Teribus - For sure, many of the fighters and ordinary people (and some of the local leaders) see it as a religous war, but I think it is essentially a war about vital strategic resources, regardless of what those people think. Great powers look ahead to how they can control key resources. The Russians and Americans are covetously eyeing the oil in the Caspian and trying to get control of it all for themselves. All the nations are eyeing the oil in the Middle East, and that (along with the Arab-Israeli issue) is why the Middle East is a powderkeg. The Israelis are eyeing useful land to expand into...if they can get away with it, and they are eying crucial water resources as well. Venezuela is being destabilized because it has oil in large amounts.

I am quite concerned about Canada's future, due to the fact that we have the World's largest reserves of fresh water. The USA wants unrestricted access to that water.

Politicians use every other means possible to get people onside for aggressive moves (military invasions, trade wars, etc)...they invoke the usual inflammatory rhetoric...whatever gets people worked up. Religion is one of the handiest ways to get people worked up, but depending on which people and where. Focusing people's anger and fear on a symbolic demonic "bad guy" to "take out" (Noriega, Castro, Bush, Osama, Saddam, Milosevic, Clinton, Quaddafi, Sharon, Arafat, etc...) is another great way to get people worked up. Who the "bad guy" is all depends on who you are talking to.

These are classic ways of manipulating ordinary people into offering themselves up as cannon fodder for darker and more prosaic objectives...which are not publicly acknowledged by the people pulling the strings.

- LH