You Can't Dream This Shit Up

From what I am able to gather from the reportage available to me from the so-called "liberal" media & what's on the InterWeb, the religious loonies are having a war over in the Middle East. The so-called Shi'a militias are up in arms against the Sunni militias and the Gringo army is in the middle of it. Added to that is the apparent collection of splits between the various militias – like the Shi'as have now split into at least three groups, each fighting against the Sunnis as well as among themselves – and you get some very interesting case studies.
     I call 'em case studies 'cause there ain't no way in hell you can make sense of a bunch of people killin' each other over differences of opinion on how this or that verse of the Qur'an says to do this or that conflicting thing. You couldn't dream this shit up.
     People all over the Middle East are killing each other instead of waiting for their god to kill them so they can see each other burn in hell or go to heaven.
     Seriously.
     I said you couldn't dream this shit up.

Habakuk kills Misru 'cause Misru said something to Habakuk's cousin about the way his second-cousins uncle on his father's side killed Mustafa's dog 'cause the dog was haram. Now Misru is a Shi'a and his brother Rashid is a Sunni. Rashid hates Misru 'cause of the Shi'a/Sunni problem but he hates Habakuk even more because he thinks the dog was not forbidden because Rashid's second cousin on his third uncle's sister's side needed the dog 'cause his uncle is blind. So Misru's brother had to make an honor killing of Habakuk's sister's daughter 'cause she was friends with the kufar Sven who lived in the bad part of town and sold wine to the Kurds before he, Sven, was killed by a mad dog that had gotten loose from the blind peoples' school on Friday just about prayer time. Sven's distant cousin Olaf flew all the way from Sweden to get his brother's body from Habakuk's grandfather, who'd killed the brother because of his having said something about a guy named Mohammed – but not the prophet Mohammed – to Habakuk's sister's daughter but which statement was misunderstood by a boy who lived next door, which boy subsequently blew up himself and sixteen people in a market the same day that the dog was declared haram by the mullah Omar, who shot Misru's dog. Which is why everybody's trying to kill a guy named Jack who lives in Florida and has never been to the Middle East but who did put new cabinets on a yacht owned by Sheik Garam Haramanggapuja, who lives in Kuala Lumpur.

Maybe you could dream this shit up. I most certainly don't have a problem dreaming it up. Even Yvan du Seine dreams this stuff up. To wit:

"I've never been to Baghdad
"but I've been to Anbar Province.
"They say the ladies are insane there
"But I really don't remember . . . "

Boom!

Now into this mix the US military had decided to give the US troops over there "Freedom Packages" which included Bibles & other "proselytizing materials." This pile of stuff was in English and Arabic so the locals with whom the US troops came in contact would be given the opportunity to come to Jesus.
     And we all know how much Jesus can do for them towel-head camel jockeys.
     Couldn't dream this shit up again.
     So this pile of tripe was given to the troops to hand out, which would have worked good 'cept the Military Religious Freedom Foundation got involved and from there the military backpedaled on making the troops hand out the "packages."
     What I find interesting about the packages was the inclusion of a computer game called "Left Behind: Eternal Forces'. According to another report, the game is a work-up of a series of cheap work novels about the end times, post-Rapture. The game evidently involves soldiers hunting down enemies of the Christ.
     And then there's this from the second site (linked above):

". . . despite what Operation Straight Up and its supporters in the Pentagon may think is taking place in Iraq, the Rapture is not a viable exit strategy."

Dream this up too? Betcha didn't. I know I couldn't . . . ok, maybe I could, but it would only come out of my fingers by way of this keyboard if I had a homunculus living in my skull . . . which would be another version of Descartes' error.
     But I wander off task.
     It absolutely blows me away that one species on the planet can be so damn dangerous and so blindly so. Bush & his fakes at the "faith-based" White House, including Karl Rove have been pushing this war – this "Surge" – as some sort of defense of our way of life, our way of life, of course, being a Christian way of life. They'll tell you it's about Iraqi freedom or "catching al-Qaeda" or fighting them over there so we won't have to fight them over here. (Wanna bet how long that really lasts?) But we also have on Bush's word that the divine told him to wage war in Iraq.
     Yeah, god talks to Dubya.
     God doesn't tell individual soldiers when they're about to get fragged. God doesn't save groups of soldiers from IEDs. He doesn't keep the Iraqi children from being used as hand grenades. But god does talk to Dubya.
     That otter be enough to get you to sleep at night, right?
     As if.
     And here some Christian activist/missionary zealots decide that they should give the Bible and a very sinister computer game based on some of the gibbering in the Bible to soldiers so they can hand the stuff over to Iraqi citizens. Show 'em that we care. Show 'em that we're concerned about their eternal salvation and after-life welfare.
     Show 'em god loves 'em. And show 'em if they don't love god back, our boys will be glad to come in and wipe the streets down with their blood and skin and sinew and bone fragments.
     'Cause god talks to Dubya.

Jesus H. Pluckin' Christ Almighty! It's already a religious war! The damn Shi'a militia has fragmented so that they're fighting each other! The damn Sunni and Shi'a are at each others' throats with guns and bombs and exploding seven year old boys! And our commander-in-chief monkey gets messages from the divine lips!
     How many more exclamation points do I have to use to make sense of this?
     Oh, I forgot: it don't make no sense 'cause I ain't in touch with the divine, who makes sense to every dumbass, desensitized, decerebrated frog-head religionist whack job believes that god talks to Dubya special.
     And once I get my mind right about that, it'll all make sense to me?
     Yeah, right. It'll make the kind of sense that has gotten into the military mindset that soldiers can be ordered to attend church, by which order any commander or platoon NCO will know that, should his troops get fragged, they will go to heaven straight up with Jesus.
     So tell me how that's different from the dead GI and the shahid blows himself up in a market place or a mosque of the opposing sect?
     Yeah, right. There ain't no difference.
     If a soldier or mujihadin is right with his god, that person is expendable. Sure, the company or ummah is down a man, but, heck, at least the CO knows that soldier went to heaven. You can't find a more expendable soldier than one that's right with his god.

That's why it's a religious war, stupid. That's why it's a religious war, even if Dubya's god won't let him admit it. But then, the truth may set you free but only if it's god's truth. Kinda like "everything I say is a lie," ain't it? No difference at all.