FORD
06-01-2004, 09:35 AM
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,9707447%5E12272,00.html
Let us pray that God speaks to Bush
June 01, 2004
IN declaring his wars on terror, the Taliban, Saddam Hussein, the French, the Germans, the UN and the Democrats, George W. Bush started saying "God" once, twice, even thrice in every sentence.
A case in point: this extract from Bob Woodward's Plan of Attack. Describing the hour when he'd given the order for the ground forces to enter Iraq, Bush said: "It was emotional for me. I prayed as I walked around the circle. I prayed that our troops would be safe, be protected by the Almighty, that there'd be a minimal loss of life ... Going into this period I was praying for strength to do the Lord's will ... I'm surely not going to justify the war based on God ... Nevertheless, in my case I pray I will be as good a messenger of his will as possible."
Replace God, the Almighty and the Lord with Allah, and Bush's dangerous devotions would be appropriate to an Islamic fundamentalist. We are reminded how ill advised it is to mix religion with politics. Yet again the case is made for the separation of church (and mosque and synagogue) from state. We also remember that, just after September 11, Bush used the term crusade to describe his overlapping wars. The ill-chosen but accurate expression confirmed the worst fears of the Islamic world and had to be explained away by spin doctors.
Just after Ronald Reagan's inauguration in 1981, I was alarmed to hear the US president talking on a religious radio network about his belief in the "end times". Sounding absolutely bonkers, he seemed enraptured by the thought of the Four Horsemen, the anti-Christ, Armageddon and Judgment Day. Not the sort of bloke you wanted with his finger on the nuclear button. He was, of course, echoing the religious zealotry that underpins a lot of US support for Israel - deriving from the apocalyptic beliefs of Christian fundamentalists. Fortunately, Reagan's martial appetites were largely sated by the invasion of Grenada, his personal amiability offsetting the war-like proclivities of others in his administration.
The US will elect a black president and a female president long, long before it votes an atheist into the White House. Not so long ago, it was unthinkable to elect a Roman Catholic. But John Kennedy made it clear that he wouldn't take orders from the Vatican. In any case, he was hardly a member of Opus Dei. Like Australia's Paul Keating, Kennedy was a tribal Catholic, not a dogmatist, and kept God out of politics.
Similarly, there was barely a trace of Richard Nixon's Quaker upbringing in his presidency, though we got some of that old-time religion in the protestations of Jimmy Carter. Bill Clinton? He went to church on Sundays but seemed to prefer playing the saxophone to singing hymns.
Whereas Bush? Like his cobber Tony Blair, he's into muscular Christianity. Born Again Bush tells us that he appeals for support to a "higher father than his own".
Our Prime Minister, like Treasurer Peter Costello and Attorney-General Philip Ruddock, has been known to make much of his religious beliefs. Praise be to God that Howard rarely cites him in his rhetoric or campaigning. Not even when he's following Bush into vetoing same-sex marriages, just as he followed the President into Iraq.
Tony Abbott is different. He has been deafeningly Catholic in his public statements when the religious Right is making significant inroads into the Liberal Party - with, we're told, Opus Dei doing some branch-stacking. Costello's address last Saturday at the National Day of Thanksgiving commemoration in Melbourne was a clarion call to the faithful to rally around Judeo-Christian traditions, lest "despair of the moral decay in our community" beset us. With luck, his Judeo-Christian prime ministership might release children from our detention centres.
Nothing in Australia parallels the energies of Christian fundamentalism in US politics or the televangelical language Bush employs in his jihads. As Brian Urquhart, former undersecretary-general of the UN, warns: "There's the sense of Messianic, big ideas not properly thought through, a certainty that sometimes even hints at divine rightness and an undertone of manifest destiny under the guidance of Almighty God."
Francis Fukuyama wrote famously of the end of History. Instead, we see familiar echoes of ancient history, of a clash of civilisations where ideological issues are eclipsed by religious antagonisms. It's in this context that the pornographic images from Abu Ghraib prison must be understood - as big, beefy "Christian" soldiers, including obscenely leering women, degrade and humiliate Islamic prisoners.
Let us pray that God speaks to Bush immediately - and tells him to calm down. A great many Christians would say amen to that.
Let us pray that God speaks to Bush
June 01, 2004
IN declaring his wars on terror, the Taliban, Saddam Hussein, the French, the Germans, the UN and the Democrats, George W. Bush started saying "God" once, twice, even thrice in every sentence.
A case in point: this extract from Bob Woodward's Plan of Attack. Describing the hour when he'd given the order for the ground forces to enter Iraq, Bush said: "It was emotional for me. I prayed as I walked around the circle. I prayed that our troops would be safe, be protected by the Almighty, that there'd be a minimal loss of life ... Going into this period I was praying for strength to do the Lord's will ... I'm surely not going to justify the war based on God ... Nevertheless, in my case I pray I will be as good a messenger of his will as possible."
Replace God, the Almighty and the Lord with Allah, and Bush's dangerous devotions would be appropriate to an Islamic fundamentalist. We are reminded how ill advised it is to mix religion with politics. Yet again the case is made for the separation of church (and mosque and synagogue) from state. We also remember that, just after September 11, Bush used the term crusade to describe his overlapping wars. The ill-chosen but accurate expression confirmed the worst fears of the Islamic world and had to be explained away by spin doctors.
Just after Ronald Reagan's inauguration in 1981, I was alarmed to hear the US president talking on a religious radio network about his belief in the "end times". Sounding absolutely bonkers, he seemed enraptured by the thought of the Four Horsemen, the anti-Christ, Armageddon and Judgment Day. Not the sort of bloke you wanted with his finger on the nuclear button. He was, of course, echoing the religious zealotry that underpins a lot of US support for Israel - deriving from the apocalyptic beliefs of Christian fundamentalists. Fortunately, Reagan's martial appetites were largely sated by the invasion of Grenada, his personal amiability offsetting the war-like proclivities of others in his administration.
The US will elect a black president and a female president long, long before it votes an atheist into the White House. Not so long ago, it was unthinkable to elect a Roman Catholic. But John Kennedy made it clear that he wouldn't take orders from the Vatican. In any case, he was hardly a member of Opus Dei. Like Australia's Paul Keating, Kennedy was a tribal Catholic, not a dogmatist, and kept God out of politics.
Similarly, there was barely a trace of Richard Nixon's Quaker upbringing in his presidency, though we got some of that old-time religion in the protestations of Jimmy Carter. Bill Clinton? He went to church on Sundays but seemed to prefer playing the saxophone to singing hymns.
Whereas Bush? Like his cobber Tony Blair, he's into muscular Christianity. Born Again Bush tells us that he appeals for support to a "higher father than his own".
Our Prime Minister, like Treasurer Peter Costello and Attorney-General Philip Ruddock, has been known to make much of his religious beliefs. Praise be to God that Howard rarely cites him in his rhetoric or campaigning. Not even when he's following Bush into vetoing same-sex marriages, just as he followed the President into Iraq.
Tony Abbott is different. He has been deafeningly Catholic in his public statements when the religious Right is making significant inroads into the Liberal Party - with, we're told, Opus Dei doing some branch-stacking. Costello's address last Saturday at the National Day of Thanksgiving commemoration in Melbourne was a clarion call to the faithful to rally around Judeo-Christian traditions, lest "despair of the moral decay in our community" beset us. With luck, his Judeo-Christian prime ministership might release children from our detention centres.
Nothing in Australia parallels the energies of Christian fundamentalism in US politics or the televangelical language Bush employs in his jihads. As Brian Urquhart, former undersecretary-general of the UN, warns: "There's the sense of Messianic, big ideas not properly thought through, a certainty that sometimes even hints at divine rightness and an undertone of manifest destiny under the guidance of Almighty God."
Francis Fukuyama wrote famously of the end of History. Instead, we see familiar echoes of ancient history, of a clash of civilisations where ideological issues are eclipsed by religious antagonisms. It's in this context that the pornographic images from Abu Ghraib prison must be understood - as big, beefy "Christian" soldiers, including obscenely leering women, degrade and humiliate Islamic prisoners.
Let us pray that God speaks to Bush immediately - and tells him to calm down. A great many Christians would say amen to that.