[MegaTrain]

Originally posted by Askan Nightbringer:
Everyone - Please lets not talk about god and jesus. Anything but god and jesus. I live in a secular nation where officials go to great lengths to never say the g word, where we find it very amusing that the only two sides that mentioned the g word in the war were US and Iraq, and the Last thing I want is to have an interesting discussion derailed with talk about god.

Ah--but its not derailing the discussion--it is one of the central issues.

You live in a secular country where (I assume) the greatest proportion of the people oppose the war. In the US, a largely religious nation(historically at least), recent polls show 75% and higher support for military action.
This tells us something about how philosophical and religious ideology can affect your worldview.

We (in the US) largely view this as a question of "right and wrong", "good vs evil". Much of the rest of the world (and many on the left in the U.S.) view this as a question of legal vs illegal. This is why there is such a huge divide between those that say that U.N. support/approval is absolutely required, and those of us that say "The UN is wrong. This action is the right thing to do, and though we would like others around the world to agree and support us, the lack of a UN vote for military action will not prevent us from doing that which is necessary and right."

Again, I belive that clarity is more important than agreement, and if we understand more about the philosophic basis behind the disparity of views, that helps bring clarity.