Posted on 10/22/2004 7:44:40 AM PDT by Pfesser
Religion looms larger over the upcoming American presidential election than at any time since 1960. George W. Bush's born-again Christianity, critics charge, renders him oblivious and uninterested in empirical reality. Worse, that faith leads the president to view himself as God's anointed, whose judgment cannot be questioned and needs never change in light of shifting circumstances. The most recent New York Times Magazine devotes nearly a dozen pages to these claims.
Yet it was the allegedly rigid Bush who quickly grasped the new world revealed by 9/11. Old strategies of deterrence, he noted, are irrelevant against shadowy terrorist networks with neither territory nor citizens to protect. He understood the relationship between rogue states and terrorist networks: The former offer terrorists the sanctuary, training and technology they need. Finally, Bush realized that the "realist" fetish with stability in the Middle East had only turned the region into a swamp breeding people bent on death and destruction.
Most important, Bush apprehended the theological basis of the battle with radical Islam. His own faith gave him insight into the diabolical power of a deformed Islam.
He understood that there can be no compromise between the lovers of life and the lovers of death. Islamists lay claim to every inch of land ever under Muslim control, and seek the imposition of Shari'a (Islamic law) over the entire globe. Those goals are non-negotiable. The battle between Islamism and the West will be determined as much by will as by firepower.
Bush, like Ronald Reagan, has been ridiculed for describing enemies as "evil." But how else to describe those who behead and gleefully hold aloft the severed heads of "infidels" as a recruiting tool to attract others with the same savage propensities? Or regimes that starve millions of their own citizens while developing and transferring nuclear weapons and missiles? Or those who gas hundreds of thousands and bury the victims in mass graves?
The terminology of "good" and "evil" helps clarify the nature of the struggle. Yet the premises of Bush's foreign policy depend on no article of religious faith. Those premises have been articulated in a series of foreign policy addresses almost Churchillian in their power. (Norman Podhoretz, not usually identified as a Christian fundamentalist, applauds Bush's world view at great length in the September issue of Commentary.)
MEANWHILE THE president's critics remain trapped by their own religion - what might be called the "rationalist folly." Rationalists view all people as basically alike - each seeking to maximize his share of the desired goods. That model, however, cannot account for the power of religious belief, positive or negative. It must continue searching for the "real causes" of religious fanaticism - e.g., poverty, Israeli settlements. Since no rational human being seeks death, rationalists cannot comprehend societies that have elevated martyrdom to their highest value.
Teresa Heinz Kerry's sunny prescription for dealing with terrorists expresses the naive optimism of rationalism: "The way we live in peace... is not by threatening people, is not by showing off your muscles. It's by listening, giving a hand, by being intelligent."
Yet expressions of understanding for Islamist terrorists and sympathy for the backwardness of Muslim societies only inspire the Islamists' contempt and further fuel their rage.
Attachment to old paradigms prevented John Kerry from comprehending the meaning of 9/11. "[It] didn't change me much at all," Kerry admits in an October 10 New York Times interview.
He simply placed al-Qaida into the framework of international crime cartels, with which he was familiar as "a former law-enforcement official."
His goal, says Kerry, is a return to a pre-9/11 world in which terrorism was no more than a nuisance, like prostitution or illegal gambling.
Kerry's words fully capture the limits of liberal imagination in the face of faith-driven terrorism. The analogy to crime syndicates is ludicrous. Drug lords may be bad guys, but they are also profit-seekers. Make their business unprofitable, and you have defeated them. Not so with theologically driven terrorists, whose goals are unlimited and who do not mind dying to achieve them.
There can be no return to the illusions with which we lived prior to 9/11. Tens of thousands of potential Islamic terrorists, many already living in the West, have access to weapons capable of killing thousands. One or two successful terrorist attacks could plunge the world into depression and turn Western countries into security states.
Defensive measures and a law enforcement approach of rounding up the bad guys will not suffice. The US has had no success stopping the flow across borders of illegal drugs or immigrants, and will be no more able to interdict every terrorist or WMD. Only by taking the war to the terrorists and, in the long run, transforming the societies in which they breed can the West ultimately prevail.
Bush's religious faith cannot dictate strategy or tactics in the struggle ahead but, at least, it has helped him recognize the life-and-death nature of that struggle. Without that recognition, no viable strategy can emerge.
For the record, Nov. 2nd is All Souls Day; the first time in my life time that a Presidential election occurred on All Souls Day, and the first time since 1982 that a Congressional election did.
=== George W. Bush's born-again Christianity, critics charge, renders him oblivious and uninterested in empirical reality.
Didn't stop him from taking God's name in vain as he launched the state-funded Human Research Project which sets a lasting precedent for ALL TIME that "all men are NOT created equal."
Hardly the stuff of a "Born Again" save where the penchant for personal interpretation ... "depends on your meaning of Is" ... sort of business is concerned.
>>George W. Bush's born-again Christianity, critics charge, renders him oblivious and uninterested in empirical reality.>>
Someone should clue the author in on history... The majority of our Founding Fathers were Christians. And NOT Kerry-styled christians either (little "c").
I guess it's a good thing, then, that others such as Bush's primary Schoolmaster during the 2000 campaign and the man who stood behind him on May 23, 2000 as Bush announced he "could do" foreign policy has been schooling the idiot Democrats even longer where the New World "revealed" by 9/11 is concerned:
To: Deckard IndependentmindGetting warmer ... this one happens to be on point:
But I raised it in the context, and I don't want to delay all of this, but I raised it in the context -- I came back from a conference on terrorism back in 1980. I was over in, not Berlin, I was in Bonn, and I went to a conference on terrorism and I spoke there, Henry Kissinger was there, Helmut Schmidt was there, and as I came out of the hotel I saw the hotel was surrounded by APCs, armored personnel carriers. And all the soldiers or policemen had automatic weapons.DefenseLink -- Cohen Breakfast Meeting with Reporters in Washington, D.C. (1/11/2001)I looked at that and I said, I wonder, would any American city allow VIPs to be protected by virtual tanks in the street? And it had been just after a guy named Schleier, a banker, had been assassinated, stuffed in his trunk of a Mercedes car, so there was real tension over there, and there was some real protection underway. I said no, it will never happen in the United States.
Then I said well wait a minute. What happens if the terrorists come to the United States and the bombs start going off, the killing starts here?
Would we as the American people, say protect our liberties or protect our lives? We've never had to have that debate at this point.
And so when you have an Oklahoma City bombing that's taken place, and you have others who may not be domestic but international, what will be the reaction of the American people?
Will they say the government's responsibility is to protect us, and we say absolutely, but how do we do that?
Do we do it through the local police? The National Guard? The Guard and Reserve? Or do we call upon the military in extremis to provide protection and to help with what they call consequence management?
50 Posted on 06/15/2001 16:12:27 PDT by Askel5
=== The majority of our Founding Fathers were Christians. And NOT Kerry-styled christians either (little "c").
Ah ... it's nice to see that the anti-Catholic bigotry is yet alive and well despite the pandering to Catholics on the Single Issue.
Hmmmmmm. Sorry but All Souls Day (All Saints Day) is November 1.
So for Kerry, let us pray, Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord.
Not a Catholic, are you?
All Souls Day and All Saints Day are two different things. All Saints Day (Hallow Day) is Nov.1; All Souls Day is Nov. 2, when Catholics pray for the souls of those who are not (yet) saints, including for the peaceful repose of the souls in purgatory.
Don't get how that's anti-Catholic. The assertion I read was that Kerry is not Christian, since he does not practice the faith he claims, Catholicism. Not that Catholics aren't Christians.
Ah ... well, then, I'll join you in that bit of anti-SoCalled Catholicism.
Cheers.
Catholics are not Christian. Read history.
MY BAD !!
You're act of contrition is to contribute a small amount of food to a complete stranger, in spite of their appearance.
Or, I could be wrong, Askel. :^D.
What I love is this ignoramus' comment, "Read history." Guess he doesn't know which church was founded by Jesus Christ, and which were founded since the 16th-century.
Bad, Hermann, BAD! Now here's your scooby-snack.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.