What Bush & Co. Really Want

The Bush administration is a sick amalgamation of extremist forces with disparate but mutually beneficial goals.

- Big business GOP donors want access to oil. Let them have it.

- Neo-conservatives want a US global empire. Let them have it.

- The Christian right-wing want... what? Do you know?

The truth is pretty wierd and more than a little bit scary. Here it is:

There a millions of "Christians" in the USA today who believe that Jesus will soon return (the Second Coming) and pass judgement on the earth. They, the "good" Christians, will watch as sinners, homosexuals and anti-Bush, anti-war people like me are tossed into the fires of Hell. But before Jesus can return, the state of Israel must be "restored" and a temple must be built on the tomb of David (where perhaps the holiest site in Islam now stands).

This is the real battle ground of the Middle East - in Middle America!

(If I've got any of that wrong, please let me know. I struggle to come to terms with it all...)

Rick Perlstein of the Village Voice has acquired a damning memo demonstrating the hold the looney Christian far Right has on Bush's Middle East policy.

In Juan Cole's column today, the penny drops:

"The gem in the article is the account of how Iran-Contra criminal mastermind and current National Security Adviser Elliot Abrams tried to reassure the Christian Zionists that an Israeli "withdrawal" from Gaza will not interfere with Jesus coming back because it wasn't part of ancient Israel. Actually, this is right. Gaza was in Philistia, not Judah, which was to its east. But for that matter, when the kindoms split, the West Bank wasn't in "Israel" either, it was in Judah. So the looney tunes Christians who are trying to kill and dispossess the poor Palestinians to drag Jesus back may as well just give it up. He wasn't treated well enough by humankind the first time to want to come back, so we're on our own, and we may as well stop being barbaric to one another in his name.

"It has for some time been obvious to me that the Bush foreign policy in the Middle East is driven by irrational and often puzzling considerations. But I hadn't stopped to consider, until Perlstein's excellent piece, that the White House is trying to bring about an apocalypse that would hasten Christ's return. And a damn fine job they're doing of it, if that's what they are up to. Why the place is more apocalyptic every day. The one downside for Bush is that he is beholden not just to the far right Christian looney fringe but also to Wall Street, and the latter can't actually be very happy with the roller coaster ride his policies are producing for their investments. Unlike poor people, moreover, the monied both vote and give to political campaigns. "

In today's USA, it seems that the lunatic fringes are struggling for power while the rest of the country watches baseball and MTV. On the one hand, the Christian right stuggles to create the conditions which will deliver these insane conditions for Christ's return, while on the other side leftists struggle to convince anyone who will listen that the White House has been taken over by a secretive cabal of fascist religious fanatics. To the MTV and baseball watchers, both sides sound equally ridiculous, and why should they care?

People of the USA, the world needs you. While Bush's mad policies affect us all, we don't have a vote against these lunatics. You do. Stop this now, before it kills us all.