re How to pray, etc.

[pynchonoid]

D:
> ...saw an email that's going around, with a picture
of
> a GI getting baptized (full immersion), saying that
> "in the desert north of Kuwait City Wednesday, March
> 12, "Eight members of the 3rd Infantry Division were
> baptized." I'll send the photo to anybody who'd like
> to see it. The religous war aspects of this war are
> troubling. 

Q:
>>"There are no atheists in foxholes," Doug.

Good point.

Q:
>>I think you can find enough 
>>valid
>>reasons to protest the war without fabricating a
>>religious one. 

I just think it's interesting the way religion comes
into play.  The image of US soldiers getting baptized
on the eve of their invasion of an Islamic country is
highly charged. And it sounds like there was some kind
of group conversion going on, what an intense scene
that must have been out there in the desert.

Q:
>>It's
>>hardly like it's part of the official rhetoric,

We do hear the President openly calling on God and
talking about prayer, creating the perception we're
fighting for God and Christ. The President is the one
who put the whole thing in the context of a "crusade",
too. The religious trappings of this war are obvious. 

Q:
>>And meanwhile, the other side is crying "Jihad!" and
>>"Our Blood and 
>>Souls
>>for Saddam?" I do hope that's part of the "religious
>>war aspects" that 
>>you
>>find "troubling."

Christian soldiers vs. Islamic warriors, followers
seduced by religious leaders in service of obviously
worldly goals. Considering the potential for a global
split along these lines, yeah, I find it troubling.  


"There were men called 'army chaplains.' They preached
inside some of these buildings. There were actually
soldiers, dead now, who sat or stood, and listened.
Holding on to what they could. Then they went out, and
some died before they got back inside a
garrison-church again. Clergymen, working for the
army, stood up and talked to the men who were going to
die about God, death, nothingness, redemption,
salvation. It really happened. It was quite common."
-Gravity's Rainbow, p. 693





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