http://www.bartcop.com/022603lyons.htm
Hypocrisy in a politician is universally held to be a very bad thing,
religious hypocrisy worst of all. Alas, to Americans holding post-Enlightenment world-views, it has come down to this: either we must earnestly pray that George W. Bush is a cunning opportunist merely throwing hay to the great lowing herd of pious cattle who confuse the evening news with the Book of Revelation, or face the prospect that the United States has embarked upon a faith-based foreign policy as distant from reality as the ranting of Osama bin Laden.
Many commentators have noticed that Bush has repeatedly cast the conflict with al Qaeda and Iraq in purely biblical terms--good against evil, "the forces of darkness" against the forces of light, etc. In a speech on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, as Bruce Nolan's article in Sunday's Democrat-Gazette noted, Bush hinted that God was stage-managing the "war on terrorism" for divine purposes. "I believe there is a reason that history has matched this nation with this time," Bush said.
According to Bob Woodward's book, "Bush at War" even in one-on-one interviews "[t]he President was casting his mission and that of the country in the grand vision of God's Master Plan." This observation followed Bush's pronouncement that "[w]e will export death and violence to the four corners of the earth in defense of this great country and rid the world of evil."
Conquering evil is bin Laden's plan too. Even fighting beside the "socialist infidel" Saddam Hussein, he hinted in a taped statement Feb. 11, was permissible "to establish the rule of God on earth." Quoting the Koran, he assured his followers that "'those who believe fight in the cause of Allah, and those who reject faith fight in the cause of evil.' So fight ye against the friends of Satan: feeble indeed is the cunning of Satan."
So have we really been transported back to the 12th century A.D. with Bush as Richard the Lionhearted and Osama/Saddam as Saladin, in a replay of the Third Holy Crusade? We'd better hope not, because although medieval prophets convinced Richard that recapturing Jerusalem from the Muslims would bring about the Second Coming and usher in the millennium, he dragged back to England defeated in 1192.
To bin Laden, who rails against American "crusaders," this happened the day before yesterday. Bush only plays into his hands with statements like the closing line of his 2003 State of the Union speech contending that "the liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world, it is God's gift to humanity."
To Saddam Hussein, a garden variety criminal psychopath and reportedly a big fan of the "Godfather" movies, it's unlikely this signifies much. As grandiose as Stalin, Saddam gives no sign of confusing himself with the deity.
The origins of Bush's flirtation with End Times rhetoric, however, are no more remote than the New York Times Best Seller List, specifically the prophetic novels of Hal Lindsey ("Blood Moon") and Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins' "Left Behind" series. Selling in the millions, these books are a florid updating of a 19th century school of bible-based soothsaying called "premillenial dispensationalism." Radio and TV evangelists, including the ubiquitous Jerry Falwell peddle this gibberish to millions.
Adepts believe, writes historian Paul S. Boyer, that a series of last day signs including "wars, natural disasters, rampant immorality, the rise of a world political and economic order, and the return of the Jews to the land promised by God to Abraham" will signal the Rapture. True Believers will be magically whisked off to heaven, the Antichrist will seize world power--through the United Nations, naturally--thus ushering in the Second Coming, Armageddon and the Millenium.
Ironically, the incomprehensible imagery in Revelation was borrowed from Babylonian (Iraqi) and Zoroastrian (Iranian) myth in the first place. Bush's flirtation with End Times rhetoric makes some suspect that he actually perceives himself as God's instrument. Many Europeans fear they're trapped between rival fundamentalist zealots whose messianic delusions threaten World War III.
Call me naïve, but I hold with hypocrisy. Everything known about Bush apart from his political rhetoric suggests belief in a conventional rich man's God. His idea of paradise is a country club golf course. His public religiosity is precisely calculated to enthrall fundamentalist Christians whose failure to turn out in 1992 led to his father's defeat--the only Armageddon Junior seriously anticipates.
