McCain's God Problem

For those of you who don't know him, Deepak Chopra is a medical doctor and widely published author on Spirituality.

I came across this great article Chopra wrote on John McCain and his islamophobic preacher Rod Parsley, who calls Islam a "false religion" that should be "destroyed."

I recommend this short article to any voter interested in spirituality, and in changing course of our "war on terror."

Deepak Chopra: McCain's Islamic Problem Isn't a Preacher Problem

But McCain does have an Islamic problem, because Rev. Parsley's view that Islam is a false religion is a view that millions of Americans agree with.
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Our avid warmakers would be outraged if told that "shock and awe" is a sanitized way of describing terrorism, yet anyone on the ground in Baghdad was certainly terrorized. There's no doubt that an innocent Iraqi citizen is just as dead whether killed by American shrapnel or abducted in the dead of night and murdered by Shiite thugs who drill holes in his head.
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Which brings us to McCain's central problem, which is that he shows signs of false consciousness born of ideology when it comes to the war. It's a distressing symptom in someone who otherwise seems to be guided by a steady moral compass. Without stooping to the dishonesty and misinformation that the Bush administration used to launch the war, McCain has arrived at the same doomed conclusion: this is a war of honor. Unfortunately, it isn't. It's a war of atavistic vengeance and tribalism on one side and militaristic nationalism and arrogance on the other. It would be easier if McCain only had a preacher problem when in actuality he has a God problem, specifically, an all-too-common American tendency to want to play God around the world.

I am a peace democrat who marched against the war with millions of other Americans. 133 members of Congress voted against this war. Other courageous leaders spoke out against it.

Just as I mourn the 3,000 people killed on 9/11 and the more than 4,000 soldiers killed in Iraq, my conscience also requires that I mourn the more than 1,000,000 Iraqis killed as a result of our invasion.

How ironic is it that the American Invasion of Iraq will have killed more Iraqis than Saddam himself in his acts of "Genocide." It is an irony worthy of a Greek tragedy, but it is not over yet - we will continue down this disastrous course as long as we have leaders who refuse to talk with our enemies; leaders who choose preemptive war over investigation and international law.

For those leaders who continue to gamble with the lives of our troops and the lives of countless innocents who will die from our bombs; leaders who refused to condemn this war - who refused to speak out against this immoral invasion: The blood of innocents is on your hands, and as Bob Dylan once sung in Masters of War, "Even Jesus would never forgive what you do."