COMMENTARY:

Pow-wow With God

We’ve been hearing about President George W. Bush's close encounters with God for years now. We have all heard about how God talks to the President, giving him instructions on how to conduct foreign policy (particularly, which countries to invade). Quite evidently, he did a good job following orders, because he got re-elected to a second term.

President Bush has never disputed the story, recounted in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, that he told the Palestinian leadership, "God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam." Then we have a similar account, courtesy of The Globe and Mail, of the President telling the Canadian Prime Minister he was carrying out divine commands.

As recently as Wednesday the 21st of September, while speaking at a luncheon for the Republican Jewish Coalition’s 20th anniversary, Mr. Bush said he had been "thinking a lot" and came to the conclusion that "they [the terrorists] are the kind of people who look at Katrina and wish they had caused it." As there is no way of knowing what other people have in their minds, it can be safely assumed that it is once again God talking to President Bush.

This Scribe has a few concerns about these God-Bush Summit meetings.

Firstly, God does not tell Bush the whole thing, only part thereof.

In the case of the Katrina disaster, for example, God did not tell him that countries like Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Jordan and Yemen—‘terrorist breeding grounds’ all—have offered hundreds of millions of dollars in aid, along with a whole range of other humanitarian assistance, with the full blessings of their peoples. God also did not tell him that Iran, his next target in the ‘axis of evil’, has offered to send an extra 20 million barrels of oil on the side. However, the US State Department, which relies more on diplomatic correspondence, was well aware of these facts.

God also did not inform the President that while he was bogged down in Iraq, God would hit America with terrible hurricanes one after another, and the resultant damage and cost of rebuilding the Gulf Coast would make impossible demands on the non-existent dinero in his treasury. Further, when God sent Hurricane Katrina, he did not tell the President that it was not okay to play guitar and eat cake while people were drowning. He also did not tell him not to hire heck-of-a-job-Brownie two years earlier.

Secondly—and this is more ironic—the President claims that all peoples worship the same God. He told the visiting leader of Turkey that they both believe in "the Almighty." Answering a British reporter’s question about the God of Islam being the same as the God of Christianity, President Bush replied: "I believe we worship the same God." Then, in an October 26, 2004, "Good Morning America" interview with Charles Gibson, he was asked: "Do we all worship the same God, Christian and Muslim?" His reply: "I think we do."

If true, this means two things. One, President Bush, the Taliban and Bin Laden all pray to the same God. Two, all the killing and dying is done in His name. The only difference is that George Bush strikes and they retaliate. He invades their countries in God’s name, they resist in God’s name. He kills in God’s name, they die in God’s name. George Bush eliminates a few ‘terrorists’ in God’s name, scores come forward to take their place in God’s name. There are more ‘terrorists’ now fighting America in God’s name than there ever were before.

If his God is different, then his God is unique. His God orders him to kill other Gods' children. Especially if those children are of a different color and are found in the vicinity of a liquid called oil. That, to say the least, is being very vengeful.

Next, President Bush’s God does not forbid him from lying. That is very disturbing, because one hears Gods do not take kindly to liars. Take, for example, the case of the Iraq war. God told him to make war on Iraq but forgot to tell him not to tell humongous lies in the process. Had He informed the President that lies don’t travel far for the simple fact that they don't have legs, or had He shown the President the full future, Bush would have been saved a number of huge embarrassments: his own September 11 Commission officially acknowledging that Iraq was not involved in the terrorist attacks on America; the US Military giving up the search for the non-existent WMDs; and having to shift shamefully to ‘freedom’ as the current war cry.

He also did not tell the President that the Iraq war was going to kill hundreds of thousands of God's other children, including thousands of newborns. God also did not tell the President that his use of depleted uranium in Iraq would cause the birth of hideously deformed babies—babies that were otherwise supposed to be the same God's most beautiful creations.

God did no tell him that Iraq war would become unwinnable not only because the sandal-clad Iraqis would give his troops a sound beating but also because there would be no more moolah in the state exchequer to sustain the billion-dollar-a-week war.

The strangest aspect of George’s communion with God remains the fact that he is always told to bring ‘freedom’ to those of God’s people who are in close proximity to oil. God does not tell him to strike the North Koreans, for example, whose rulers are not only Godless, but have repeatedly declared their intention to build WMDs and whose malnourished people are in most urgent need of freedom.

No oil? President Bush’s God is not interested. Very ungodly, one must say. Unless, in the Presidential dictionary, God is actually a code name for Halliburton, the Carlyle group, Enron and Bechtel. Then all the mysterious omissions and strange consequences of these Presidential pow-wows with God become instantly clear.

But seriously, the President does say he talks to God on a regular basis, prays frequently and trusts the guidance that God gives him. This, apparently, would make him God's choice. So if President Bush really does talk with God, and he really believes that he is on God's mission, then we are witnessing history being made by the almighty interpreter of Almighty God.

All this killing, all this bloodshed, all this rape, loot and plunder must be what God wants. God also, it appears, does not like the Iraqi people. First He sent Saddam to kill them in the thousands. Not satisfied, He next sent in George Bush to kill them in the hundreds of thousands. Is this why they say “Strange are God’s ways”?

By all accounts, a whopping 40% of Americans still believe this cock and bull story about Bush’s godly pow-wows. Are these Americans really so gullible? Do they not know that human history is replete with unhinged dictators with a God complex, conceited leaders with a talent for exploitation, self-righteous and egotistical political elites and bigoted religious leaders who would go to any length to perpetuate their rule?

Do they need to be informed of the supporting cast of bloodsuckers, moneygrubbers and human lowlifes, with their gaudy show of sadism, trickery and revolting absurdity? Given a few moments on the center stage of the world, these charlatans are capable of destroying the lives of millions. Do they need reminders that when the curtain finally comes down on these hideous acts, the stage is invariably full of blood and gore and that the dead of this show never rise again? Do they want to give these creatures more time?

Manuel Noriega, the former Panamanian dictator and American stooge, declined an interview on the grounds that, as he put it in a letter to the interviewer, he was by no means yet in the category of forgotten dictators. “God,” he explained, “has not yet written the last word on Manuel A. Noriega!”

Even the devil, it seems, can quote scriptures.