A great article, an excerpt:
He said the crisis was caused not just by America’s actions but also by its misguided sense of its own mission. He poured scorn on the “chosen nation myth of America, meaning that what happens in America is very much at the heart of God’s purpose for humanity”.
This worries me most about our current situation. We seem to believe we are part of some divine plan being overseen by God. But the problem is that we cannot know what "God" wants us to do in regards to foreign policy. And anyone that tells you different is a fraud or insane. God does not whisper down into the ears of our politicians. God is used as a tool by cynical politicians to placate the masses while they fulfill their own selfish desires. We must realize that we are victims of circumstance. If a conservative in favor of the Iraq war for "religious" reasons was born in Iran they would be a Muslim fundamentalist and would support the despotic regime of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The key is we must think about secular problems in a rational secular way.
