Kingdom of Heaven

A bit of background on the film at yahoo news:

LOS ANGELES - In these uneasy times, you'd think a Hollywood epic about the Crusades would spark a major revival of hard feelings over the medieval religious wars in the Middle East. Yet Ridley Scott's "Kingdom of Heaven" is hitting theaters in comparative quiet, without the sort of uproar provoked by President Bush's post-Sept. 11 "crusade" gaffe or Mel Gibson's crucifixion saga "The Passion of the Christ."

There were uneasy rumblings among Arab groups that obtained an early treatment of the script a year or so ago. They found the film potentially fraught with stereotypes about 12th century Muslims fighting Christians for control of Jerusalem, negative images that might have inflamed anti-Muslim sentiment.

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee was among those worried groups, but half a dozen members came away greatly relieved after a "Kingdom of Heaven" screening arranged for them by Scott.

Once again, the difference between liberal and conservative. Mel Gibson created a snuff film. Ridley Scott creates a film that makes the basic point of the liberal. In any conflict, both sides think they are absolutely righteous. Gibson loves the violence and death.

The nature of WWII was not religious. The conflict we see today is. It is a continuation of the crusades. Only by addressing the core problem will there ever be any measure of peace. The Republican agenda, and in fact the position of the BSC's, is a zero sum game that will never work. They believe you kill one Islamic extremist, and there is one less.

How long will mankind keep making this same mistake? The solution is dialog and diplomacy. Remove the reasons to hate each other by respecting the points of view of all concerned.

At it's core - the issue is Israel. Muslims have to relent to the existence of Israel, and Israel has to relent on the existence of a sovereign Palestinian state. It's the only way.

"Kingdom of Heaven" ends with a bit of text recapping the centuries of strife in the Middle East following the Crusades.

"It's so relevant today," Bloom said. "The last caption of the movie is, a thousand years later, we're still doing the same thing, still fighting one another over the same religious divides, and Jerusalem is still in conflict. It's like: When are we going to learn?"

Indeed. The Oxen and the other BSC's want to keep fighting the same war that has been fought for eons. Well, in Oxen's case, he doesn't want to actually inconvience himself to fight it. He just wants to cheer it on.

Remember the wise words of Albert Einstein that I posted yesterday.

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."