Cynosure

I find this kind of talk extremely disturbing, especially when coming from a potential Vice President...

The rest of this article can be found here: Palin: Iraq war 'a task that is from God' - Yahoo! News

If you believe in the Christian God, how can you even think that He is in favor of a war that was founded upon so much misinformation, if not upon outright lies? How can you continue to support a war, and continue to believe that it is God's will, when the leaders of that war condone torture, and the war itself has been exposed to be rife with corporate favortism, profiteering, and corruption? If God is with us, in this war, then why is our nation having to go so deeply into debt to finance it, borrowing massive amounts of money from foreign nations who are out fierce competitors and may even someday be opposed against us? If this is God's will and a just cause, why are we having to recycle our troops, again and again, pushing them past the brink of mental/emotional exhaustion and bringing great anguish upon themselves and their families? (No wonder, suicide among our troops is at an all-time high.)

And if you don't believe in the Christian God – or in any God, for that matter – then Palin's words and beliefs should be even more disturbing, to you.

Rekna

I believe in God and I hate it when people claim something is God's will. The bible is clear, if you say something is from God and it is not then it is from Satin. When the religious nuts get up and say something will happen because God wills it and it doesn't I always wonder if they think about this verse.... I know their listeners don't.

ottopilot

I find this kind of talk extremely disturbing, especially when coming from a potential President...

__________________
"All the leaders of groups tend to be frauds. If they were not, it would be impossible for them to retain the allegiance of their dupes" - H.L. Mencken
"continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it." - George Washington on political parties

fresnelly

What's the verse?

'm not challenging you here, I'm just curious and would like to read it.

__________________
"I am Ronald of Mordor, the Mage, the Destroyer.

Taste the scorched fruit inside my pies.

Chew the bitter towelette of truth."

J Pod by Douglas Coupland

LoganSnake

Religion has no place in politics. Any time Christian God is brought up, it is extremely disturbing.

__________________
Without a universal law there is no gravity. Without the gravity there is no atmosphere. Without an atmosphere there is no chance at life. And with no chance at life I don’t exist.

Baraka_Guru

Why do you say that? You don't want a president that guards against pride and despair and has the wisdom to do what is right and just?

Or are you simply stating that you expect a president of the United States to be an atheist as a requirement?

__________________
"The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. [...] In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer."

—"Politics and the English Language," George Orwell

"Humankind cannot bear very much reality."

—"Burnt Norton," Four Quartets, T. S. Eliot

ratbastid

Well, it's even worse in the context of what she's actually TALKING ABOUT.

To the Muslim residents of the middle east, suggestions that Western incursion into their lands and sovereignty is the divine will of a Christian god is a direct reference to the Crusades, and is deeply deeply offensive. This kind of talk is directly inflammatory, and she doesn't even know it.

Cynosure

That a President of the U.S. is a believer in God, and him wanting to be an instrument of God's will, is nothing new. There have been plenty of Presidents like that, throughout this nation's history. (Why, our very first President was like that.)

So, I don't find it disturbing just because a President or a Presidential candidate believes in God and wants to do His will. No, my argument here is more manifold than that.

I do like the first parts of Obama's prayer: "Forgive me my sins and help me guard against pride and despair. Give me the wisdom to do what is right and just."

ratbastid

I'm trying to figure out why. Too humble?

Bush took his will and wrapped it in God-talk. That's a different thing.

Aladdin Sane

The AP reports the Palin quote as "Our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God," she said. "That's what we have to make sure that we're praying for, that there is a plan and that plan is God's plan."
This quote starts in Palin's mid-sentence. The AP piece is a hatchet job and is intended to make Gov. Palin a scary religious nut.

Here's Palin's actual quote:

“Pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right. Also, for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending [U.S. soldiers] out on a task that is from God,” she exhorted the congregants. “That’s what we have to make sure that we’re praying for, that there is a plan and that that plan is God’s plan.”

Even the leftwing Huffington Post has the entire quote in context and the actual video. See the video with the quote in context at Palin's Church May Have Shaped Controversial Worldview. The money part runs from about 5:30 to 6:15.

Let the slime fest begin.

__________________
Addicted to Morphemes

Baraka_Guru

The insurgents fighting back in Iraq and Afghanistan are saying similar things to what Palin has said here.

EDIT:
Well, then. So it is.

I'll reread the Orwell quotation in my signature....

__________________
"The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. [...] In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer."

—"Politics and the English Language," George Orwell

"Humankind cannot bear very much reality."

—"Burnt Norton," Four Quartets, T. S. Eliot

ottopilot

I don't believe that at all... I just want to illustrate how easily we can escalate such claims or false perceptions with context biased factoids and distortions. I bet that if inclined, I could find all sorts of eye-brow raising religious "news" on any of these nominees.

__________________
"All the leaders of groups tend to be frauds. If they were not, it would be impossible for them to retain the allegiance of their dupes" - H.L. Mencken
"continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it." - George Washington on political parties

Baraka_Guru

Fair enough. I simply found your reaction to the Obama snippet to be unjustly reactionary given the context (or lack thereof). Palin was at least contextualized to be speaking about the Iraq War. Obama, on the other hand, was at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. A bit different, no?

Or were you just making a point? (Re: biased factoids and distortions.)

__________________
"The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. [...] In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer."

—"Politics and the English Language," George Orwell

"Humankind cannot bear very much reality."

—"Burnt Norton," Four Quartets, T. S. Eliot

Cynosure

Even with the entire quote, I do not feel a bit less disturbed. Palin was not exhorting her audience to pray for insight and wisdom, to know whether or not the Iraq war is God's plan. No, she was exhorting them to pray that the Iraq war is God's plan.

That, my friends, is the exhortations of fanaticism.

roachboy

so is the idea that because, for whatever reasons, this nitwit discourse referring to "god" or "special missions" from the Commander of the Divine Spaceship is an element in the degenerate field of american political discourse, then no use of it is of any more or less weight than any other?

isn't that to simply exclude sarah palin's actual positions from consideration, to reduce her to just another pronoun at the beginning of a sentence?

because if you don't do that, then the comparison to obama makes no sense.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

ottopilot

Yes... let's not forget Jeremiah Wright. Unfortunate business, but there it was.

__________________
"All the leaders of groups tend to be frauds. If they were not, it would be impossible for them to retain the allegiance of their dupes" - H.L. Mencken
"continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it." - George Washington on political parties

Leto

the fact that the Muslim god and the Christian god are one and the same leads me to believe that Western incursion is more of a power play based on economics and spheres of control, rather than one-up-gods-ship. Same goes for the crusades of yore.

aceventura3

Perhaps it does not matter that the "word of God" is a persons support of a war but the underlying principle that leads them to the support of the war. Both sides of a conflict can use the "word of God" as support for war, but what we really need is to take the next step and dig a bit deeper to understand the principles leading to the support of the war. So, if one group believes that God wants a certain other groups of people removed from the face of the earth or converted, and then another group believes that God wants people to live in freedom and that the strong is obligated to protect the weak - perhaps even those that don't believe there is a God could make a determination on which group is right and which group wrong if the two groups are engaged in a war.

__________________
"Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch."
"It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions on vegetarianism while the wolf is of a different opinion."
"If you live among wolves you have to act like one."
"A lady screams at the mouse but smiles at the wolf. A gentleman is a wolf who sends flowers."

dc_dux

IMO, a person of faith in the WH is, for the most part, a good thing. The power is enormous and remaining grounded is essential.

It is when that person uses that faith, rather than facts on the ground or the geopolitically reality, that it becomes dangerous:
Of course, the WH denied such conversation ever took place and we will never know for sure.

But the possibility of developing and implementing such a foreign policy based on the word of God is frightening.

__________________
"In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican. "
~ H.L. Mencken

abaya

This is such an extreme over-simplification of the whole situation (not to mention being fervently biased in one direction), I don't even know where to start--or whether I really want to, knowing that absolutely zero that I say will be actually heard and considered, other than to look for something to exploit in my answer.

Don't get me wrong--I am not on either side of this war--but you simply cannot take thousands of years of history and politics and write a nice little sentence to boil it all down to make sense with one particular worldview. No.

__________________
And think not you can direct the course of Love;
for Love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.
--Khalil Gibran

dc_dux

This exchange with Bob Woodward in his book "Plan of Attack" is marginally better:

__________________
"In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican. "
~ H.L. Mencken

Cynosure

Nothing short of a literal burning bush, parting of the sea, and pillar of fire should lead one into believing that a war – a war, resulting in death and suffering on a massive scale! – is God's will. In other words: a still, quiet voice in the back of your mind, and the belief that it's God talking to you, shouldn't be nearly enough to lead you into waging a war – especially if you and your allies somehow have vested interests in waging that war.

No, if you're a political leader and you're exhorting to me that it's God's will that we go to war, and that you are God's instrument in this matter, you'd better damn well have some miraclous, world shaking, irrefutable evidence to back your exhortations. Otherwise, leave God and His will out of anything you say about the matter.