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The
Armageddon Policy
April 3, 2002
By punpirate
 Hubert Locke's commentary in the March
29th edition of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer should
act as a firm reminder of two things: first, that as long as
the world is generously populated with nuclear weapons, all
the troubles they imply are still with us, governmentally,
militarily, environmentally and economically. Second,
protestations in favor of war, even of a generally-accepted
but undeclared one, mean that governments and militaries of
all sorts begin to think in strategic and tactical terms, of
their manpower, supplies, and their stockpiles of weapons, and
of the directions given them by government.
It should come as no surprise to anyone that policy about
such weapons is governed by all the necessities of war, one of
which is expediency.
What has been lost, completely, in the discussions about
the latest Nuclear Posture Review, is that of the necessity of
war, now and in the future. Avoiding war is the means to
avoiding the use of such weapons. Actively engaging in war, or
serious talk of war, opens the lid to Pandora's Box. Once the
daemons have been let loose, one can't get them into the box
again.
The moral of that fable is to think first, even if one's
self-interest seems of paramount importance at the moment.
Many commentators have speculated that the use of nuclear
weapons against Iraq would possibly engage the Muslim world
against the United States. Possibly? Thinking first, one
would, of necessity, phrase it as, "certainly." The reason for
not thinking so, however, is not so apparent to Americans. For
a great deal of the last three decades or so, our country has
engaged in a love affair with the right wing, who themselves
adapt their policies and campaign speeches to the requirements
of an increasingly strident minority in their midst, Christian
fundamentalists and evangelicals.
Nothing to do with the latest talk of war? Our current
President, in varying terms likely crafted from polls to
extract the greatest emotional response from the most people,
has repeatedly suggested that ours is a holy war, a war
against all evil, and that invoking God's help is necessary
for victory. Is this, in any real sense, differently motivated
than the war that Muslim fundamentalists wish to wage against
us?
Let us not dismiss lightly that the President, in the early
days after the attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., chose
to use the word "crusade" to describe our future intentions
and acts. Only after it was pointed out to the administration
that this choice of words was impolitic, given the history of
the first Crusades as viewed by the non-Christian world, that
different means of saying the same thing were devised.
Admittedly, it sounds quite silly to suggest that current
events are the result of two warring fundamentalist clans, one
Wahhabi, one Christian, but it's also silly not to acknowledge
the religious undertones of the rhetoric, and dangerous not to
acknowledge that governments, and politicians, have their own
irrational prejudices which do inevitably find their way into
policy and speechmaking.
In a book by the late Grace Halsell, little-remarked on at
the time in the mainstream press, Prophecy and Politics:
Militant Evangelists on the Road to Nuclear War, published
in 1986, Ms. Halsell quotes a TV evangelist of some note at
the time, James Robison:
"'There'll be no peace until Jesus comes. Any preaching of
peace prior to this return is heresy; it's against the word of
God; it's Anti-Christ,' says TV evangelist Jim Robison, who
was invited by President Reagan to deliver the opening prayer
at the 1984 Republican National Convention."
A July, 2000 USA Today article relates, "During his
father's 1988 campaign, Bush specialized in religious liaison
work, and Wead says 'nobody comes close to George W. Bush' in
cultivating clergy. In the run-up to his own 2000 campaign,
Bush quietly scheduled numerous sessions with small groups of
ministers. His own religious counselors run to evangelical
personalities like fiery Fort Worth evangelist James
Robison..."
Robison is variously described in other pre-2000 election
stories as being one of the prime movers, along with Billy
Graham, in George W. Bush's conversion to born-again status.
Let us also remind ourselves of the times. Odd and
sometimes absolutely crackpot ideas have sprung up at each
millenium. A current one among fundamentalists and
evangelicals, despite certain anti-Semitism in the past, is
that Israel is the Biblical seat of God's power, and if the
Arab world attacks Israel, such would be a signal of the
Second Coming.
Most of the intellectual commentary at the time of the
release of Halsell's book concerned remarks by former
President Reagan. It is not known at this time if George W.
Bush agrees with some of the wilder of recorded Reagan
pronouncements on the subject of Armageddon and government
policy.
There's also that matter of oil, and the odd coincidence of
oil and evil seeming to reside in the same neighborhoods. Just
speculating, but perhaps the administration thinks there's
nothing wrong with hedging one's bets if the Rapture fails to
come off according to schedule, no matter how determinedly
some have sought to induce it.
Nevertheless, it's troublesome business for many Americans
when one begins to think government and religion might be just
a bit too cozy. While many in the country look askance at, for
instance, the ACLU's dogged determination to prevent prayer at
public-school events of all sorts, it's also true that the
spirit and intent of the 1st Amendment is to both provide for
the private expression of faith, and to keep that faith quite
far from unduly influencing national policy.
And yet, during the Reagan years, there was an eerie
confluence between Reagan's indifference to environmental
standards, regulatory process, skyrocketing national debt, his
occasionally taunting remarks in the direction of the former
Soviet Union, and the lust of the evangelicals for Armageddon
and the Rapture it is purported to bring. As Edward Johnson
mentions in "The Journal of Historical Review," Armageddon and
policy might be subtly entwined:
"At a 1971 dinner, Reagan told California legislator James
Mills that 'everything is in place for the battle of
Armageddon and the Second Coming of Christ.' The President has
permitted Jerry Falwell to attend National Security Council
briefings and author and Armageddon-advocate Hal Lindsey to
give a talk on nuclear war with Russia to top Pentagon
strategists.
"If Mills, Halsell and other observers of the presidency
are correct, Reagan's personal belief in the Dispensationalist
scenario explains the mystery of the seeming fatalism of so
many of his military, domestic and monetary policies.
According to Mills, Reagan's attitude can be summed up as,
'There's no reason to get wrought up about the national debt,
if God is soon going to foreclose on the whole world.'"
Activists and ordinary citizens have decried the Bush
administration's increasing retrenchment from open government,
its steady erosion of environmental policy, its utter
indifference to budgetary common sense in favor of gross
militarism and its calloused hints of nuclear war against Iraq
as it looks the other way while Israelis and Palestinians seek
to destroy each other.
In terms of effects of policy administration, there seems
to be little to distinguish Bush and Reagan from one another,
nor does there seem to be much difference in their closeness
to the Christian fundamentalist and evangelical movements,
except that Bush's overtness about his own conversion and his
Biblical language make him the more troublesome of the two for
citizens worried that church and state need some separation.
There are other explanations, of course - the right-wing's
abiding distaste of government interfering with the affairs of
the rich, corporate and individual, its belief in the
quasi-religious mandate to use the resources of the world to
enrich the Elect, and its almost automatic support for any
sort of militarism and military spending to support that
perceived mandate - but, it's worth musing on the possibility
that, moving like a subterranean river, there is the constant
tidal tug of fundamentalist determinism on today's United
States government and on George W. Bush. To the faithful, the
ones believing the Rapture awaits them, thinking first is last
on their list of priorities.
punpirate is a New Mexico writer, longing for more
democratic times.
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