The 160-Year Christian History Behind What's Happening in Ukraine

And remember this from High School? The Charge of the Light Brigade

‘Forward, the Light Brigade!’
Was there a man dismay’d?
Not tho’ the soldiers knew
Some one had blunder’d:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

That was pretty interesting the reference to “Pseudo-Daniel” notwithstanding.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/03/140305-maps-crimea-hist…

Two thoughts:

1) It is hard to see Putin as doing anything because of noble intentions of protecting Christians. Maybe I just read him wrong.

2) When the author talks about half of Europe going to war over religious reasons in the 1850s, it is important to remember that those decisions were made by tiny, dysfunctional ruling factions in those countries who put absolutely no value on the lives of the lower classes they sent into war. There was little noble about those wars except for the peasants who inexplicably gave up their lives for their countries even though they had no rights afforded to them. That was the way it was all the way up to (and including) World War I even in Great Britain. So while I don’t doubt that those countries manipulated their lower classes with plenty of religious images and references to get them into war, I suspect religion did not play as big a part in this as some might think.