been contained to the Middle East but a wall between India and Pakistan would be a plus for world peace.

8. And the stock markets and economies around the globe continue to show good growth and opportunity for the common stock holders.

So George and his guys and gals have not been perfect but there are some major accomplishments. Bill Clinton and his crew definitely had their accomplishments but were not "pretty wingie talking thingies" either.

I certainly don't mind if Christians and other religious folks pray, chant, make offerings, drink the blood of the lamb or the chicken or whatever; I just hope that when they're done with that they'll speak out against this bloody disaster and use their votes to gives us a government with the courage and humility to end it.