Reply #16: Yes, I am serious about that.

[Rhythm and Blue]

Individual leaders frequently invoke God, generally when giving speeches to religious audiences. Religion is rarely invoked in any official capacity, and it is never used as an explicit justification in documents establishing official policies.

I agree that it is a war launched in Western self-interest. However, Islam is not the target. The specter of a particular political movement that draws some (but certainly a minority) of its strength from religious fanaticism is often the nominal target, but the actual actions of our government would suggest that Islamist terrorism is more a symptom of that which we are targeting rather than the target itself. Our target is not Islam, our target is the confrontational regionalism of the Muslim world. The PNAC goal was explicitly to politically and economically liberalize (in the classic sense, not the American one) the Middle East, by applying force to political structures that resisted. The idea was to start a chain reaction that would turn the entire M.E. into Dubais and Qatars, not to defend Christianity.

Many Red-Staters certainly believe in fighting in fear of the Muslim Menace, but they're not the ones making the decisions. They're the ones merrily going along with the decisions the government makes.