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God Orders Bush to War

By CHAD SNOW
Chad Snow is a senior in political science and Chinese. He can be reached for comment at snow.76@osu.edu.

The Lantern, Ohio State University, Oct. 10, 2005


Photo: George W. Bush, The Nation, November 11, 2000

Recently, the media has become captivated by a report that said President Bush informed Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas that God told him to fight terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan, and now he has a moral and religious obligation get Palestine a state. Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, broke the story on July 26, 2005, and the senior Palestinian politician's interview will be shown later this month by the B.B.C. The White House claims that President Bush never made these comments; however, Bush has never been subtle about invoking the name of God. If Bush did say what Abbas claims and he meant his words in a literal manner, this raises a number of concerns:

The world's faithful are many, but it appears the age of the prophet has long passed. Anymore, if you hear of someone claiming that God directly spoke to him or her, then it may be regarded as safe to presume some degree of insanity. Personally, I am very afraid of the prospect of the world's most powerful man being on the same playing field as Waco's finest, David Koresh, or Andrea Yates, the mother who believed she was following God's orders when murdering her children.

With a position of power comes respect, but I see no difference between these cases - all include directly or indirectly harming innocent people for some distant, ultimate purpose. It seems that we are on a mission to prevent fundamentalist Muslims from obtaining nuclear weapons and with good cause. However, it seems to be taking an increasing amount of effort and faith in the American form of government to hope we can prevent fundamentalist Christians from using nuclear weapons. Religion understandably influences decisions, but we should be very wary of those who believe they are on an untold divine mission, when they have access to such powerful forces.

Curiously, if President Bush has such a cozy relationship with God, why did the Divine Creator not inform him that the 'Mission Accomplished' banner so proudly displayed on the U.S.S. Lincoln more than two years ago, was such an obvious public relations blunder? I also find it hard to believe that the Almighty, Omniscient Creator would not explain to President Bush that you must have some sort of post-war plans outside of rewarding no-bid contracts to the vice president's ex-company, Halliburton - surely God would not enjoy seeing Iraqi civilians and coalition soldiers die and watching Iraq fall into lawlessness and chaos. Though Halliburton stock has nearly tripled since the Iraq War, I highly doubt God has their stock.

It also seems that our Intelligent Designer would inform President Bush that he should not mislead the American people, but simply tell them that he would like to end tyranny. He should not capitalize on a fear of an unstable dictator amassing weapons of mass destruction when there were not any to be found. God certainly would not be a part of this folly, especially when he would know that other states like North Korea were more important adversaries.

I also take issue with President Bush believing he is special enough to directly hear from God. Many atheists have tried to establish some sort of relationship with God and were simply not convinced after a lack of evidence or signs. Why are some people so pretentious that they believe that God actually directly speaks to them, while leaving others out to dry? According to some doctrines on unbelievers, wouldn't this also beg the question as to why a loving God would seemingly predetermine some humans' ultimate destinations to be hell?

I appreciate that our President is a religious man, but I hope White House officials are telling the truth saying Bush never made these comments. What scares me most about fundamentalist Christians with power, who believe they are on a divine mission, is that their objectives seem to be ushering in Armaggedon well before God is ready to.