Shop, Go to Church, Support Bush and wait for Armageddon

Shop, Go to Church, Support Bush and wait for Armageddon

By Saul Landau

In my neighborhood of trimmed lawns and two or more car garages, with one or two
more vehicles parked outside the garage, I counted 15 American flags in less than five
minutes of my slow trot, most of them new since the U.S. invaded Iraq. One house had
a sign with a U.S. flag waving over a map of Iraq.

Americans learn geography through war, experience the traumas of battle—well,
virtually—and root for the good guys. We know we’re good because God blesses
America and f….s our enemies—with the help of the missiles, bombs, tanks and other
war technology with which He has blessed us. Our God loves peace and keeps us, as
Gore Vidal quipped, in “perpetual war.” Our God does not like opposition, from within,
or from our former friends abroad. He has told our leaders, all of whom remain in close
contact with Him, to punish such heretic behavior.

Our God is one of love and compassion, although he seems to act out of rage and
retribution. But some of the media, particularly Fox and CNN, seem to have found
hidden in FCC regulations some clause that dictates that their major news reporting task
is to follow the orders of our God-chosen political leaders—since the majority did not
choose them. Former officers, like Lt. Col. Oliver North who, in violation of the law,
conspired to sell missiles to Iran in the 1980s in order to fund the Nicaraguan
Contras—another violation of the law—now appear as honored war experts and
cheerleaders for our troops .

On April 6, before I jogged through my neighborhood, I watched TV images of bombs
and artillery shells decimating Iraq, Iraqi women and children pleading for water. One
scene even showed a full hospital without running water, so the doctor could not mix
plaster with which to make a cast for a small boy’s broken arm.

On line I saw more horrific images from non-U.S. sources, including Agence France
Presse. Mutilated bodies of children and weeping adults holding their dead kids!
Liberating Iraq! Yes, death is the ultimate liberation!

Bush has set forth “a worldview that is intrinsically paranoid,” writes philosopher
Francois Bernard in the March 31 Ha’aretz, “imbued with visions of the most
regressive Crusades, drenched in a frightening symbolism that sees any external
opposition as evidence of crime and in which every decision and every action bear the
seal of a vengeful divinity.” Since 9/11/01—was this the work of the Devil?—God has
emerged as the dominant force in U.S. politics. This God preaches democracy, although
its meaning has yet to become clear. It has something to do with good, the United
States, the United Kingdom and other members of the coalition of the willing, versus the
axes of evil and their tacit partners in malice.

Our God teaches us that shopping and going to Disneyland constitute the highest spiritual
values—outside of attending church once a week. Our God has singled us out among all
peoples, even though we came from all peoples, as His chosen elite to reside in His
promised land. After all, the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay believed in that very ethos
as did the first slave owners in the South. Since God had sent them to this land without
first providing them with knowledge of farming, He must have meant for them to
acquire slaves to do their work. How else could they remain free to think noble thoughts,
engage in carefree sexual adventures with their more comely servants and compose
patriotic songs, like Dixie? Yes, tradition vibrates strongly in this land of ever newly
arriving immigrants.

Well-dressed people pour out of churches, get in their SUVs and drive to their
$400,000-plus homes. Some will watch sports on TV; others will tune in to the
presstitutes, as Uri Avnery calls them, who report on the war in Iraq. “Their original
sin,” he says, “was their agreement to be ‘embedded’ in army units. This American
term sounds like being put to bed, and that is what it amounts to in practice. A journalist
who lies down in the bed of an army unit becomes a voluntary slave. He is attached to
the commander's staff, led to the places the commander is interested in, sees what the
commander wants him or her to see, is turned away from the places the commanders
does not want him to see, hears what he wants him to hear and does not hear what the
army does not want him to hear. He is worse than an official army spokesman, because
he pretends to be an independent reporter. The problem is not that he only sees a small
piece of the grand mosaic of the war, but that he transmits a mendacious view of that
piece.”

The rosy reports on the “news” of the virtuous coalition troops’ steady triumph over the
unfair-fighting forces of evil give several residents of my suburban neighborhood reason
to feel righteous, if not downright pious in their support of the Bush Administration’s
policy. Those Bush supporters I have spoken to see no relationship between their
comfortable lifestyles and the devastation the U.S. military has inflicted in Iraq. “Now
we’re even for what they did to us,” said a sales manager at a local hotel chain. He
referred to 9/11, as if Saddam Hussein and the Iraqis had actually done those foul
deeds. “They’re not going to try that one again,” he said smugly. Almost half of
Americans polled blame Saddam for 9/11—thanks to President Bush’s constant
references to “his links” to terrorists, reported without critical comment by the media.

Most Americans don’t have access through TV news or the daily print press of critical
reporting coming out of Iraq. On April 8, Robert Fisk of the Independent filed this
report:

"It looks very neat on television, the American marines on the banks of the Tigris, the
all-so-funny visit to the presidential palace, the videotape of Saddam Hussein's golden
loo. But the innocent are bleeding and screaming with pain to bring us our exciting
television pictures and to provide Messrs Bush and Blair with their boastful talk of
victory. I watched two-and-a-half-year-old Ali Najour lying in agony on the bed, his
clothes soaked with blood, a tube through his nose…”

Ignorant of and therefore oblivious to Iraqi pain, one would think the suburbanites would
at least respond to their state’s fiscal crisis. How much will they have to pay when they
start the post-war reconstruction plans for Iraq? Californians, already faced with a $35
billion state deficit, look forward to paying heavier state and local taxes to make up for
the shortfall from the federal government’s yearly allocation to the states. They do not
seem to worry about additional costs for rebuilding Iraq. When I mention the tax-cut for
the very wealthy, their eyes glaze over.

I have also met the programmed “born-agains,” those who believe robot-like that what
they view on TV as current history is the working out of biblical prophecy. One woman
mentioned the battles of Gog and Magog that must precede the final reckoning. She
identifies “100% with our President.” He, unlike the lascivious Bill Clinton, “is a true
Christian.” Most of the neighbors with whom I spoke said that the bloodshed had upset
them, but “that’s the price we have to pay for security,” one man said as he pruned his
roses.

In Iraq, the born-again Christians work with the U.S. military. Meg Laughlin in the April
5 Miami Herald quoted Evangelical Christian Army chaplain Josh Llano. "They want
water. I have it, as long as they agree to get baptized," he said. “In so many ways,”
writes Laughlin, “this represents the true mindset of the individuals who have pushed this
war. It is right down the line with the actions of this administration over the past three
years; recall that, when our airmen were being held in China back in 2001, Mr. Bush
was only concerned with whether or not they had Bibles.”

Nothing in the fundamentalist theology seems to inhibit consumption, however. These
God-fearing people buy gas-guzzling vehicles, pay Mexicans to mow their lawns and
drop chemicals into their swimming pools and take periodic vacations in Las
Vegas—where God does not always bless them. In church, they listen to the pious
sermons about what being a Christian means in daily life. But their interpretation of the
Bible does not sensitize them to the pain of the Iraqis. I notice a satisfied, almost smug
smile on the faces of the men as they announce their support for the president and his
policies.

My neighbors have problems, like all people. Their suburban-reared kids often drink and
then drive, use drugs and get caught or fail to make college-level grades. But many of
the parents themselves also tend to use addictive substances and then go into religious
programs to recover—or get divorced, go bankrupt and even commit suicide. Those I
spoke with consider themselves good people, kind, charitable. Like many suburban
families, my neighbors spend parts of their weekends on shopping expeditions for lawn,
garden, patio and pool supplies, home furniture, kitchen needs and of course clothing.
Most of them could not quite understand why some people protested a war against a
brute like Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

“Those hedonistic terrorists got what they deserve,” opined one older neighbor with a
prominently displayed flag on her lawn. She had just returned from her Baptist church
service where she prayed for President Bush. Later she will take advantage of a sale to
buy her grandchildren some new back packs for their school backs. “Lord knows, they
sure get plenty of use.” I nod. She says: “God bless you!”

In Iraq, Saddam invoked God as well. The last we saw of him, he continued to call on
his people to resist in the name of the Muslim homeland and Allah. It appears that God
has lost this war. Or maybe just this battle for Iraq in the last days of born-again
history…