# Our Christian war machine **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [August 7, 2014, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/our-christian-war-machine/695047 "2014-08-07T18:21:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Fotheringay-Phipps](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/d9b06d/32.png) [@Fotheringay-Phipps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fotheringay-Phipps)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2014, 12:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/our-christian-war-machine/695047/41 "2014-08-08T12:51:47Z")
> [@Sicks\_Ate](#): > > Nope, I reserve it for privileged majorities who need to pretend to be oppressed so that they can believe that they are fulfilling a prophecy in which they are Saved. IOW, People You Don’t Like. Logically, your same point applied to some other groups. But you just like them better. > [@Trinopus](#): > > I didn’t; I am speaking for myself and as many others who agree with me as may choose. > > In case you haven’t noticed, this is a free-for-all discussion forum. We get to stick our oars in, when and where we want. You can say your own opinion, but you can’t respond to a question about another poster’s position, which this was. > [@](#): > > If you have an actual substantive rebuttal, bring it. I already did in the very post you quoted, but you just ignored it and pretended I hadn’t. So probably not worth bothering further. > [@panache45](#): > > I wasn’t referring to a war that happened 20 years ago. If you limit your sample size to this particular incident, you can prove whatever you want. ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2014, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/our-christian-war-machine/695047/42 "2014-08-08T14:37:25Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > Wait, weren’t most of the Bosnians Muslims? Forget it, he’s rolling. ---
**Author:** ![snowthx](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowthx/32/10660_2.png) [@snowthx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snowthx)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2014, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/our-christian-war-machine/695047/43 "2014-08-08T17:32:26Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > I think, instead, it’s because the violence is approaching a city where we have a number of advisors in residence. > > If we didn’t act to protect them, it’d be Benghazi all over again. Yes, I agree with this, now that I have marinated the issue a little. However, in the news conference, he mentioned the American advisors (I am pretty sure) _ **after** _ invoking the persecution of “religious minorities, especially Christians and Yezidis” as the reason for action now. As **levdrakon** stated, I too, am not sure which threat spurred us to action. While I agree protecting American interests and personnel should be at the forefront, I still feel we do not approach humanitarian crises in an even-handed way. It is a conundrum - we do not seek to be the world’s policeman, but genocide existing today, anywhere, seems to show we are selective over which crisis will get action from the US. Maybe that is the way it should be - and only when American interests are at risk do we “do” something to help. I dunno. ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Tildrum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e95f7d/32.png) [@Tom\_Tildrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Tildrum)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2014, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/our-christian-war-machine/695047/44 "2014-08-08T19:20:31Z")
> [@El\_Kabong](#): > > The articles I’ve been reading [(example linked)](http://www.voanews.com/content/obama-considers-airstrikes-against-islamic-state-in-iraq/2406146.html) say that although some Christians are involved, the main concern is for a Kurdish population who identify as Yazidis. I have to confess I never heard of a religion by that name before today, although it’s apparently been around for quite some time. CNN [describes](http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/08/world/meast/iraq-yazidi-people/index.html?hpt=hp_t1) the Yazidis as following “an ancient pre-Islamic religion.” Technically, I guess that could be Christianity, but that doesn’t seem to be the implication. ---
**Author:** ![buddy431](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6a8cbe/32.png) [@buddy431](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/buddy431)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2014, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/our-christian-war-machine/695047/45 "2014-08-08T19:42:25Z")
> [@Tom\_Tildrum](#): > > CNN [describes](http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/08/world/meast/iraq-yazidi-people/index.html?hpt=hp_t1) the Yazidis as following “an ancient pre-Islamic religion.” Technically, I guess that could be Christianity, but that doesn’t seem to be the implication. They practice a religion with ties to Zoroastrianism, as well as older beliefs from the area. They do not, as far as I can tell, have any significant connection to Christianity. ---
**Author:** ![ISiddiqui](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/97f17d/32.png) [@ISiddiqui](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ISiddiqui)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2014, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/our-christian-war-machine/695047/46 "2014-08-08T20:30:03Z")
Added to all this is that Egyptian Christians have been really having a hard time of it as loads of churches have been getting burned down and they’ve been forced to flee from violence… but the US isn’t exactly itching to get into Egypt. Also Iraqi Christians have been getting persecuted for the last 5+ years, so if the US is going in for them it’s coming in fairly late. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2014, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/our-christian-war-machine/695047/47 "2014-08-08T21:28:39Z")
> [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#): > > . . . You can say your own opinion, but you can’t respond to a question about another poster’s position, which this was. . . . You’re wrong. That’s entirely valid. Note that I did not speak directly for the poster in question, but answered in a more generalized fashion. Answering with a hypothetical is also legitimate. These are both commonplace here. Jack: I hate potato chips. William: Why do you hate potato chips? Deschambres: It might be because they’re greasy. Lots of people are put off by the grease. Let’s not discuss this any further here. If you feel strongly, bring it up in ATMB. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2014, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/our-christian-war-machine/695047/48 "2014-08-08T21:35:13Z")
> [@snowthx](#): > > . . . I still feel we do not approach humanitarian crises in an even-handed way. It is a conundrum - we do not seek to be the world’s policeman, but genocide existing today, anywhere, seems to show we are selective over which crisis will get action from the US. Maybe that is the way it should be - and only when American interests are at risk do we “do” something to help. I dunno. Yes, alas, this is entirely true. We “pick and choose” and, as it is at least partially on the basis of public opinion, it is subject to popular biases. I hate to play the “racism” card, but I think the horrifying truth is that the typical American voter doesn’t care as much about genocide in Africa as in Asia, and less about genocide in Asia than in South America. We, as voters, have our preconceptions and differences in application of moral values. (I personally think it’s part racial bigotry, but also part sheer ignorance. Americans know far less about Africa than about any other part of the world. It’s as if there is a big hole square in the middle of our mental map of the planet.) There are analysts at the State Department who are actually very good at assessing these crises objectively, able to make fair and unbiased recommendations of how military or humanitarian aid could most effectively be applied. But the administration, and, more, the Congress, are driven by public opinion – which is, in a democracy, a feature, not a bug – and thus the government will often act in a way that is popular, but less effective overall in reducing harm to oppressed people. ---
**Author:** ![Fotheringay-Phipps](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/d9b06d/32.png) [@Fotheringay-Phipps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fotheringay-Phipps)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2014, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/our-christian-war-machine/695047/49 "2014-08-08T21:37:22Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > You’re wrong. That’s entirely valid. Note that I did not speak directly for the poster in question, but answered in a more generalized fashion. Answering with a hypothetical is also legitimate. These are both commonplace here. > > Jack: I hate potato chips. > William: Why do you hate potato chips? > Deschambres: It might be because they’re greasy. Lots of people are put off by the grease. > > Let’s not discuss this any further here. If you feel strongly, bring it up in ATMB. I would say it’s more like: Jack: I hate potato chips because they’re greasy. William: Oh yeah, do you also hate other greasy foods like …? Deschambres: No I don’t, but they’re different because … And what’s important here is that “Deschambres” didn’t really buy into the grease angle completely altogether. In this case, the standard that Sicks Ate was promoting was that “real persecution” was what’s happening in Iraq now. It would follow from that any other groups suffering a lesser level of persecution were not really being persecuted. But you were not the one who adopted this definition of persecution. Whether you do or don’t take that approach to other groups wasn’t relevant to whether Sicks Ate did, because you were not the one who should have done so based on his own post. So your distinction may have been valid for you but was just a distraction in relation to the question posed to Sicks Ate. ---
**Author:** ![armedmonkey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@armedmonkey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/armedmonkey)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2014, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/our-christian-war-machine/695047/50 "2014-08-08T22:04:33Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > I hate to play the “racism” card, but I think the horrifying truth is that the typical American voter doesn’t care as much about genocide in Africa as in Asia, and less about genocide in Asia than in South America. We, as voters, have our preconceptions and differences in application of moral values. While I am sympathetic to that opinion, I don’t think it is entirely correct. Think a second about how Americans lost their freakin’ minds over Joseph Kony. Added to that, if you look at [US Military action](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_United_States_military_operations#2010.E2.80.93present) in the last ten years, you will see that the US has intervened in Uganda, Somalia, Libya, Mali, Central African Republic, and Chad. In fact, discounting some humanitarian aid to Georgia and a little saber ratting in North Korea’s direction, Africa and the Middle East are the only areas of the world the US has performed military actions in the last ten years. ---
**Author:** ![levdrakon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@levdrakon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/levdrakon)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2014, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/our-christian-war-machine/695047/51 "2014-08-08T22:07:25Z")
Maybe part of it is that the media, for whatever reason, likes to splatter us with daily updates about Israel/Palestine and Justin Bieber’s latest exploits and doesn’t hammer us over the head with African news. Doesn’t mean we aren’t active in Africa, just… you know. ---
**Author:** ![FeAudrey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/7feea3/32.png) [@FeAudrey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FeAudrey)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2014, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/our-christian-war-machine/695047/52 "2014-08-09T00:17:20Z")
Side trip to Africa: We went to a lot of trouble to capture and try the arms dealer Victor Bout, and he was mostly supplying various sides in some very ugly Central African and West African civil wars. (sometimes both sides in the same conflict – “We Never Close!”) Back to the Yazidi: Mystery writer Barbara Nadel has a series set in Istanbul (Inspector Cetin Ikmen) and often featuring various minority populations of Turkey. One of the books, _Arabesk_, centers on the Yazidi. There is also a continuing police character who is Yazidi, but it’s been a while, and I don’t remember a lot of detail. He might the one who had the affair with the gypsy … ---
**Author:** ![Merneith](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/57b2e6/32.png) [@Merneith](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merneith)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2014, 4:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/our-christian-war-machine/695047/53 "2014-08-09T04:24:11Z")
The Yazidi religion is really interesting, although I never heard about it before and only have Wiki to rely on. > **[Yazidis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yazidi)** > > Yazidis or Yezidis (/jəˈziːdiːz/ (listen); Kurdish: ئێزیدی, romanized: Êzidî) are a Kurdish-speaking endogamous ethnoreligious group who are indigenous to Kurdistan, a geographical region in Western Asia that includes parts of Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Iran. The majority of Yazidis remaining in the Middle East today live in Iraq, primarily in the governorates of Nineveh and Duhok. > There is a disagreement among scholars and in Yazidi circles on whether the Yazidi people are a distinct ethnorel... The Yazidi religion has ties to Zoroastrianism as well as the Abrahamic religions. According to them, God created the world and left it in the care of 7 angels (refered to as the Seven Holy Mysteries.) The chief of these is Melek Taus, who is known as the Peacock Angel. > **[Tawûsî Melek](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peacock_Angel)** > > Ancient > Medieval > Modern > Tawûsî Melek\[a\] (Kurdish: تاوسی مەلەک, romanized: Tawûsî Melek, lit. 'Peacock Angel'),is one of the central figures of the Yazidi religion. In Yazidi creation stories, before the creation of this world, God created seven Divine Beings, of whom Tawûsî Melek was appointed as the leader. God assigned all of the world's affairs to these seven Divine Beings, also often referred to as the Seven Angels or heft sirr ("the Seven Mysteries"). The Melek Taus is said to embody all the good and evil, both, in the world. The story of his fall is nearly identical to the story of Satan in the Koran. Only, where Satan is said to be unredeemed in Islam and Christianity, the Yezedi hold that Melek Taus’ tears of remorse put out the fires of his prison and he was reconciled with God. According to Wiki, The Peacock Angel’s name is Shaytan, which is the same as the Arabic word for the being we know as Satan. The Yazidi are considered to be Satan worshipers by the Islamic and Christian people in the region. The Yazidi themselves are told by their “black book” to live apart from the other cultures because when a Christian or Islamic person prays to be saved from Satan, Yazidi believe this is an insult which they must avenge by killing the insulting person and then killing themselves. The Yazidi don’t actually hold that Satan is evil. They believe that it’s human thoughts and emotions which lead to evil, not The Peacock Angel’s promptings. Melek Taus embodies everything, good and bad. You can see the influence of Zoroastrianism in their theology. But the distinction is pretty much lost on their Abrahamic neighbors. So yeah. Obama just went to war in Iraq to save a bunch of Satan worshipers. Awesome. I wonder how long it will be before this gets out. ---
**Author:** ![levdrakon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@levdrakon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/levdrakon)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2014, 4:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/our-christian-war-machine/695047/54 "2014-08-09T04:29:48Z")
Yeah, Peacock deity just happens to be named Satan. Awkward. ---
**Author:** ![handsomeharry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e9c0ed/32.png) [@handsomeharry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handsomeharry)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2014, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/our-christian-war-machine/695047/55 "2014-08-13T21:20:00Z")
> [@buddy431](#): > > The last time the U.S. Congress [declared](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_declaration_of_war_upon_Bulgaria) war was June 5, 1942. I forgot about the Big One. ---
**Author:** ![Drunky\_Smurf](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drunky_smurf/32/449_2.png) [@Drunky\_Smurf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Drunky_Smurf)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2014, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/our-christian-war-machine/695047/56 "2014-08-13T21:24:04Z")
When will the American people wake up and say “No!” to our Satan war machine? ---
**Author:** ![armedmonkey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@armedmonkey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/armedmonkey)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2014, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/our-christian-war-machine/695047/57 "2014-08-14T01:41:41Z")
> [@Drunky\_Smurf](#): > > When will the American people wake up and say “No!” to our Satan war machine? More importantly, how the Hell is there no band named “Our Satan War Machine”? What four words could possibly be more metal? ---
**Author:** ![levdrakon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@levdrakon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/levdrakon)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2014, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/our-christian-war-machine/695047/58 "2014-08-14T02:02:25Z")
Speed punk reggae industrial techno metal! ---
**Author:** ![Octarine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/22d042/32.png) [@Octarine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Octarine)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2014, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/our-christian-war-machine/695047/59 "2014-08-14T02:30:41Z")
> [@armedmonkey](#): > > More importantly, how the Hell is there no band named “Our Satan War Machine”? What four words could possibly be more metal? [You were saying?](http://satanswarmachine.bandcamp.com/) (OK, OK, it has no “Our” and it’s “Satan’s”. But still.) ---
**Author:** ![armedmonkey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@armedmonkey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/armedmonkey)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2014, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/our-christian-war-machine/695047/60 "2014-08-14T15:12:58Z")
> [@Octarine](#): > > [You were saying?](http://satanswarmachine.bandcamp.com/) > > (OK, OK, it has no “Our” and it’s “Satan’s”. But still.) Hah! They sound, well, they sound exactly like a band with that name should sound. By that I mean smooth jazz. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/our-christian-war-machine/695047.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/our-christian-war-machine/695047.md?page=4)