Crusader Codpiece

by digby

President Bush said yesterday that he senses a “Third Awakening” of religious devotion in the United States that has coincided with the nation’s struggle with international terrorists, a war that he depicted as “a confrontation between good and evil.”

Bush told a group of conservative journalists that he notices more open expressions of faith among people he meets during his travels, and he suggested that might signal a broader revival similar to other religious movements in history. Bush noted that some of Abraham Lincoln’s strongest supporters were religious people “who saw life in terms of good and evil” and who believed that slavery was evil. Many of his own supporters, he said, see the current conflict in similar terms.

“A lot of people in America see this as a confrontation between good and evil, including me,” Bush said during a 1 1/2 -hour Oval Office conversation on cultural changes and a battle with terrorists that he sees lasting decades. “There was a stark change between the culture of the ’50s and the ’60s — boom — and I think there’s change happening here,” he added. “It seems to me that there’s a Third Awakening.”

I love this. He and his administation want to try people for treason for leaking to the papers about his illegal spying on US citizens and then he blurts out some babble that validates every stupid thing bin Laden preaches to his deluded followers. He might as well just call it a Christian Crusade and get it over with. He just framed his War On Terror in religious terms, which is very, very dumb.

Perhaps everyone has forgotten, what with all the idiotic hyperbole about “The Ideological Struggle of the 21st century” but al Qaeda framed this jihad from the very beginning as being a religous war against the “Jews and Crusaders.” I don’t know about you, but I don’t think it’s very smart for the president of the United States to keep helping him make that case. It’s the basis for bin Laden’s demagogic appeal.

Meanwhile, Bush goes on and on about how we can’t leave Iraq because bin Laden will think we’re chicken and … I don’t know … be “emboldened.” This is based upon bin Laden trash talk, which really seems to make these wingnuts so mad they just lose their wits:

“We are sending signals today that no matter how much you provoke us, no matter how viciously you describe things in public, no matter how many things you’re doing with missiles and nuclear weapons, the most you’ll get out of us is talk,” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said.

Viciously describing things in public will not stand! For a superpower, we sure are easily provoked by religious fanatics calling us chicken if we leave Iraq or fail to respond militarily to some Iranian nutcases ramblings.

Meanwhile the president of the United States is holding court with a bunch of his sycophants characterizing the U.S. as being in the midst of a Christian crusade. Oy.

Why is it they do absolutely everything bass-askwards? It’s a bad idea to base US policy on trash talk. We should not be making national security decisions on whether bin Laden will “think” we are weak. We are the United States of America and we are too big and powerful to be playing games like this.

On the other hand, it makes no sense to provide bin Laden and his ilk with ready made recruiting tools and propaganda for no good reason either. It is irresponsible for Bush to be characterizing this “war” in religious terms when it isn’t true, it’s purely for his own political purposes and it gives the terrorists ammunition.

The administration and its allies succumb to bin Laden’s taunts when it comes to important matters of policy and then turn around and overtly help bin Laden recruit terrorists with ridiculous rhetoric about Great Awakenings and the war on terror. (Meanwhile, he’s got his inane undersecretary of state for public diplomacy running around the mid-east talking about her experiences being a suburban soccer mom.)

If you didn’t know better, you’d think that Osama bin Laden had George W. Bush wrapped around his little finger.

*** Following up on tristero’s posts below about Bush’s potential use of tactical nuclear weapons — a fear that I share, since, for all the reasons tristero outlines, it’s hard to see how the GOP’s fear mongering can lead to anything else — I recall a post I wrote some months back on the subject of taboo’s. It ended with this quote from Gene Lyons:

Once again Bush has denied hostile intent, just as he did for many months after secretly ordering the Pentagon to draft detailed war plans against Iraq. Writing in The New Yorker, Seymour Hersh suggests that all systems are go at the White House, including possible use of tactical nuclear weapons. He hints that the neo-conservative ideologues around Dick Cheney have deluded themselves that bombing Iran would lead to internal rebellion and the overthrow of the nation’s Islamic regime.

Yeah, sure it would. Ever noticed how much the neo-cons’ ignorance of basic human psychology rivals only Osama bin Laden’s ?

yep.

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