So this is what it looks like when you're on the inside of a crusade

"This crusade, this war on terrorism, is going to take a while." President George W. Bush, Sept. 16, 2001.


A week after bin Laden's 9/11 terror king hit on New York in 2001, the Christian Science Monitor was already alert to a misguided missile counter attack:

Europe cringes at Bush 'crusade' against terrorists
By Peter Ford September 19, 2001

As Europeans wait to see how the United States is planning to retaliate for last week's attacks on Washington and New York, there is growing anxiety here about the tone of American war rhetoric.

President Bush's reference to a "crusade" against terrorism, which passed almost unnoticed by Americans, rang alarm bells in Europe. It raised fears that the terrorist attacks could spark a 'clash of civilizations' between Christians and Muslims, sowing fresh winds of hatred and mistrust.

"We have to avoid a clash of civilizations at all costs," French foreign minister Hubert Vedrine said on Sunday. "One has to avoid falling into this huge trap, this monstrous trap" which he said had been "conceived by the instigators of the assault."

[H]is earlier comments, declaring a war between good and evil, shocked Europeans. "Bush is walking a fine line," suggested Dominique Moisi, a political analyst with the French Institute for International Relations, the country's top foreign policy think tank. "This confusion between politics and religion...risks encouraging a clash of civilizations in a religious sense, which is very dangerous," he added.

A couple of years later, Shaun Carney revisited the Crusade in an opinion piece in Melbourne's The Age newspaper:

The Start Of Bush's Crusade
April 12, 2003

Last month, as the war on Iraq began, John Howard made his last prewar pitch to the Australian people, setting down the rationale for Australia's active military involvement. The chief reason, he said, was that terrorists who hated Western societies wanted weapons of mass destruction, that Saddam Hussein had these weapons and that eventually the Iraqi leader would supply them to terrorists.

As well - and this was a late addition to the arguments for engagement rolled out by Howard since late last year - Saddam was a monster who systematically oppressed and tortured his citizens, a people who deserved liberation.

To strengthen the security of Western nations through the removal of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and the elimination of a tyrant: these were the goals. Since the statues of Saddam were toppled in Baghdad on Wednesday, the military adventure involving American, British and Australian troops seems to have developed into a straight-out righteous war of liberation. Chemical and biological weapons were clearly not a front-line instrument for the Iraqi forces; they were not used in the battlefield and none have yet been discovered by the conquering coalition troops.

The alleged or suspected links between Saddam and al-Qaeda that were said to compel the coalition aggression drifted from the foreground as the battle proceeded in the past three weeks.

Many questions and unresolved issues arise from this venture. If, with America, Australia is now on a crusade to export democracy, why have there been so many demands from pro-war advocates that the "left" or the "peace movement" apologise? Is this what our society is to be reduced to? Is sheer military power - the ability to kill other human beings efficiently and in large numbers - the measure by which our morals are to be determined and judged? If so, democracy is over, and in its place stands fascism.

Democracy is about allowing for a multiplicity of views, of tolerating differences of opinion. Once a government deploys troops, does that mean debate is automatically shut down, that we lose our democratic rights to discuss an issue because we all must "support" our fighting men and women - whatever "support" actually means?

The correctness and wisdom of the invasion of Iraq, conducted without a United Nations mandate, will not be known for several years. Setting aside the possibility of terrorist reprisals, the coalition nations now have the responsibility of creating an independent, democratic Iraq - potentially the greatest challenge facing the West since the end of the Second World War.

This is now a unipolar world, with one massive superpower that is determined to use its military and economic dominance to reshape the world, to make and unmake another nation. Of course, there will be no invasion of North Korea. Its weapons of mass destruction are too powerful, it is too close to China and Japan. So its people will just have to stay unliberated, oppressed and mistreated. The US-led export program for democracy has its limits.

What has just taken place in Baghdad and the deserts of Iraq, and in Washington and New York and London and Canberra, is that an open-ended crusade has begun - whether the participants want to believe that or not.

Of course, at least one participant was firmly and unabashidly of that belief. Hell, his top general was pointedly articulate about it:

The top soldier assigned to track down Bin Laden and Hussein is an evangelical Christian who speaks publicly of 'the army of God.'
October 16, 2003, Los Angeles Times, by Richard T. Cooper

The Pentagon has assigned the task of tracking down and eliminating Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and other high-profile targets to an Army general who sees the war on terrorism as a clash between Judeo-Christian values and Satan.

. . . the former commander and 13-year veteran of the Army's top-secret Delta Force is also an outspoken evangelical Christian who appeared in dress uniform and polished jump boots before a religious group in Oregon in June to declare that radical Islamists hated the United States "because we're a Christian nation, because our foundation and our roots are Judeo-Christian ... and the enemy is a guy named Satan."

Discussing the battle against a Muslim warlord in Somalia, Boykin told another audience, "I knew my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol."

"We in the army of God, in the house of God, kingdom of God have been raised for such a time as this," Boykin said last year.

On at least one occasion, in Sandy, Ore., in June, Boykin said of President Bush: "He's in the White House because God put him there."

It took the sobering reality that America re-elected Bush for a second term for people to begin to openly discuss the disquiet that they had begun to feel about the theocratic fundamental Christian hijacking of the government of America following on from the fundamental Islamist hijacking of the planes on 9/11.

George Bush’s Religious Crusade Against Democracy:
Fundamentalism as Cultural Politics, by Henry A. Giroux August 4, 2004

Religion has always played a powerful role in the daily lives of Americans. But it has never wielded such influence in the highest levels of American government as it does under the Bush presidency. Moreover, the religious conservative movement that has come into political prominence with the election of George W. Bush views him as its earthly leader. As Washington Post staff writer Dana Milbank, puts it:

For the first time since religious conservatism became a modern political movement, the president of the United States has become the movement’s de facto leader–a status even Ronald Reagan, though admired by religious conservatives, never earned. Christian publications, radio and television shower Bush with praise, while preachers from the pulpit treat his leadership as an act of providence. A procession of religious leaders who have met with him testify to his faith, while Web sites encourage people to fast and pray for the president. [1]

Considered the leader of the Christian right, Bush is viewed by many of his aides and followers as a leader with a higher purpose. Bush aide, Tim Goeglein, echoes this view: “I think President Bush is God’s man at this hour, and I say this with a great sense of humility.” [2]

Bush has relentlessly developed policies based less on social needs than on a highly personal and narrowly moral sense of divine purpose. Using the privilege of executive action, he has aggressively attempted to evangelize the realm of social services. For example, he has made available to a greater extent than any other president more federal funds to Christian religious groups that provide a range of social services. He has also eased the rules “for overtly religious institutions to access $20-billion in federal social service grants and another $8-billion in Housing and Urban Development money. Tax dollars can now be used to construct and renovate houses of worship as long as the funds are not used to build the principal room used for prayer, such as the sanctuary or chapel.” [6] He also provided more than $60 billion in federal funds for faith-based initiatives organized by religious charitable groups. [7]

The two programs that Bush showcased during his January 2003 State of the Union speech both “use religious conversion as treatment.” [9] Bush has also created an office in the White House entirely dedicated to providing assistance to faith-based organizations applying for federal funding. Moreover, Bush is using school voucher programs to enable private schools to receive public money, and refusing to fund schools that “interfere with or fail to accommodate prayer for bible study by teachers or students.” [10] The Secretary of Education, Rod Paige, made it clear how he feels about the separation of church and state when he told a Baptist publication that he believed that schools should teach Christian values.

As Winnifred Sullivan, a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Divinity School puts it, the conservative evangelical proponents of the faith-based initiative “want government funds to go to the kinds of churches that regard conversion as part of your rehabilitation. It’s a critique of secular professional social service standards.” [12]

Bush is not the only one in his administration who combines evangelical morality with dubious ethical actions and undemocratic practices. Attorney General John Ashcroft, a Christian fundamentalist who holds morning-prayer sessions in his Washington office, added another layer to this type of religious fervor in February of 2002 when he told a crowd at the National Religious Broadcasters Convention in Nashville, Tennessee that the freedoms Americans enjoy appear to have little to do with the men who wrote the US Constitution since such freedoms are made in Heaven. Ashcroft argues that, “We are a nation called to defend freedom–a freedom that is not the grant of any government or document but is our endowment from God.” [14] Without any irony intended, Ashcroft further exhibited his rigid Christian morality by having the “Spirit of Justice” statue draped so as to cover up her marble breasts....

See, In Christ we're thrust and The Sisters of Mercenary

But over five years has passed since Bush told us he would lead us on that Crusade. Has he changed his tune? Nope. This is what he had to say about that just a couple of days ago:

"The challenge playing out across the broader Middle East is more than a military conflict. It is the decisive ideological struggle of our time."

Bush’s War on Terrorism as a Religious Crusade: Religious Language & Connotations are Integral to Bush’s War & Tactics October 22, 2006 by PatriotBoy

President George W. Bush has received quite a bit of criticism for some of the religious language he has used in explaining or promoting his worldwide War on Terrorism. Critics have pointed out that this War on Terror is usually framed as a political struggle against antidemocratic and anti-liberal forces of extremism, not as a struggle between religions. Even supporters argue that America can ill afford to make enemies of all Muslims by acting as though the War on Terror were a war on Islam. For a variety of reasons, I think that the references to religion were not mere slips of the tongue, but rather may be indications that the real targets of this war are not the ones usually given by Bush and his administration.

First of all, claiming terrorism as a target fails because terrorism is a tactic rather than an ideology or a people. For all that a "war on terror" makes for a nice rhetorical flourish, you can’t eliminate a tactic — anyone who picks up a gun or bomb and makes demands becomes a terrorist, and that isn’t something which can ever be completely prevented.

Second, to the extent that actual terrorists are targeted, it's notable that the antidemocratic and anti-liberal aspects of their ideology are rarely singled out for criticism, except in bland slogans like, “They hate us because we’re free.” That’s only to be expected, as so many of Bush’s biggest supporters hold similar antidemocratic and anti-liberal beliefs. Some even go so far as to promote these beliefs by arguing that liberties must be restricted in America in response to foreign terrorism. If Muslim extremists can’t achieve their goals through bombs, domestic Christian extremists would like to achieve much the same goals through legislation.

The religion of those targeted by the Bush administration is not the only issue — the religion of those pursuing their war of aggression is an important factor as well. For many Americans, religion is political and politics is religious. They recognize no valid distinction between True Patriotism and True Religion, between the best political policies for America and the only valid religion for all human beings. Because of this, religious language will necessarily creep into political discourse — preventing it would require erecting a wall between religious theology and political ideology which simply cannot exist for them.

Theological beliefs structure, inform, and determine the course of political decision-making which can be difficult for more secularly-minded people to fully comprehend (even those who are themselves religious on a personal level). Thus any discussion of the War on Terror will necessarily include references to religion and religious terminology — not simply because religion is a motivating factor, but because these people cannot think in categories and concepts that are not religious in nature. Enemies are demonic, not simply mistaken or misguided. Wars are crusades because rather than having merely political causes, they are part of God’s agenda for humanity.

When Bush speaks about the War on Terror as a “Crusade,” he may be doing so because he really is targeting Islam and because he simply can’t avoid religious terminology. It appears, then, that we are being given a glimpse into the true workings of such people’s minds and we should not dismiss such evidence as irrelevant, unimportant, or “much ado about nothing.”

And so, Bush continues his Crusade, armored in the language of ideology -- make that ID-ology -- and in stubborn opposition to his best advice. The problem is, Crudader Bush is not a lone Don Quixote. He is the leader of the world's (current) economic-political superpower, which means the rest of us are dragged along like knights' serfs on his errand.