Albright and Religion

Former Sec of State Albright is promoting the idea of bring religion in to diplomacy in an upcoming, six-hour television event, "God's Warriors," hosted by CNN chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour .

IMO, one cannot look at the current situation in ME without looking at the religious aspect, because as she puts it…

Solomon. With this being holy to all three of the Abrahamic religions, it's very difficult. And religion, rather than bringing people together on this, is driving them apart, which ... I don't think [is] what is intend.

She continues along this line and what she says, makes me believe she is not the right person for the job.

It's so interesting; we're talking about the whole issue of sovereignty here. Because the parties both believed that God gave them that little piece of land, we started playing with a term, which was that it belonged to God. Divine sovereignty.

Maybe she does mean to come across this way but the “little piece of land” comment is condescending from someone who doesn’t get it. To her it is just a case of figuring out how to convince them to forget part of their believes.

Anybody who's been to Jerusalem can see why it is so complicated. Physically, religious holy places are completely intertwined, one on top of the other. So in many ways, there's great appeal to saying it belongs to God, and then trying to figure out how it [is] administered, maybe through some international group of some kind.

It isn’t really about the land; it is about the promise from God for the Jews and the word of Mohammad. An international group of some kind is not going to be able to administer what belongs to God. In religious term, everything belongs to God. Christians believe we are just steward until he takes it back. The Jews believe the land was set aside for them especial because they are the Chosen People (the Christian Bible also agrees with this). The Muslims hold that the Jews usurpers of the true God (Allah) and have stolen their birthright. I could go on and expand this to death but this simplified version begins to show how complicated it is.

If her “little piece of land” wasn’t condescending enough for you, how about this?

Well, the extremists really are very nervous in terms of the question of sovereignty and the creation of an international organization, which they misinterpret to be world government, which it actually is not. And then there are the even more extreme views -- you know, some of them saw the secretary-general as the antichrist and that I was consorting with the devil.
These are the people who are afraid of the U.N., because they think it has black helicopters that will swoop down and steal your lawn furniture. And then there are some people who don't like the U.N. because it's full of foreigners, which frankly can't be helped. So you have a wide range of critics there.

I’m afraid of the UN because prop up dictators with Oil-for-Food, allow rape and prostitution while pretending to help, allow terrorist to re-arm right in front of them, protects counterfeiters and pack the Human Right panel with the greatest violators of human rights. Besides I don't have any lawn furniture for the black helicopters to take away.