[Mb-civic] Jesus, Jihadis, and the Red-State Blues

[Michael Butler]

    Jesus, Jihadis, and the Red-State Blues
    By Steve Weissman
    t r u t h o u t | Perspective

     Thursday 29 July 2004

     In this week of John Kerry's nomination, we should all give President
Bush his due. Iraq boils up in his face. Over half his fellow Americans now
think his war wrong-footed, if not pig-headed. Spies and other professional
observers openly confirm what a few of us amateurs warned from the start,
that American troops in Iraq give bin Laden an unbeatable banner to recruit
his suicidal Fools of God. And from within Washington's most secret places,
loose lips let slip how Team Bush consistently misled the American people
about everything from Saddam's weapons to how the United States tortures
captives around the world while observing "the spirit of the Geneva
Conventions." Yet the stalwart Mr. Bush soldiers on, bravely telling the
same tall tales, now about Iran as well as Iraq.

     Critics accuse him of lying: I fear worse. Either Mr. Bush still
believes the intoxicating fables that Iraqi exiles fed to Cheney, Rumsfeld,
and the neo-conservative crapologists, or else he feels no need to get facts
straight as long as he does the Lord's Work. Having followed his "higher
Father" into a faith-based war in Iraq, the poor Prophet Bush now casts his
eye across the Euphrates, waiting for Revelation and listening to Iranian
expatriates, some of whom work with the shadowy spies of Gen. Sharon.

     Ah, Babylon. We are, it would seem, approaching the End Time, for which
millions of American Christians fervently pray. The Israelites have rebuilt
their kingdom, as prophesized, and Jesus will soon return to earth, where He
will raise his believers bodily into the heavens in what they call the
Rapture.

     That is the good news. The bad, at least to me, is that two-thirds of
the Hebrews - having rejected Christ again - must perish in their Great
Tribulation. Satan the Anti-Christ, Armageddon, and eternal damnation to
follow.

     Scoff at your peril. Apparently, our president doth not. Nor do his
fundamentalist mentors, from the Rev. Billy Graham and son Franklin to Jerry
Falwell, Pat Robertson, and a host of others, all Christian Zionists and
staunch supporters of the Jewish State. Now we see the hot times they have
in mind for Jews.

     How far does Mr. Bush go with this "dispensational theology," as
believers call it? No one seems to know. But he swims in their Apocalyptic
current, which might explain why he so blithely gives the Islamic jihadis
the endless war they crave.

     Believers in a radically politicized jihad, or holy war, fervently seek
a righteous, rejuvenated Islam, one that recaptures all lands that Moslems
once ruled, especially those now dominated by Jews and Christian
"crusaders." Organizing themselves for over a hundred years in clandestine
groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, the jihadis directly shaped both Hamas
and al-Qaeda. But now thanks to Mr. Bush, his overly militarized War on
Terror, his use of torture and sexual humiliation, and his sending troops to
occupy Iraq, the once small minority has gained greater support among the
world's Moslems than anyone could have reasonably expected.

     Believers in the End Time desperately need Israel to keep hold of the
Holy Land, or else - as they read Biblical prophecy - Jesus will not return
to whisk them away. A quintessentially American messianic movement reaching
back to the 1830s, the End-Timers historically shied away from politics. But
now they regularly mobilize the Republican faithful and boast of a
fellow-traveler in the White House. With bin Laden filling in for the
Anti-Christ, no wonder they look to the most powerful nation on earth to
give them other-worldly hope.

     The two groups of holy warriors - Islamic and Christian - reinforce
each other at every turn, holding the rest of the world hostage. Except in
their often brilliant use of political tactics, neither lives by reason.
Both threaten those of us who try.

     Make no mistake: Their competing holy wars are not - or at least not
yet - a clash of civilizations between Islam and the West. Without the
politically polarizing impact that Mr. Bush has created among Moslems the
world over, the jihadis would have little hope of successfully hijacking
Islam. Without his radically breaching the wall that has, however
inconsistently, separated church and state in America, the End-Timers would
still have freedom to believe what they want, but no easy way to impose it
on how Washington walks in the world.

     Mr. Bush makes the difference. Believing he hears the Voice of God, he
encourages two groups of diametrically opposed religious zealots to drag us
all into their Apocalypse. Stop the World, said the playwright. I want to
get off.

     To be fair, the End-Timers hardly stand alone in pushing Mr. Bush's
buttons. He also listens to the secular neo-conservatives, who - more than
anyone - sold him on the glories of a new, beneficent, and wonderfully
profitable American empire, beginning in Iraq. He also does the bidding of
the Pentagon's favorite base-builders and weapons-makers, the media cartels,
his and Mr. Cheney's friends in Big Oil, and a fundraisers list of other
corporate greedsters. Fit ENRON in where you will.

     But, all this is American politics as usual, and the Democrats have
their own fat cats and sacred cows. What's new - and terrifyingly different
- is the irrationality the End-Timers bring, and how Mr. Bush answers their
prayers in the Middle East.

     Truly believing in a real-time Jesus and his Rapture, the End-Timers
will never willingly walk away, no matter how much they endanger the rest of
us. Nor will the Islamic jihadis. We, their hostages, have to stop them
both, demanding nothing less than a return to reason, both in the White
House and the Middle East.

     The first step, but only the first, will come in working night and day
to elect the eminently reasonable John Kerry, who has the good grace to keep
his religious beliefs to himself, at least most of the time. As deeply as I
oppose his dangerously open-ended commitment to keep American troops in Iraq
until it becomes secure, we would have to be as grossly irrational as Mr.
Bush, or as high as his "higher father," to leave the present bunch anywhere
near the levers of power. The risks are much too great.

     Voting in Florida in the last election, I cast my ballot for Ralph
Nader. Voting absentee this year, but still in Florida, I hope to undo at
least some of the chaos I helped to create.

     The second step begins November 3, the morning after the election.
Should Bush win, those of us who oppose his self-righteous ways must build
the kind of grassroots movement that can limit the damage he does, whether
in Iraq, Iran, or our American homeland. Should Kerry win, we must create
the same political groundswell, forcing him to accept the reality of Iraq.
No matter how reasonable he tries to be, the nationalistic Iraqis will not
accept foreign domination, whether the occupying forces come from America,
Europe, or their Arab neighbors. And the longer Washington tries to make
Iraq secure, the stronger the jihadis will grow.

     The third step is by far the most difficult. We must work with those
Israelis and Palestinians who seek to compromise, and find a solution that a
majority on each side can accept. The Geneva Accord is a good place to
start, and we should press Washington to support it as part of a more
even-handed approach.

     If we are ever to isolate the Islamic Fools of God, we can have no
higher priority than finding a mutually acceptable end to the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which - whether we like it or not - will mean
dividing the Holy Land between the two peoples. Without a viable Palestinian
state living in peace with Israel, the jihadis will have a festering sore to
exploit, gaining the ear of millions of Muslims who would otherwise reject
them.

     Hamas and other Palestinian terrorists, right-wing Israeli settlers,
and Christian Zionists will all object to getting only part of what they
think their due. The Palestinians and Israelis will each have to forcefully
curb their own die-hards, and we Americans will have to gently quarantine
ours. If rationally fighting terror and making a just peace delays the
return of Jesus and his Rapture, the End-Timers had best pray for their
sins.

  

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