Fear, Guns, God, Oil, and Shamelessness

Here are a few excerpts from Seymour M. Hersh’s article, Up in the Air, in the New Yorker.

Bush’s closest advisers have long been aware of the religious nature of his policy commitments. In recent interviews, one former senior official, who served in Bush’s first term, spoke extensively about the connection between the President’s religious faith and his view of the war in Iraq. After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the former official said, he was told that Bush felt that “God put me here” to deal with the war on terror. The President’s belief was fortified by the Republican sweep in the 2002 congressional elections; Bush saw the victory as a purposeful message from God that “he’s the man,” the former official said. Publicly, Bush depicted his reelection as a referendum on the war; privately, he spoke of it as another manifestation of divine purpose.

. . .

“The President is more determined than ever to stay the course,” the former defense official said. “He doesn’t feel any pain. Bush is a believer in the adage ‘People may suffer and die, but the Church advances.’ ” He said that the President had become more detached, leaving more issues to Karl Rove and Vice-President Cheney. “They keep him in the gray world of religious idealism, where he wants to be anyway,” the former defense official said. Bush’s public appearances, for example, are generally scheduled in front of friendly audiences, most often at military bases. Four decades ago, President Lyndon Johnson, who was also confronted with an ncreasingly unpopular war, was limited to similar public forums. “Johnson knew he was a prisoner in the White House,” the former official said, “but Bush has no idea.”

So the Iraq war is about religion too. What’s the war really all about?

* Fear spilling outside the bounds of reason
* The efficacy of preemptive war
* The egos of political leaders
* Religious zealotry on all sides
* Big business and big oil
* Preserving an untenable U. S. economic infrastructure
* Diverting funding for domestic programs to mass destruction
* Combat viewed as strength
* Diplomacy and negotiation viewed as a weakness

The reasons for the war defy the imagination’s magnificent powers to make sense of it all.

What really exacerbates the issues is that the United States is such a rich and powerful country.

Hundreds of billions of dollars spent on the war seem a drop in the bucket, and something easily paid off twenty or thirty years from now.

A few thousand dead and wounded on the American side still pales in comparison to some of America’s bloodier wars. The small number of families impacted by the war get a lot of press, but it’s all abstract political point scoring. Virtually everyone in America can go about their business each day without a care about Iraq.

The rich get their tax cuts. A few million more impoverished families don’t matter much when there is a war to be won.

World opinion doesn’t matter. If America listened to world opinion, and signed international treaties, America could not get everything it wants. When you are the big bully on the block, there is no reason to be concerned about anyone else’s interests--to heck with altruism and morals.

America feels no sense of shame because it can drown or silence any voice through sheer volume, banality, and little white lies that attempts to shame it.

Shame? That is what a lot of the war is about too. Why feel shame and remorse when you can put the cost on your credit card and hope the whole thing goes away before it gets too expensive or one your own gets killed or wounded?

You hear a lot of lamenting about how polarized and partisan politics has become in Washington D. C. How terrible for those in the seats of political power. They no longer enjoy the polite society to which they had become accustomed. How terribly inconvenient for them all. It is getting so they cannot even enjoy a nice lunch with their favorite lobbyist anymore.

Let’s not forget the frustration caused by all those interrupted prayer meetings.