Op-ed:
Religion in War...A Factor Overlooked
By: Diane Sori / The Patriot Factor / Right Side Patriots / Right Side Patriots Radio

The article posted here is the authors opinion alone, and does not necessarily represent the views of blogspot.com or Google  

...And while both “Abrahamic” religions...Judaism and Christianity...do believe in but one God who rules over all...monotheism it's called...the belief in one God alone does not make it fact nor does it negate what many believe to be fact, thus continuing the ongoing centuries old argument between believers v. nonbelievers.

 

But this article is not about ones personal religious beliefs nor is it about any of the religious collectives to which one might or might not belong, yet religion itself is this article's core topic as it relates to the realities of war...including Iran's ongoing war chant “death to Israel, death to America,” and how it's the calling card for Iran's what they believe to be a “Holy War.” And this key factor is being overlooked by far too many folks as this is the most dangerous type of war for when ones enemy believes that God is on their side alone, they think they can do no wrong. Read entire article here. 

Op-ed:

Religion in War...A Factor Overlooked

By: Diane Sori / The Patriot Factor / Right Side Patriots / Right Side Patriots Radio

The article posted here is the authors opinion alone, and does not necessarily represent the views of blogspot.com or Google  

Religion...“organized religion” to be more precise...has a long and somewhat sorted history...man-made to those who are non-believers...the “One Most Holy” who has dominion over us all to those who do believe. And yet neither side, to date, has been able to offer tangible here and now proof positive of either the existence of God or the lack thereof.

And while to the Christian faithful the Holy Bible is all the proof they need of God's existence, yet that proof is actually not tangible proof for the Bible in reality is but the words of mortal men...men “inspired” by the words of God yet not written by the hand of God. That deed alone belongs to the Jewish faith...which preceded Christianity by thousands of years...for it was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob who, with his own hand, set the words of the Ten Commandments upon rock tablets giving them to Moses after he led the Jews out of bondage in Egypt. And while both “Abrahamic” religions...Judaism and Christianity...do believe in but one God who rules over all...monotheism it's called...the belief in one God alone does not make it fact nor does it negate what many believe to be fact, thus continuing the ongoing centuries old argument between believers v. nonbelievers.

But this article is not about ones personal religious beliefs nor is it about any of the religious collectives to which one might or might not belong, yet religion itself is this article's core topic as it relates to the realities of war...including Iran's ongoing war chant “death to Israel, death to America,” and how it's the calling card for Iran's what they believe to be a “Holy War.” And this key factor is being overlooked by far too many folks as this is the most dangerous type of war for when ones enemy believes that God is on their side alone, they think they can do no wrong.

In fact, history itself has shown that religious “tensions,” if you will, is what contributed to the rise of extremist ideologies as witnessed by the Crusades, what was the Papal initiated religious wars of “reclamation” fought during the Middle Ages; the Thirty Years War (1618-1648) between Catholics and Protestants; and islam's numerous still ongoing wars of hoped for“islamic conquest.” But the most vile of all wars having religion as one of its driving forces was, in my opinion, World War II, for not only did one evil man promote anti-Semitism to justify what was to become the “Holocaust,” but he, Adolf Hitler, deemed an entire group of people...the Jewish people...to be “sub-human” and in need of “extermination,” thus claiming that in doing so it would help to “purify” the so-called “Aryan race.” Remember, Hitler was obsessed with “racial purity” and used the word “Aryan” to describe his idea of a “pure German race.”

And Hitler's personal hatred for the Jewish people...the people he identified as “enemies of the state”...became the very people he foolishly held responsible for both Germany's economic and cultural decline. And when it was coupled with Hitler's all but consuming jealousy of the Jews economic and personal successes...the Jews fate was sealed. And when Hitler's hate fueled rhetoric morphed into his selling the justification for murdering six million+ Jews, even the most devote and faithful of religious believers legitimized and gave credence to what was truly the saddest chapter in this, the most unholy of wars.

Simply, Hitler was able to unify the vast majority of the German people together in an act of cleverly crafted preordained hate, thus laying the groundwork for the creating of selectively targeted victims hidden within a most vile of masqueraded causes, while at the same time negating...or at the very least masking...for way too many of the faithful the guilt factor that some must have carried...guilt for their having remained silent about the unspeakable acts knowingly being committed while they willingly and shamefully looked away.

And Hitler did relish in using the influence of Christian religious leaders...religious leaders too afraid to stand up against the man who literally threw aside the Biblical concepts of knowing right from wrong, good from evil... and did so to garner their help in keeping the faithful in line...as in loyal to Hitler's party line that is. And so the clergy became but one of the propaganda arms of the “Third Reich.”

So here the question then becomes, why did the majority of Germany's religious leaders...why did the majority of Europe's religious leaders...not stand up against the evil that walked amongst them? The answer is really not at all that surprising in that once Nazi Germany was able to manipulate both religious rhetoric and its clerical deliverers, churches became gathering places by which Hitler successfully spread Nazi propaganda while instilling in the faithful what he believed to be the “legitimization of his actions.” And he did so while at the same time fostering a sense of what some call “divine support” for the eliminating of those deemed “unholy”...as in the Jews...the now easily and frequently blamed “Christ killers.”

And so for too many countries of Europe “Jew hatred” became a then quite acceptable norm for way too many folks, while the systemic murdering of six millions Jews...babies and children amongst them... morphed into a complex play between Biblical teachings of religious doctrine, and the fact that on some level both the German people and the people of Europe had to know what was really going on. Why so...because Nazi Germany became experts in manipulating religious rhetoric to help propagate its hate filled ideology and propaganda.

Simply, Hitler was successful in using religious musings to turn neighbor against neighbor, friend against friend, all in an effort to not only place blame on those who were actually blameless, but to use the religious faithful as one of the means by which to help spread the doctrine that became known as the “Final Solution.” Churches across Germany and Europe were forced to align their teachings with Nazi state rhetoric and propaganda, and unfortunately too many of the faithful did fall sheepishly in line no matter that the smell of death reeked even inside houses of worship, And while some stood strong against this most perverse style of indoctrination, those who did so were also deemed “enemies of the state,” and like the Jews they tried to protect their bodies joined that of Jews piled high inside the anything but “work camps.”

And Germany of the 1930s and 1940s clearly shows that when religious idealism and fervor is entwined within the reasons for war, a most dangerous of combinations is created for it causes divisions and hatreds amongst people that might not have existed before. And this in turn gives birth to radical extremism which can easily morph into immeasurable suffering and loss of life with God's holy name becoming anything but holy. And when a U.S. president is faced with such a quandary their actions, or lack thereof, becomes part of history itself with both religious and secular history melding into one and the same.

Such is the case with then war time President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) who simply ignored what was deemed to be the “industrial scale killing” of Jews taking place in Europe. Believed by some to be an anti-Semite, FDR's actions...or lack thereof...did speak for themselves then as they do now that history has been written.

FDR was a practicing Episcopalian who not only embraced a “Jesus based theology,” but one who mentioned God and religion in his war time speeches,  yet he literally turned his back on Hitler's systemic annihilation of Europe's Jewish population. And in Roosevelt's taking no actions to help save the Jews, his disdain for the Jewish people and their faith was on full display for all to see if only their eyes had been open.

And so, the claimed to be “man of faith”...never once publicly spoke out against Hitler's systemic murdering of Europe's Jews not even after “The Auschwitz Protocal”* was released to the American press in the fall of 1944. Briefly, this document described, in detail, the atrocities committed at Auschwitz and Birkenau by three camp escapees, and how Auschwitz and others like it needed to be bombed. In fact, in the summer and early fall of 1944, the “World Jewish Congress” along with the “War Refugee Board” (WRB) forwarded requests to bomb Auschwitz to the US War Department. These requests were denied by both the department and by FDR himself. And this was no matter that the US Army Air Force had recently carried out a heavy bombing raid of the I.G. Farben synthetic oil and rubber (Buna) factory which was less than five miles away from the “Auschwitz-Birkenau killing center.”

A truly sad commentary indeed, and no excuses made can mask the fact that the plight of European Jews was of little to no concern to Roosevelt or to those in his eyes closed administration. 

Simply, religion...the Jewish religion...did indeed color the landscape of WWII and in the way we fought. And while our military shoulders no blame, the fact remains that World War II...especially in the European Theater... was indeed a religious colored war, making this war even uglier than it already was. In fact, if it was not for the “extermination camps” still operating unimpeded, and Roosevelt not allowing the bombing of said camps or the rail lines continuing to bring Jews to what he well knew were the gas chambers...the war might have been over sooner and countless Jewish lives would have been saved, and the children murdered would have been able to grow up.

In fact, in a February 2013 edition of the Jerusalem Post, former South Dakota Senator and 1972 Democrat presidential nominee, George McGovern spoke about his having piloted a B-24 “Liberator” in December 1944, and how his squadron bombed Nazi oil facilities less than five miles from Auschwitz. And in an earlier interview in 2005, McGovern stated that, “There is no question we should have attacked Auschwitz,” adding that, “ There was a pretty good chance we could have blasted those rail lines off the face of the Earth, which would have interrupted the flow of people to those death chambers, and we had a pretty good chance of knocking out those gas ovens.”

Could have, should have, would have...no tangible reason not to have bombed both Auschwitz and the rail lies except for the “no-go” from Roosevelt himself with his flimsy excuses being that our priority was to defeat the Axis powers before anything else. Sure some “collateral damage” would have happened, but that would have been a small price to pay for the “ovens” and “crematories” to be permanently rendered out of commission.

So when some say there was no basis in religion for WWII...when some evil sorts still say the Jews got what they deserved and that the job Hitler started needs to be finished; when supposed men of God throw their faith aside in order to focus on the perpetrators instead of the victims; remember that religion is indeed a first, last, or somewhere in the middle...and probably forever...factor regarding all aspects of war.

And really why shouldn't it be for God seems to have done nothing to help stop hate, war, or injustice. God basically walked away from us after (what some believe) to be creation for it seems, at least to me, that “He” never intended to be “hands on” if you will, as “free will” was given to us for a reason. Case closed.

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Footnote 

* “The Auschwitz Protocol” was originally published as “The Extermination Camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau,” and is a collection of three eyewitness accounts from 1943–1944 about the mass murder that was taking place inside the Auschwitz concentration camp in German-occupied Poland during the Second World War. The eyewitness accounts are individually known as the Vrba–Wetzler report, Polish Major's report, and Rosin-Mordowicz report. Read the actual “The Auschwitz Protocal” here.

Copyright © 2025 Diane Sori / The Patriot Factor / All rights reserved. 

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For more political commentary please visit my RIGHT SIDE PATRIOTS partner Craig Andresen's blog The National Patriot to read his latest article Liberalism...Stupid on Steroids. 

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RIGHT SIDE PATRIOTS...LIVE!                                                         Tomorrow, Tuesday, July 15th from 7 to 8:30pm EST, RIGHT SIDE PATRIOTS Craig Andresen and Diane Sori discuss 'Religion in War...A Factor Overlooked'; 'Liberalism...Stupid on Steroids'; and important news of the day. Hope you can tune in to RIGHT SIDE PATRIOTS on https://rspradio1.com Click 'LISTEN LIVE' starting at 6:50pm EST, show begins at 7pm EST. 

Op-ed:

On Cowards, The Courageous, and The Insane

By: Diane Sori / The Patriot Factor / Right Side Patriots / Right Side Patriots Radio

“We're not attacking Russia; we're helping Ukraine defend itself against Russian aggression.”

- Joe Biden's words regarding our newest aid package to Ukraine

 

Let me start by saying that a key reason Ukraine now finds itself at war with Russia is because Vladimir Putin was able, back in 2014, to manipulate America's cowardly apologist Barack HUSSEIN Obama and his VP sidekick Joe Biden into looking away as he brought both Crimea and Ukraine's Donbas region back into Russia's fold. And Putin did so while NATO and the U.N. looked away as well leaving Putin to basically run unchecked with Ukraine getting a brief respite while Donald Trump...a strong commander-in-chief...was president.

Now back and emboldened like never before, Vladimir Putin continues to make a mockery of both Biden and NATO what with his dictating how this war will and will not be played, and by his continuing to hang the shadow of possible nuclear war over all our heads. And as atrocity after atrocity is inflicted upon innocent Ukrainian civilians, Putin sits back and relishes in channeling his inner Hitler, for what he is doing in Ukraine is using Hitler's extermination tactics albeit on a much smaller scale. One just needs to see what remains of the once thriving port city of Mariupol and her people to understand that.  

So now as the U.S. and the NATO nations talk of increasing military aid to Ukraine...as in sending additional aide on top of the aide already promised that has yet to arrive...we find Putin and his cronies warning said nations that their doing so only helps to “fuel the conflict.” And don't think that Nancy Pelosi and crew's recent photo-op visit to Ukraine hasn't gone unnoticed by Putin as well. Remember, Putin still calls his illegal incursion into the sovereign nation of Ukraine a “special military operation” and not a “war”... while at the same time he continues to issue warnings...read “threats” here...that said aid or even musings of increasing aid raises the risk of seeing a “direct confrontation” between Russia and the NATO powers. 

But here Putin's actually addressing the U.S. no matter that Biden continues to state that American forces will not physically join the fight in Ukraine.

But like a good military tactician that Putin is...or at least he thinks he is never mind that he, his strategists, and his generals all grossly underestimated the will of the Ukrainian people to fight back...Putin knows well that any actual confrontation between Russia and the U.S...a confrontation where Russia hoped to come out on top...would best happen before 2024 at the latest while a weak Joe Biden is still under Obama's America-hating control.

And while Putin is a smart man...we are not dealing with a mind like Joe Biden's here...he is also a laser focused man whose unwavering goal has now obviously become clear, as in to bring all the satellite nations lost at the end of the Cold War back under Russia's control. And Putin gave that away not just with his incursion into Ukraine per se, but also with his now likely involving Moldova, a small impoverish nation who now lacks the strength, militarily or otherwise, to fight back. Like lambs to the slaughter Moldova will sadly go if Putin so wishes it, leaving one to wonder which former satellite but currently free nation will be next.

It's a roll of the dice it now seems, what with a cunningly calculating madman possibly being the very one who determines not only Ukraine's future, but Europe's and the world's future as well. Remember, Vladimir Putin has the one thing that even Hitler failed to have...a world so terrified of both nuclear and/or chemical war that even in the scope of the dangers presented he knows that we in the West still are refusing to tangibly fight back.

It's better, many think, to let Ukraine fall...better to let the breakaway satellites get reabsorbed back into “Mother Russia's” fold...as it's better to let that happen than to risk nuclear war by standing up to a man who clearly is not in his right mind...a man who gambled on his successfully committing atrocities we still are bearing witness to, while knowing full well that we will do nothing to stop innocent Ukrainian blood from being shed.

“The Western world has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, each government, each political party, and, of course, in the United Nations...”

- exiled anti-communist Russian novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, 1978

Simply and quite shamefully, Vladimir Putin has basically rendered the West, and especially our beloved America, militarily impotent in a game of “Russian roulette”...quite apropos is it not...a game where only he knows in which chamber the nuclear bullet lies. Now becoming the world's most dangerous man, Putin truly fits the definition of one gone mad...mad with power that is. And when one is so driven by the need for power coupled with the want of having ultimate and lasting control, can madness itself...can actual insanity...be far behind. Surely, I think not.

So the question now becomes is Vladimir Putin simply trying to show the world that there's a new world order of which he's the new boss, or has he actually become gripped in the throws of power hungry, revenge seeking, insanity?

The answer to that is really an amalgam of both for only one not in their right mind would see the mere presence of a freedom seeking country like Ukraine as encroaching on Russia's dictatorial borders, especially when Ukraine made no threats against them. Only one on the border of insanity would believe that Ukraine was a “fundamental threat” to the Russian Federation that echoed Nazi Germany's 1940's threat to the then-Soviet Union. And only one now in the grips of insanity would believe, as does Putin, that the Communist Red Army was the savior of WWII, and that the Russian military of today would save Ukraine from what he believes to be a Nazi regime. And all stated is Vladimir Putin's current line of thinking, while Russian troops willingly commit atrocities on par with Hitler's at the same time Putin's propaganda machine spews rhetoric contrary to what is visually seen.

And so the man whom both the Russian forces and the Russian propaganda machine now call their “supreme high commander”...a reference of honor in twisted minds to the infamous Joseph Stalin...but is it really a reference to hide the fact that something is not mentally right with Vladimir Putin? Does Vladimir Putin now believe himself to be a supreme god of war of sorts...a despotic mindset to the nth degree...as his actions in this war sure seem that way. How so? Only one on the edge of insanity would decide to launch a “catastrophic new European war,” knowingly and willingly commit what is paramount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, and then use the threat of nuclear war to be the self-deciding factor as to his winning said war. This alone leaves one to wonder if Vladimir Putin has become so paranoid of failure that he's lost all sense of reality.

Is failure what Vladimir Putin fears most...is fear of failure what drives him to do things no sane individual would do? I truly believe so, because if Putin fails in Ukraine he also fails at home in Russia, and on the world stage as well. Losing to the likes of Ukraine's ever courageous Volodymyr Zelensky is simply not an option for Putin. And while Zelensky has rallied his “troops” by giving them a cause worth fighting and possibly dying for...with freedom and self-determination being said cause...Putin instead sees the Russian people protesting and turning against him as his self-promoted, propaganda driven lies finally are being exposed. To the victor goes the spoils of war, and Putin knows well that if he loses on the Ukrainian battlefield his iron fist now hovering over Russia might just turn out to be what leads to his ultimate downfall.

And then there's the fact that Vladimir Putin's physical appearance seems to be changing as well, and that he appears to be but a shell of his former self. Even President Trump has alluded to the fact that the Putin he knew and dealt with when president is not the same Putin he is today. “Bloated and weakened” some foreign newspapers are claiming, and that maybe he's suffering from a physical ailment...possibly even some form of cancer coupled with Parkinson's disease...either of which in running its natural course could also be affecting his mind.

Or is it simply the fact that in his miscalculating both President Zelensky's leadership and those in Ukraine continuing to fight back, that Vladimir Putin now has less inner confidence in his ability to win what is a war of his own doing. And could Putin's seemingly aggressive behavior coupled with the overtly threatening demeanor he's now showing towards both his adversaries and his own people alike, be but a front to mask a true coward of a man who knows that history will show that his hands will now and forever be stained with the blood of all the innocent Ukrainian civilians both he and his generals killed.

So while the world at large continues to watch the horrors in Ukraine continuing to unfold on an almost daily basis, know that even a cowardly, child killing, little man as vile, manipulating, and self-centered as Vladimir Putin is...whether his countenance be courtesy of ambition, illness, or a self-perceived need to seek revenge for the Soviet Union's downfall...that said very man still must deal with world opinion which is now decidedly and ever so rightfully against him.

And with his hoped for 3-day war now entering it's third month, know that Vladimir Putin's reign of terror will eventually come to an end whether it be in war or by his own or another's hand. And while the time of this war's end still remains unknown as does the final number of the dead on both sides of a war that neither the Ukrainians nor the Russian people wanted, the annals of history do show that more times than not he who thinks themselves invincible, simply and thankfully is not. Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and others of their ilk met their destined fate in Hell as someday Vladimir Putin will too.

And with that I say, case closed.

Copyright © 2022 / Diane Sori / The Patriot Factor / All rights reserved. 

 

*************************************************************************************         For more political commentary please visit my RIGHT SIDE PATRIOTS partner Craig Andresen's blog The National Patriot to read his latest article, Wake Up and Speak Freely.

 

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RIGHT SIDE PATRIOTS...LIVE!

 

Tomorrow, Tuesday, May 10th from 7 to 8:30pm EST, RIGHT SIDE PATRIOTS Craig Andresen and Diane Sori will discuss 'On Cowards, The Courageous, and The Insane'; 'Wake Up and Speak Freely' and other important news of the day. Hope you can tune in to RIGHT SIDE PATRIOTS on https://rspradio1.com. Click 'LISTEN LIVE' starting at 6:50 pm EST with show beginning at 7pm EST.