This is a great article, and this is a good thread. However, let us put religion in its place.

Can we all please agree on the following?

Since even before the establishment of the Catholic church, since the first tribe of man, institutional religion is designed to do three things:

1) keep the populace obedient and in line. Read the Ten Commandments lately?

2) endow who ever is in charge with a "divine right" to rule and to use the legal system and the army or police to carry out God's will. It's not that the leader divine's God's will, but that whatever he does is "God's will."

3) to protect economic powers, whether they be state owned, mercantilist or oligopolists in a so called free market economy, what is important is the workers get up each morning and produce their labors in service of their business masters because labor is in service of the lord.

A quick aside: Communism may have been sold to us as a threat to religious beliefs, even the end of religion, but, in practice, it was often just a substitute. The formula - keeping the masses from turning into anarchy, serving the state and its economic model - was still the same. Unless, of course, you really thought huge statues of "Great Leaders" was because everyone from Lenin to Kim Il Jong were coincidentally hung up on great statues of themselves.

Now, yes, Dubya is born again, and, like born again people, they never seem to reach adolescence, let alone adulthood. He is open like a child to accept what "God" tells him to do. Still, he is no Hitler and while he was surrounded by sycophants there were plenty of people in place to put the kibosh on any crazy religious dream he felt like carrying out.

George W. Bush did not invade Iraq because God told him to and his Veep, NSA director, and cabinet said "Whatever you say." He may have believed he was invading Iraq because God said so, much like McKinley took the Philippenes because God came to him, too. But before he woke up to make that decision he went to bed with the arguments of advisors in his head. Somebody won, Dubya just needed to add "God's" to their argument.

Our concern should be with who won.

Religion was a useful tool, just like neoconservatism was to the philosopher set. However, it was not the driving force.

Let's keep our eyes on the wealth and power people.

Realpolitick means taking Bismarck's strategy for uniting Germany, the Roman concept of divide and conquer and adding in England's belief in colonialist control through selective military action, with France's sense of ruthless treatment of the locals. Kissenger in "Diplomacy" pointed out the faults of each and then forwarded a strategy that would discard the faults, adopt the advantages and form a new diplomacy. Of course this diplomacy still relied on the fact that the third world were like sheep needing tending.

We are now faced with sheep armed with RPGs.