Faith-Based War: From 9/11 To Catastrophic Success In Iraq

Book Summary

The Bush administration was prompted to invade Iraq by a religious vision that blinded them to the realities of the struggle against terror, and propelled them into moral and political catastrophe. The propaganda campaign that promoted the war, the choice of a self-defeating "Shock and Awe" invasion, and the expanded torture program bear witness to a faith-based policy that violated democratic ideals and perverted religious truth. The White House embraced a version of Christian nationalism in which the president serves as the agent of God's of wrath to punish evildoers, in keeping with a tradition that descends from the Massachusetts Bay Puritans, who considered themselves a "chosen people" occupying a "promised land." As native peoples resisted Puritan encroachment at the frontiers of expansion, they were marked as devils incarnate, fit for total destruction. A modern version of this imperialist vision was invoked on 9/11, when the social and political conditions giving rise to the terrorist atrocity were forgotten, and sanctimonious wrath against evildoers ruled the White House response. At the heart of this religious mythology stands the "frontier hero," who takes action when the "not chosen" strike back against the advance guard of the "chosen." In order to defeat the forces of evil, this cowboy champion of civilization employs savage means: he violates human law in the name of establishing God's law. The Bush administration, acting out this fantasy, claimed the right to engage in illegal surveillance and torture, and invented specious excuses for toppling a government it conceived to be "evil." The classic mythology of the American frontier allowed Christian militarists in the Religious Right of the Republican party to make common cause with broad sectors of the American public. They achieved predominant influence in the Bush White House, and in the future will seek to regain control over U.S. foreign policy. In Bush years, the government of the United States sought to play God, and this perversion of religious truth yielded abhorrent results. Faith-Based War discusses the analogy between the U.S. torture program and the Roman practice of crucifixion, to which Jesus fell victim, affirming that sacred authority resides in the targets of religiously-sanctioned violence, not in those who wield it.

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