War and Religion
Don't tell me 'the Bible made me do it'
By Philip Giraldi
April 22, 2015 "Information
Clearing House" - "UR"
- Traditional conservative friends of mine now rarely refer to
Republicans without using the preceding descriptor “batshit ignorant.” They
are onto something. Former representative Michelle Bachmann, who was quite
recently a viable GOP candidate for President of the United States, appeared
on
radio last week to discuss President Barack Obama’s policies. She said
that his nuclear deal with Iran and his “declaring war” on Israel would
bring about Armageddon and the so-called “End Time.” Bachmann, who claims to
be something of an Islamic scholar, observed that the “Koran and Hadith…the
works of Islamic jurisprudence, they say one complete consistent truth and
that’s that they want to have a nuclear weapon.”
Bachmann’s discovery that Iran’s nuclear weapons program actually began in
the seventh century will surprise many but it is reassuring to also learn
from her that “The world is embracing degeneracy [and]…we have very little
time…left before the second return of Christ. That’s good news!”
Fortunately for Bachmann someone is actually doing
something about it. Daniel Larison makes a
compelling case that Republicans in Congress and possibly also in
control of the White House after 2016 will actually do what they are
threatening to do, which is reject any agreement made by the Obama White
House so they can increase pressure on Iran. That would constitute a war
policy. Such a war would by both definition and geography be Armageddon,
which means it might be coming a whole lot sooner than most people think,
suggesting that Bachmann might just be right. Larison argues that hostility
to Iran is so widespread in the Republican Party at all levels that it has
become dogma, a pledge that any GOP candidate, if elected, would actually be
compelled to keep if only to maintain control of his own party relating to
the issue.
It is being
argued in other circles, including among Iranian leaders, that it really
doesn’t matter what Congress and a new president do because the P5+1
agreement with Tehran will be made, if final negotiations are successful,
with multiple parties who can make irrelevant the possible continuation of
sanctions by Washington. U.S. Sanctions and other punitive action would
presumably be sidestepped by the international community, just as Russia has
already
agreed to sell a defensive missile system to Tehran and Turkey is
already working out arrangements to buy oil and gas.
But that thinking ignores two things. First, Washington
has enormous leverage over what other banks, particularly central banks, do
if it chooses to punish them, so it might very well be able to sustain
considerable pressure on Iran in financial markets. And second, unrelenting
hostility towards Iran is a slippery slope that could lead to much worse if
there is an incident either by accident or design that invites a military
response. Even if most Republicans in Congress do not actually want war with
Iran they might just wind up getting it by miscalculation or as the result
of an Israeli covert action.
And unfortunately for the rest of us it is not just
Congress and the gaggle of hawkish candidates who are “batshit.” Among
Republican rank and file there are a lot of Michelle Bachmanns running
around. There has been some serious chatter in the alternative media
(inevitably) about a recent
Bloomberg opinion poll that includes questions about American attitudes
towards Israel. Glenn Greenwald
headlines the article on the subject “Religious fanaticism is a huge
factor in Americans’ support for Israel.”
In overview, the poll suggests that two out of three
Republicans are willing to support Israel “even if its interests diverge”
from those of the United States. For the Democrats it is a flip, with
two-thirds saying “no.” Combining the two results, however, reveals that
only 47% of Americans believe that U.S. interests trump those of Israel.
Greenwald sees the astonishing level of support for Israel
as related to religion, and more particularly to the views of the 37% of
Christians who regard themselves as born again or evangelical. The more
fundamentalist one is the stronger is the connection. He notes how the
inclination to blindly support Israel is often linked directly to the Bible.
Pastor John Hagee of Christians United for Israel put it this way, “We
support Israel because all other nations were created by an act of men, but
Israel was created by an act of God.”
It’s tough to argue with that one. And the same
formulation also holds for American Jews. Greenwald notes that the support
for Israel among American Jews, normally liberal and Democratic, is
similarly along fundamentalist lines. Four out of ten Jews believe that
Israel was given to them by God, but among the Orthodox the percentage who
believe that to be true doubles.
The Bloomberg poll includes some ratings of leading
politicians and
breaks down the data by voter preferences. Interestingly, the only
declared presidential candidate whose “very favorable” and “mostly
favorable” ratings exceed those of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
is Hillary Clinton. Sixty-seven per cent of Republicans find Netanyahu
“sympathetic” versus only 16% who would say the same about President Barack
Obama. So perhaps those jokes about the GOP disbanding and declaring
Netanyahu as their leader are not so funny after all. It also makes one
wonder about the extent to which the American public actually followed
Bibi’s antics back in March. For what it’s worth, Bill Clinton topped the
poll of political figures in terms of his favorability.
Admittedly, much of the response reflects the questions
themselves and how they were phrased. Regarding Israel they were, “Israel is
an important ally, the only democracy in the region, and we should support
it even if our interests diverge” versus “Israel is an ally but we should
pursue America’s interests when we disagree with them.” The question, is of
course, both loaded and flawed in that Israel is not now and has never been
an ally of the United States and many would question that it is even a
democracy if one considers the second class treatment of its own Arab
citizens and its military occupation of East Jerusalem and much of the West
Bank.
If the question were “Would you support Israel even if it
means going to war with Iran?” the response might have been somewhat
different. Or “Israel and the United States have different national
interests. Whose interests should be more important for American politicians
and policymakers?”
Nevertheless the issue of a large portion of the
electorate and a majority of the Republican Party regarding Israel as an
untouchable in Washington’s fractious politics should be troubling to any
American who considers himself to be even vaguely patriotic. Ironically, the
evangelicals who bleed for Israel also back the war against terror and the
use of torture by a two to one margin, suggesting that it ain’t the New
Testament that they have been reading. In my opinion, Bachmann and her
millions of clones let their Bibles do their thinking for them, which is
perfectly fine as long as they do not demand that a-historical Biblical
allegories become the basis for defining United States Foreign Policy. And
it might be observed that she and her associates represent a real danger for
all the rest of us as the issue of Israel and Iran could easily come down to
real American blood and real American deaths if it goes the wrong way.