LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

An article in AlterNet about Bush's barely hidden theocratic desires is chilling in what it says:

The radical collapse of all distinction between church and state and the promotion of an angry "Christianity" as the USA's official state religion have grown increasingly apparent as the Bush regime has turned more grandiose and reckless after 9/11. That revolutionary program has gradually come into view despite the press's failure to expose it, and despite the random efforts of the White House to conceal it ("Well, I – first of all, I would never justify – I would never use God to promote policy decisions," Bush said, without conviction, to Brit Hume in an interview on September 22, 2003). A cursory survey of Bush/Cheney's foreign and domestic innovations will make clear that from the start, this regime has been hard at work transforming the United States into a theocratic system, and, globally, at the gradual creation of a nominally Christian New World Order.

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God told him to run for president, Bush says, and God told him to strike al Qaeda, and God told him to occupy Iraq. "I haven't suffered doubt," Bush said to Woodward (adding, without irony, "I hope I'm able to convey that in a humble way"). For all his weak demurrals, Bush does in fact perceive the "war on terrorism" as a new crusade, as a member of his family makes explicit:

"George sees this as a religious war. He doesn't have a p.c. view of the war. His view of this is that they are trying to kill the Christians. And we the Christians will strike back with more force and more ferocity than they will ever know."

Of course, it would be comforting to see this only as a case of individual mania, which reasonable people – Christian and non-Christian – might shrug off. And yet this is no laughing matter, as Bush is not alone in his apocalyptic frame of mind, but aided and abetted very powerfully. Having variously seized our nation's government, the GOP also pursues "religious war."

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Shortly after the invasion, U.S. troops stationed in Iraq received a booklet called "A Christian's Duty," adjuring them to pray for Bush and even mail the president a special tear-out form assuring him that, while dodging potshots and firing on civilians, they were praying for him. Meanwhile, the ravaged theater of the occupation has been overrun by Southern Baptist missionaries seeking to exploit Iraqi misery for Jesus' sake. Laden with clean blankets, bottled water, bread, and bandages – and countless Bibles – the Christian soldiers of the International Mission Board (IMB) use such material inducements to convert as many Muslims as they can, waging what their Web site calls a "war for souls":

"Southern Baptists must understand that there is a war for souls under way in Iraq... Even as Islamic leaders try to tighten their grip on the country and its people, cult groups like the Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses are sending hundreds of their missionaries into Iraq to spread their pseudo-Christianity."

Muslims have been horrified by such spiritual carpetbagging. "The Iraqi people are in a state of siege – they lack, food, water, everything – and to come to exploit it and to give it in the name of Jesus Christ the Lord is unacceptable," Ali Abu Zarkuk of the American Muslim Council told the BBC in April of 2003. "You will be perceived as either dying by the bullet or dying by the Bible through Muslim eyes." Eight months later, Islamic terrorists in Yemen bombed the Jibla Baptist Hospital, killing all three mission workers, and thereby inflicting "the worst tragedy in the 156-year history of the IMB," reported APB News in December 2003. The U.S. Christian presence has amounted to a dangerous provocation in Iraq, although our press has rarely mentioned it.

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Stateside, meanwhile, the theocrats continue to exert their wonder-working powers, as they have been doing ever since the president's first public act, which was to make John Ashcroft his attorney general. That step alone should have made clear to all that Bush was no "uniter" but averse to "reaching out," and, indeed, uninterested in solving any worldly problems, dedicated as he is to stealthily theocratizing this republic.

What would four more years of these people turn this country into? I don't want to know, to be honest...

Sunfell
Very afraid... for the USA