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The President of the United States claims to be inspired by God. Cabinet members who dare ask for evidence in support of policy are accused of disloyalty. They rapidly become apostates to reality-based politics and evicted from the White House. Mr Bush has become more infallible than the Pope. He is doing God’s work bringing freedom and liberty to the world.
Scary stuff. As if having Osama bin Laden loose in the world was not enough. Who needs a born again Christian at the helm of the world’s only hyperpower? It feels like being on a train driven by a mad mullah. None of us can get off.
When I was being taught economics some lecturer borrowed the quip that when the United States sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold. And when the United States goes mad?
Whether Mr Bush or Mr Kerry becomes the next President of the United States the harm done to the American Dream is probably irreversible. It is fundamentally un-American for the president of the United States to be a faith-based leader. The fact that 42 per cent of US citizens are born again Christians just like Mr Bush only makes things worse. This is a country founded on tolerance turning fundamentalist. Osama bin Laden has already won.
The Republican thrust has shifted the US so far to the right that it is impossible for the Democrat challenger to scoff at the fundamental flaws in the President’s faith based politics. He is apologetic in his criticism. As President, Mr Kerry will have to take account of the shift and accommodate it. Even if the Republicans lose on November 3, they will still have won.
Monica Lewinsky has a lot to answer for. Her dalliance with Bill Clinton roused the puritan soul of America’s bible bashers. Bigotry and hypocrisy now rule. Clinton’s failing cleared the path for the self-righteous Bush. That absurd consummation of animal lust between two very fallible humans now justifies the infallibility of one man with the blood of many thousands on his hands. Thank you Monica. Thank you very much Mr Gingrich.
According to one US television chat show with a clear anti-Bush penchant the estimate of civilian deaths in Iraq stands at 21,000. Nobody, but nobody, mentions Iraqi military casualties during the invasion nor those of anti-US combatants since. If Mr Kerry were to mention them, his chances of victory will evaporate. There is a clear sensation while eavesdropping on US television that non-Americans are not human.
Was it worth the sea of blood to get rid of Saddam Hussein? Was there absolutely no other way? Could it be possible that nobody expresses any regret for such vast ‘collateral damage’? Does Godliness make one blind and amoral? Saddam Hussein did worse? Why join him?
It has a lot to do with the American conviction that Americans are God’s Chosen People and that the US is the Promised Land. Pearl Harbour and 9/11 have traumatized the Amercan psyche because they are blasphemous more than murderous. America must strike back against Evil otherwise God loses. This is America’s jihad.
For most Europeans all this is very hard to believe. We are all older and wiser and a lot more cynical. We would like to believe that the invasion of Iraq was all about oil and only about oil. That’s what Europeans would have done it for had they done it at all. This whole business of the divine right of George W. Bush to defend America is just too farfetched.
The explosive cocktail is a mixture of oil, divine inspiration and overwhelming power. The US defense budget is a third more than the combined budgets of all EU countries, Russia, China and Japan. With a stick that big in one’s hand it is more than simply irritating to be asking anybody’s permission to use it. America does because it can. Whether it is right or wrong or even wise to do whatever it happens to be, is secondary. Once the engine of war is on the move Americans chant “My country right or wrong” in unison. Everything becomes easier for a President going about God’s work. It simply could not happen anywhere in Europe except for one island suffering from Blaired vision.
To be self-congratulatory about European savoir faire and global street-wisdom would be as dangerous as imagining God to be whispering in our ear. We have all underestimated George W Bush. We have all been far too happy to listen to him tripping himself up. We were glad that he was an idiot. We should have been terrified.
He is God’s avenger looking for the Axis of Evil. None of the 20 century’s worst dictators started out with the firepower at the disposal of this former baseball team manager. Some believed themselves to be children of destiny, none claimed to have a hotline to God. Compared to him, Moses was a poor Egyptian refugee in the desert. This fellow thinks he is the burning Bush itself and he is going to give us all American freedom and liberty whether we like it or not.
Five more years of George W.Bush and the world will be unrecognizable. Five years of John Kerry will not repair half the damage done so far. We can only sit and wait. Some day we may all be citizens of the United States and, if God still tolerates democracy, we could vote any George W.Bush to kingdom come. Not this time around.
harry.vassallo@alternattiva.org.mt
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