I don’t think this is a just war. And I’m appalled that we have had a pre-emptive strike. On the other hand, if we look at Saddam Hussein he is truly one of the worst monsters the world has produced.

Despite our best efforts, and I think they have been excellent, there have been thousands of civilians that have died—more civilians than soldiers.

The issue has never been the troops that we sent over there. For me, I have always believed that they should be supported.

But where can we be? On the one hand this is a terrible man and a vicious oppression, and on the other hand we have entered into an entirely new kind of approach to foreign relations in the use of war.

I was very young in WW 2 and I remember the stories of what was happening to the Jews in Germany coming out, being made known to us and people said, “Oh it just can’t be that bad . . .”

People that age believe that we should never allow that to happen again, believe we should never allow that to happen again.

If we truly have learned anything from WW 2 . . . I think it’s mandatory that we have to move to stop that when we see it.

If we truly believe “never again,” it demands that we do something to attempt to stop it.

Why don’t we stop all evil in the entire world? And I think that’s a place where we’ve got some significant capability in American but we don’t have unlimited forces. And I think we have to really understand that the military is an instrument of national policy. And it can only be used really when there is some national interest. Now, stability of the world is in our national interest, but only when it really impacts us. And that’s a hard thing for us to face, that we can’t right every wrong in the world, regardless of how heinous that is.

During the war for independence, we wished we had allies that would have come and liberated us from the British but we had to fight our own fight.

We are the only superpower, we must make sure that we should be fair and we should stand up for all weak. My religion, Islam, teaches that if I have power I should stand up and stop evil, even if I have to do it with my own hand.

On the other hand, as much as I appreciate Iraqis being liberated, there are other places in the world where butchery goes on. In Africa, and I know hundreds of thousands of people died, Hutus and Tutsis in massacre and we just stood silently by and we didn’t do anything. I think it’s a moral obligation on us if we remember our own history that we should stand up and protect all the weak.

Is military force really the solution to the answers wherever oppression is taking place? Has it worked in Israel? Has it worked in Iraq? Has it worked in any of the places where you get a long-going conflict where it can only be suppressed by force? I don’t believe that any of our efforts, not diplomatic, not cultural exchange, not humanitarian . . .

Nowhere in our policy have we done enough that at the same time the military force is being employed that we’re also taking care of other factors. And I believe in most cases it’s wrong and I believe that the new era in the United States where we’re taking pre-emptive force it’s just wide open for abuse and for really terrible things to happen to us and the whole world.

Now we have even more damage in the world that we have to somehow attempt to try and correct. And it’s damage that we created. Maybe we made things better in the long run, but for right now, there were a lot of holes in this world to be filled before and now we have even larger work ahead of us.

This has just totally consumed me. I think it’s because I have this notion that America is a Christian nation, that America is Christian and this idea that a Christian nation would find some excuse, any excuse, to commit murder and destruction in the name of Christ. It’s just . . . I just I cannot explain. I wish I could say how much that has impacted me.

My understanding of what Christ wanted is “Love God with all your heart” and “Love your neighbor as yourself.” That means that when there is evil in the world, and there are bad, bad people doing horrible things, it doesn’t mean that we walk away from it or we don’t deal with it, but we deal with it in the way Christ would deal with it. And what did Christ teach us? Did Christ come to earth and say, “If you are the most powerful and if you are the strongest then you win? So get out there and get those arms and go and smash?” Or did Christ say, “That’s not what it’s about. Turn the other cheek. If your enemy is hungry feed him; if he wants your cloak, give him your cloak”? Over and over again, Christ says, 4000 years of violence to suppress violence does not work.

Christ came 2000 years ago and this America, the Christian nation, the Christian nation is doing this. We can’t come up with anything better? I mean, look at Gandhi, look at MLK, look at what happened in South Africa. It is possible to live and love. It is possible. It is possible to change the world. But we, I am just so disappointed in America that we can’t think smarter than we have done.

What are we saying to the Muslims and everybody else in the world about what it means to be a Christian?

The sports ethic in this country I suspect has leaked into the rest of our lives where we have to be number one, we have to come out on top, we have to declare ourselves winners. And unfortunately I think that presents not only the wrong attitude towards the rest of the world but leads us into dangerous territory in many parts of life.

My faith . . . says that all people are worth compassion. All people should be loved. That there is no number one and number two. There is no winner and there is no loser if you’re approaching life with compassion and with putting humanity first.

This war, like its predecessor incidentally with the other Bush in office, angered me, outraged me and caused me to fulminate to the point where I think I’ve had to monitor my blood rate and my pulse rate. I have done different things this time, though. I took part in the first peace march that I’ve ever done. . . Despite that I think it’s irrelevant, half the time. I wrote to every single one of my congressman and wrote the White House and got the typical form letters back.

I think a big part of our problem is that we inculcate in ourselves and in our children this whole idea of win--“win, win, win”-- and I don’t object to it on the sports field but when it spills out into the rest of our approach then we can’t sit back in humility and say well yes we have all this power but there’s other ways to show it than to say that we’re all powerful and dominate others.

We always I think start with the right intentions but somewhere-- I’ve seen in the past so many conflicts I’ve been here long enough-- we always tend to bungle up.

I still do not know what the national interest is. It’s always nice to be on the winning side. I started with doubts, as we started winning there, it kind of felt good. And now I’m wondering at the conclusion. It was interesting in the Wall Street Journal General Motors took a full-page ad as we were winning. You know what the ad was about—buy Humvees, buy Hummers. So are we winning the war so we can have more gasoline?

If we are number one, we have to act like number one, even at the point that we may become bankrupt.

The number one position at least scripturally says that the king may become bankrupt. But we have to have that conviction.

First we have to know what’s right. I don’t think anyone knows what is right.

I saw after September 11, for about four days, everything was fine, there were no parties; people were coming to churches, and mosques and temples. And probably the next week it was “kill, kill, kill.” BSU stadium was full; the beer was flowing. It was normal.

Charity begins at home. We’ll keep on fighting these wars until we basically change our own selves . . .

What Christ says, what Gandhi said, they all talk about not world domination. First look at your own self. How many of us have changed our lives since September 11? Except worry that “Oh, you know take your shoes off at the airport.” It requires something more than that. How many of us have sat down and read geography books, history books, appreciated other cultures? Nothing of that sort. We want our Hummers. We went from cars to SUVs, now Hummers. It is amazing. I mean 200 people died from this country, thousands from there, so we can get oil for Hummers. And that’s not what makes a big nation.

There isn’t a war to end all wars. The way to peace is not through war. The Dalai Lama said recently that war is obsolete. You may want it in your head but your heart doesn’t want it and you’re split in two if you go for war.

The national interest in this past year has been much too narrowly defined.

Winning for us means the other guy loses. And I think that is a big problem. Why does the other person have to lose? The sports metaphor, football. We know that we’ve won when they’ve lost. What about everybody staying alive? Everybody’s kids living?

I think the idea of finding a just peace rather than a just war . . . we have a department of the military. I think we’ll never make it where we’re going until we have a department of peace.

I’m thinking of Israel and Egypt. That looked at one point like it was going to be a standoff and we all know that it wasn’t.

By demilitarizing something rather than going in and crashing heads they were able to find a solution where the Egyptians were able to own the Sinai; the Israelis were able to defuse their fear of what was in the Sinai; and they didn’t go to war.

We are the country that has the most foreign students come to our schools of higher learning. I think it’s appalling that with all this brain-power we’re using fire power to solve the problems of the world.

Muslims who are living outside the US, we need to see from their angle, and the rest of the world, how they look at the US at this time.

British in India, they started occupying India by saying “We’re just here as traders and we will just leave,” and soon they were all over the place. Living here in the US, we know our country is not going to do that. But that’s us. It’s just like family. We know our family, but it’s the outside world that does not know the family.

I go to church more than one day a week and I do not think this is a just war. And I think there are other ways to do what needed to be done.

And I really think that you’re talking about a minority number of Christians, very vocal ones, and the ones that put the present regime in power. I think that people, Christians like myself have been very quiet, too quiet. That’s my problem—that I’ve been too quiet.

War is hell. Nobody in their right mind wants war. It’s a horrible thing to happen. It’s a horrible thing to be involved with. It’s a horrible thing to be looking at a gun that’s pointed at you and you have to make a decision. But sometimes those decisions have to be made. I look at the war in Iraq and I’m appalled at the peace marchers. Why am I appalled? Because I think we had a good possibility of removing Saddam Hussein from power without firing a shot. But France would not allow us to do it. And then we got all kinds of disruptions within our own country. Now the lady here said that we are a Christian nation. But I would debate that. We are more Christian now than before 9/11, but when I see what comes out of Hollywood . . .

God is behind all of this. Whether we want to accept the idea or not. You know, people talk about the Bible. They say, well I don’t believe the Bible. OK, don’t believe the Bible. But believe in the man who the Bible was about who changed the world forever. And that world is changed. Did everything go right for him? So it’s not all going to go perfect.

I’d love to see the draft back. What has happened to our young people since the draft went away? What has happened to our schools? We kicked out prayer in the school. We kicked out the Ten Commandments. We wonder why our morals went to pot. And that’s what’s driving our nation.

I’m really a strong advocate of this country and of our governmental system. And I must tell you up front, I consider myself a practicing Christian, not as good as I should be, but better than I would be without it, and this person and these people speaking for the National Council of Churches don’t impress me at all. I think their name is a misnomer.

And so we have these people who weren’t elected by anyone, I don’t even know who they were selected by, let alone elected by, and they say we ought not do what we did. We also have—I’ve heard it called a regime—but we have a slate of leaders in this republican system that I’m so fond of and they were elected by the people.

And so I’ve got two options. I can either put my allegiance to what this representative of the NCC says or I can support the leadership that’s been put in by the citizens of this nation. And I’ll choose the latter.

This is not a Christian nation. We’re made up of lots of faiths. And so we didn’t attack the Muslims. We attacked Iraq and Saddam Hussein and his Republican Guard.

I heard several people talk about peace as a method of attaining righteousness or whatever. No, I think peace is an end. Peace is not a method. If Gandhi or Mandela or the Dalai Lama had tried their techniques in Iraq or in the Soviet Union and tried to use peace as a method, they’d be dead.

Knowing that my brother is over there until at least this August. There’s something to be said that my brother is not a warmonger. But he thought the GI bill was his way to an education. He’s a much better accountant than he is a shooter.

I feel as an American, as a Christian, the only thing I have to do is give unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, but past that, everything else goes to the Lord. And that means banding together and doing everything I can towards peace. And that means if there is a walkout on campus, I’m walking out.

I say that we have to become more vocal.

I’m trying to make a movement that says there is a large group of Christians that are willing to be loud, that are willing to say hey, there are many things that we can do other than this war. Let’s get my brother back to accounting and less on the shooting.

As being a Muslim American, I do realize that we are guests. We have been invited in and we have to learn to live with the family.

What is more important is what happens now in Iraq, after the war is over. Franklin Graham is going into Iraq with a bunch of Bibles and hand them with gifts from the real Christian people.

What is going happen now is going to be the test of our intentions. If we continue . . . our actions actually have to speak louder than our words. If we are there and do what our leaders have said they will do-—hand the power back to the democratically elected government of Iraqis, ruled and governed by Iraqis. We can oversee it and leave. Let the people have their resources. Let them figure out their differences and let them choose their own leaders. Then we won, folks. We did what we promised that we will. Now, once we are there and we start looking around and saying, “Now we have been here, now we have to expand,” we will be doubted, all over. Our intentions will be doubted. And as Americans we will look bad, because it is our government that we have elected and voted, and that these people have told us a tall tale. And that the end result is what they wanted, not we wanted. And we all lose.

We just don’t want other people’s land. I’m convinced of that.

Should our religious leaders be speaking out? Of course they should. Should they be shoving 30 second television spots in between toothpaste and car commercials? Probably not. It’s not the most effective way to reach the administration.

I was raised a very devout Christian and I’d like to submit that we should not be proceeding as a Christian nation. I think we should be proceeding as a nation that took the principle of separation of church and state and made a great nation on that basis. And that we should be perceived as a non-Christian nation that knows how to separate and knows how to how to allow each of its citizens to have the faith that it wants.

As we proceed to places like Iraq, like Afghanistan, and the places where we go, I very strongly believe that the best Christian, the best faith-based efforts of any kind are the ones that give with no strings attached and that simply go to help with medical aid, with material aid, and if they’re not doing it that way then they’re doing it wrong.

That’s very well put. That by example is our only hope of persuading these people that we wish them well and that we want them to be peaceful people and in control of their own country.

There has been a lot of talk about proselytizing Muslims of Iraq. They actually have started doing that in Afghanistan. There actually is a web site called “afghan bibles dot com” or something like that. And that kind of concerns me. Not that these people will convert or not convert. They have their free will. They have to answer to God and that’s their choice. But my concern is how that makes us look like?

It makes us look bad. Like we did all this war. The notion of crusades is a very bad notion. Because the Christian crusaders did not convert people. They butchered them.

I certainly hope that we don’t turn into crusaders. I pray that we don’t become imperialist. But I have to say a word on behalf of the evangelists.

Why is Franklin Graham taking Bibles over to the Muslims?

I can only assume that the reason they’re using their resources, their time, their energies, is that they believe, in short they have faith that their belief is the better belief, or the best belief that’s available. I certainly believe that.

I don’t think they’re doing it to bring hardship or bad things to anyone. I can only hope that they’re doing it because in their mind they’re doing the best thing for the people that can possibly be done.

If Iraq was a tribe that was just discovered and the Bibles were needed there, I would understand that. I would go there with Koran and the Hindus would go with Ghita. Now Iraq has a minority of Christians and they have thrived there for generations.

And I think the people of Iraq are very well aware. They are a very old nation. The people know Christianity. And it sounds very suspicious.

So we as a nation think that we want to back off once we have given the Iraqi people their freedom. And our system says majority rules. The majority is Shiite and they don’t want a country, they don’t want a government that separates church and state. They want a Shiite government. What should be the position of the American people towards their majority?

If they want a theocracy I think they should have one.

I believe that we in the United States will not allow Shiia Muslims to form a government out there. Because of their allegiance to Iran. Iran is one of the countries in the axis of evil. And how could we have another axis of evil out there, since we got rid of one?

God is too great for any human to understand. And the glory of all these different religions is they give us a special aspect of God. They emphasize a special aspect of God. One is not better than another.

I am not part of what is defined as Christianity in this country anymore.

Any flag word that has its own inherently negative connotation immediately colors the argument. And that’s what’s happened here with use of the word proselytizing.

Why not make Bibles available? Why not make the Ghita available? Why not make the Koran available in equal availability just like here in America. And every religion has the ability to express their faith. And that’s the way it should be in any country. And to use the word proselytizing—it immediately puts the negative connotation to it and pre-supposes what our decision about proselytizing should be. “No, shouldn’t have that.”

What I would prefer to do is by example.

But then you’re not expressing your faith.

Well, I think you find that if your example is good, then they will want to know.

The true charity, according to Ghita, is defined as that the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing.

The term that I’ve used is like, “Rice Christians.” Whoever gives me rice today, I’ll become that. So that is not religion. If you feel proud about that, handing a bible out when the guy that doesn’t even know English, or doesn’t even know how to read. That’s just statistics. And we believe in statistics. So I gave out 10,000 bibles. How many true Christians did you really make, the one who loves their neighbor?

I like your example. If you go out and say here’s food, regardless of religion, the guy’s going to say, which faith are you from?” That’s much better than doing all this stuff. It will never work. You can try it out. India was totally Buddhist at one time.

Everybody seems to insist that their story is right. And everybody’s got a different story.

And what I look at is not who’s got the better story but who’s handing out the rice. What activity is actually taking place? And that’s the thing that impresses me.

I’m just full of fallacy and full of all sorts of things that don’t give Christianity a very good name in all probability. So what I’d rather do is give them the users manual and let them read it for themselves because that’s without error in my view.

If Christianity depends on people looking at me and seeing such a wonderful thing there that they all want to be like that, Christianity is in deep trouble.

This [What would Jesus drive? ad] is nonsense. We’re talking about our desires and putting them on Jesus. Jesus would take public transportation. Or he would take a plane. Depends on what the purpose is.

Simple thinking and high thinking. That’s what we should be.

Economics has got nothing to do with God. God sustains the whole world without the dollars, without the dinars, without the rupees. To even talk about it shows our ignorance of God. Economics has got nothing to do with it. God is above all this material crass. We should be talking about how God sustains the whole world. The elephants in Africa. The Iranians, the Afghanistanis, the Americans. That’s what sustains us.

It irritates me to no end to see someone using Jesus or whoever it is for their own personal gain, for their own purpose. If Jesus were to drive one I think he’d drive a big bus and pick everyone up.

But we’re not talking really the reality of the situation. And for someone to use this for commercial purposes really does irritate me. Now should religion in our life and should it be a consideration of what we do, what we buy, absolutely. Yes it certainly should be. But I don’t think that’s a quality example of it.

The religion has to play an important part in the way we are towards environment because God has created environment in its purest and cleanest form and it’s us, it’s the people who pollute it and that cannot be in the plans that God has planned for the environment to be polluted, because it’s a gift and it’s a trust and we are abusing this trust.

Can we live without the SUVs? Yes we can. Can we live without a lot of these high polluting engines? Yes we can. Do we have the technology to build things that go without gas? Yes we do. But why aren’t they out there. Because economics, it’s dollars. It boils down to the companies out there that are involved they are addicted to the oil. And that’s where we have all the problems.

I think it’s people who are addicted to oil. I think it’s our vanity in some sense. That’s part of our nature. I’m not saying that’s good. I’m saying that’s reality. Why did a chieftain need 12 camels instead of just one? It’s a part of our vanity.

It’s technology that is based upon this oil right now. That’s where we are. We need to move beyond that, but that takes time.

If they’d had said, if at the end it had said, “What Would Mohammad Drive, or What Would Buddha Drive,” I’ll bet there would be a lot of people jump up and down and be offended by the whole thing.

We would never do a commercial [What would Jesus drive?] like that—hey, Unitarians defend the environment and you should too.

I’m appalled by seeing the waste. You go look at, not that I have looked, but I have worked at fast food restaurants and I know that a lot of food is dumped every night instead of giving to the employees or to a homeless shelter or to places where people could eat it actually, it’s dumped. Because, for whatever reason. You go into developing nations and people go through garbage to find food. And somebody has asked me this question, “Why do they hate us outside?” One of the reasons why people detest us is because they think we’re too arrogant. And as people of faith, we need to be humble. And what would Jesus do is a good question for us to ask, or what would Mohammad do?

I think that the religions are blatantly failing in regard to the environment, in regard to the real crisis that we have in regard to diseases.

We have two million people in prisons. We don’t have a universal health care system. We’re far from it. We have people falling through the cracks all over. Here in Idaho we have children who are not immunized. And I don’t believe that any of the major religions are doing anything besides fighting amongst themselves, looking to make sure that their own soul is saved. We’re just not doing what should be done. The religions are just . . . every fundamentalist here should just be appalled at what’s happening because they’re not fundamentally taking care of the world. Which is all one.

I think that our priorities are wrong. Vern has pointed out what I think is really important and what most of us really feel that we should be looking at first, like health care for all of us. Education for all of us. When we have taken care of those things, then I think we should start looking at what the rest of the world is doing.

We too look at in my church at these things on an individual basis. Once a month I get my 89 Nissan pickup truck down to the church and we fill it with trash. And we take it to the recycling center. We sell it and we save that money. And we participate in the heifer project. And we have bought a goat. And now we’re halfway towards a llama. We haven’t gotten around to buying a yak yet, but that’s a possibility.

People see the way that we live and we live like no other country in the world and then our television commercials, our programs, our movies then portray this and everybody else wants a piece of the action. They also want to live like we do. Well we know that that is a death knell for the earth.

I think corporate capitalism is tearing the world apart and corporate capitalism is what’s running the administration. Corporate capitalism is one reason we’re in Iraq. It’s one reason that many other cultures are now being subverted with American kinds of things. Do we need McDonalds in every country of the world? No we don’t. Do we need American clothes, do we need the Nike symbol emblazoned over everything you see around the world? Of course we don’t.

Our faith takes subjects like this and tries to teach us about them. In the UU World this month, two thirds of the issue is devoted to the question of corporate greed and what the corporations of American really are. And one of the eye-openers in there is that the US Supreme Court back in the 1880’s gave corporations the same status as people.

Corporate power is something we really need to deal with.

I've got an example to give. As a Muslim . . . now I'm in real estate, and I know to buy a house in the United States, unless you're a millionaire, you can't buy it cash. You have to get a loan. Islamic . . . the religion of Islam prohibits giving and taking of interest, so communities have to become really creative about financing the house. To get around giving usage of interest, in California, the San Jose, Santa Clara area, about a thousand people, and of course, people out there have wages that we can't dream of, that they could afford doing that, and the only way they could buy a house is if a thousand of them got together and . . . we call it a committee. We have been doing this back home forever, where everybody pitches in $1000 a month. It's like a savings account. And whoever is first in line -- there's 1000 people -- you've got enough money to buy a house. And so by the time it's [number] one thousand's turn, you'll have a house paid for every month. And people are successfully doing that. They've got 140 people that pitch in whatever a month.

I'm just giving an example. And there are various other organizations that have gotten together, pitch in the money, and they're buying houses on a profit and loss basis instead of charging people interest. We just bought a Mosque based on that. Instead of the seller charging us interest we had him do a . . . do a profit, what his property may be worth in 5 years, once the loan is paid off, and based the sales price on that.

So the religious involvement in getting over the corporate . . . and making corporations socially responsible is a great idea.

What does history teach us? The standard of living in the world, health, everything else, has risen tremendously all over the world. All over the world. A rising tide raises all boats.

There are a lot of countries where I’ve been in where 20 years ago they were far better off than they are in now.

We have a mistaken notion that just because someone has a job on the border of Mexico and Texas they’re better off than they would have been back in their rural economy.

20 years ago, 50 years ago, 100 years ago life was much worse than it is today, worldwide.

You talk about opening up borders. Trade. You know which companies come in first? Seagram’s. Whisky, vodka. That’s the last thing those people need.

Coke. India does not have enough water to drink. It takes 6 bottles of water to make one bottle of coke and you paid 20 rupees for it when the water was free.

As leaders, you have to lead. I’m not saying take away our cars and my cars and all that stuff. But to say, Alzheimer’s was not known before. What you’re seeing is—it’s not quantity, you’re living 80 years, you’re living 15 in the nursing home. Quality is what matters. Quality of life has not got nothing to do with good clothes. Quality means you hug your child, not to put them in a babysitter’s home, or a foster home.

I have to come to the defense of corporations. Sure they’re lots of bad ones, but you’re absolutely right. The situation of the world of most of the world is much better than it was 50, 100 years ago. All we have to do is look at what Eastern Europe and Russia was like when they had communism.

Whatever you say about capitalism there’s nothing in the world that has ever been tried that’s better.

The idea that the condition of people is getting better throughout the world is really hard for me to reconcile with what I read about what’s happening in Africa where AIDS is decimating just a huge, a quarter of the population in different places. A QUARTER of the population has a serious life threatening disease? . . . I just can’t believe that the world is getting better.

The fact that America has done well with capitalism and the fact that we’re so proud of it doesn’t mean that the rest of the world is doing well, is still using that system entirely. There’s lots of countries that have universal health care and they’re socialist.

When we say that corporations are greedy. I work for corporations. Of course they’re greedy. I don’t have any rights. I’ve lost my rights as a . . . I don’t have the same rights that my father or the previous generation had in terms of pension, in terms of longevity of the job. Even though we’re still benefiting from this so-called wonderful standard of living, it isn’t all that great. It isn’t better than it was before. Even in our own system.

We’re living in a third world. And I’m noticing that as the people on top, I’m reminded of something that I was told where any injustice that lacks utility is not a logical act. Any inequality that lacks utility is unjust. And with those two together: I can’t see how although America has progressed—and I’ll even go along and say when the tide rises all boats rise—but I’m not willing to say that because we have a bigger boat, we’re justified in having that boat.

As people of faith in a broader sense, or just people of conscience, do we say that I’m going to stick to my money before I stick to my neighbor? I can’t make that assertion.

It’s Americans who give the overwhelming majority per capita of donations to the entire world. And so we are getting ourselves a smaller boat and giving to the rest of the world.

That’s what America is about. And it’s not a Christian principle. It’s a people of faith principle that we want to help our neighbors. And I think we are doing that.