War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning

I don't think "most" war in a nation-versus-nation sense is religious at all. I think religious differences have often been used as a divisive factor, but look at the major wars of this century. Focusing on the United States alone, were World War 1, World War 2, Korea, Vietnam or Desert Storm based on religion? The current conflict is the closest you can come to a religious-based war, but mostly due to the "sectarian" violence in Iraq. I full believe that is a solely religious conflict, but only in in a local, civil scale. The war that cost the most American lives, our own Civil War, was not religious in the slightest. Nor was our War for Independence.

Religion has far more power in a guerrilla effort, such as the "insurgency" in Iraq and other Islamic groups working in small groups to attack a much larger foe, or in a civil war for control of a larger nation divided by contentious religious groups. There is no doubt, in my mind, that the suicide tactics of Islamic fundamentalists is religiously motivated. But were the Japanese Kamikaze bombers in World War 2 sacrificing themselves for religious reasons? I doubt it, I've never heard the argument put forth. When it comes to convincing an entire nation to pit itself in military conflict against one or more other nations, I don't think religion has been a very powerful motivator for quite some time, though its effect on the current administration is troubling, to say the least.

My personal stance on war in general can be easily summed up by John Stuart Mill:

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth a war, is much worse. When a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice,—is often the means of their regeneration. A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever-renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other.

Whether a given conflict meets these criteria is obviously a matter of debate...