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May
31, 2003
The Devil's Advocate
Bush
Locates Source of World Evil: God
By CHRIS FLOYD
Too little attention has been paid to a remarkable
declaration by George W. Bush in his State of the Union address
last January. In between great lardbuckets of warmongering lies
and vacuous preening, Bush also delivered this ringing passage:
"We do not claim to know all the ways of Providence, yet
we can trust in them, placing our confidence in the loving God
behind all of life, and all of history."
Dismissed at first as either a bit of
overheated rhetorical trumpery or else a slab of coded red meat
thrown to his voracious "core constituency" on the
hard Christian Right, Bush's declaration is in fact a powerful
tool for understanding what otherwise seems to be the irredeemably
chaotic nature of human reality. In essence, his masterful philosophy
can be boiled down to this: "God did it."
For example, last week Iraqis began unearthing
a mass grave that could contain up to 15,000 bodies of Shiites
slaughtered during an uprising against Saddam Hussein in 1991.
Some heretics might want to blame Saddam for this atrocity, or
even assign partial blame to George H.W. Bush, who specifically
called on these Shiites to rebel, then betrayed them, granting
the just-conquered Saddam permission to use his full military
might against the rebels, while a vast American army stood by,
motionless, in Kuwait. But now, thanks to Bush Junior's revelation
of divine agency behind every single act in history, we know
that neither ex-CIA asset Saddam nor his long-time supporter
and sugar daddy Bush Senior were in any way responsible for those
corpses moldering in the desert wastes. God did it.
It's all so simple, isn't it? So blindingly
clear, so infinitely comforting. Feel free to try it at home.
Take any situation you please and run it through the patented
George W. Bush God Did It meat-grinder. You'll find a neat little
patty of moral clarity on the other end, ready to fry up in a
creamy sauce of red wine, onions, amnesia and self-absolution.
Big event or private failing, it doesn't
matter. That father who just slammed his infant's head into a
wall? All part of God's plan - for verily, His loving hand is
behind all of life and all of history. The Holocaust? Surely
it goes it without saying that those six million Jews weren't
killed by the Nazi Regime, nor that any of the American financial
elitists - such as the Bush Family - who made millions of dollars
bankrolling Nazi enterprises while American soldiers were dying
on the battlefield were in any degree responsible for what seemed
to be their own actions. No, you poor, misguided, Satan-deceived
wretches - God did it, don't you see?
And the September 11 attacks? Again,
no true believer could ever hold Mohammed Atta or ex-CIA asset
Osama bin Laden responsible - especially not for an act which,
as many Bushist evangelicals now openly avow, was a blessing
for America, because it greatly augmented the powers and popularity
of the man the Lord Himself has appointed to lead the nation
- yea, the world - to a new Promised Land of peace and prosperity.
No: God killed those 3,000 innocent people, He burned them, He
crushed them, He flung them out of windows hundreds of feet in
the air. It was His loving hand, that same hand behind all of
life and all of history.
This divine principle applies equally
to acts of omission, as well as commission. Consider Bush's "war
on terror." It's true, the anthrax killer has not been caught.
Osama bin Laden has not been caught (in fact, he's busier than
ever). Mullah Omar has not been caught. Saddam Hussein has not
been caught. It's true, Afghanistan has collapsed again into
anarchy, rampant warlordism, fierce Islamic extremism, hopelessness,
violence, despair. It's true, Iraq is collapsing into anarchy,
incipient warlordism, fierce Islamic extremism, hopelessness,
violence, despair. But none of this has anything to do with the
staggering, criminal incompetence of the Bush Regime in gutting
legitimate domestic security measures at home - both before and
after September 11 - and launching mindless foreign adventures
aimed largely at thrusting American military power into the world's
oil regions, regardless of the consequences. No; it is without
doubt the will of the loving God behind all of life and all of
history.
When - and if - He wants these miscreants
to be caught, they will be caught. For now, He is quite content
to let them roam the earth and murder more innocent people. When
- and if - He wants to relieve the suffering of the Afghan and
Iraqi peoples, He will do it. For now, He is happy to watch children
blow themselves to pieces with brightly-colored cluster bombs.
There's nothing that His faithful servant, George W. Bush, can
do about any of this. He is not to blame; God did it. We are
all merely automatons, pushed hither and yon by the all-encompassing
wisdom of His totalitarian order.
Yes, on the surface, this all sounds
like the self-justifying moral onanism of a complacent, pampered,
willfully ignorant upper-class twit - but it is actually one
of the most profound and earth-scorching expressions of religious
nihilism ever uttered by a public figure. Stepping far beyond
Nietzsche, who merely asserted that God is dead, Bush's philosophy
declares that God is a lust-maddened, child-devouring demon,
glutted with the blood and bones of the innocent - the malevolent
agent of every atrocity ever committed in "all of life and
all of history."
Does Jerry Falwell know about this?
Chris Floyd
is a columnist for the Moscow Times and a regular contributor
to CounterPunch. He can be reached at: cfloyd72@hotmail.com
Today's
Features
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Jason
Leopold
Despite Thin Intelligence Reports,
US Plans Overthrow of Iran Regime
Ron
Jacobs
Popular Uprising, Inc.
Michelle
Ciaccorra
Bush's Nuclear Policy: Do As I Say, Not As I Do
Yves Engler
The Economics of Health Care in
America: Pay More to Die Sooner
Kimberly
Blaker
Vouchers for Jesus
Harry
Browne
Stakeknife: Britain's Army Spy at
the Top of the IRA
Stew
Albert
Cops of the World
Steve Perry
Greens 04: In or Out?
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