From: Scott Chase (osteopilus@yahoo.com)
Date: Sat 09 Oct 2004 - 03:14:09 GMT
--- Ray Recchia <rrecchia@frontiernet.net> wrote:
>
> Scott,
>
> The point of the talk was religious belief is used
> in war to inspire troops
> and to justify violence. People who believe that
> God is on their side will
> for example will take extraordinary risks because
> they believe that God
> will protect them and even if they die they will be
> going to heaven. In
> the U.S. and other similar nations, the army pays
> ministers of various
> faiths to accompany troops into battle. They say
> prayers that inspire, and
> comfort those who have lost friends, finding
> religious justification for
> their deaths. In WWII, the only forces that didn't
> have religious figures
> accompanying their troops were the Soviets, who lost
> 27 million to the
> Germans. Hitler very consciously and very
> cynically co-opted Catholic and
> Protestant leaders. Eventually, Stalin realized
> that there was an
> advantage to having religious figures accompany his
> troops and brought them
> into his forces.
>
> A war doesn't have to be overtly religious for
> political leaders to be able
> to co-opt religious motivation.
>
True. Religion has been an important consideration for
nations such as the US in maintaining troop morale. In
part the crusade (yipes) against communism may have
been motivated by the repugnance that God fearing
Christians had for the Marxist atheists. So even wars
like in Korea and Vietnam which weren't religious wars
had some religious underones, at least for one of the
sides.
On the communist side, the morale may have come from
ideological sources. The ideals of communism may have
paralleled belief in a higher power in keeping troops
focused on the struggle in the trenches, paddies and
hill bunkers. Cadres may have taken the place of
chaplains for the Vietcong for instance. Thus it might
be good to look at religious belief as a subset of
ideology. Agitprop and indoctrination may have played
their role in ideas cementing relations between people
and committing them to a struggle against a common foe
just the same as conversion to a religious belief and
listening to sermons preached by a unit chaplain would
rally non-communist troops. I think that even those
not overly religious may have benefited from listening
to an ispiring sermon by a US military chaplain.
I wouldn't forcefit the notion of communist ideology
being a religion, but instead that religions are based
upon ideology like communism is.
I'm struggling to see the parallels here, so if I'm
mistaken please point it out. Unlike Dubya I can make
mistakes and admit them ;-)
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