Faith-Based Stupidity, and Long Rant

It's all God's Fault, Not Dear Leaders

Let's face it, George W. Bush, has the worst of the messianic stupidity that has been the bane of humanity for several thousand years, in its Christian mystic form.

Whenever, fundies want to explain sin, the say "free will", but conveniently, whenever that "free will" results in the death of people, they chalk it up to "God's Will".

It really is quite a racket isn't it? God doesn't put the gun in the hand or the murderer to knock off somebody, but if Dear Leader at the stroke of a pen sends 1,100 plus Americans and more than ten thousand Iraqi's off this mortal coil, it is the will of the Almighty. All the massively bad stuff is on God.

To re-write Stalin, "the death of one person is a choice, the death of thousands is fate". Ironic how supposedly exclusive ideologies fit together so well when they are twisted is it not?

Case in point, this unbelievable example of total "w"incompetence in the overall panoply of clusterfuckery that is Iraq.

The Iraqi interim government has warned the United States and international nuclear inspectors that nearly 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives - used to demolish buildings, make missile warheads and detonate nuclear weapons - are missing from one of Iraq's most sensitive former military installations.

The huge facility, called Al Qaqaa, was supposed to be under American military control but is now a no man's land, still picked over by looters as recently as Sunday. United Nations weapons inspectors had monitored the explosives for many years, but White House and Pentagon officials acknowledge that the explosives vanished sometime after the American-led invasion last year.

The White House said President Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, was informed within the past month that the explosives were missing. It is unclear whether President Bush was informed. American officials have never publicly announced the disappearance, but beginning last week they answered questions about it posed by The New York Times and the CBS News program "60 Minutes."

...

The bomb that brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988 used less than a pound of the same type of material, and larger amounts were apparently used in the bombing of a housing complex in November 2003 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and the blasts in a Moscow apartment complex in September 1999 that killed nearly 300 people.

The explosives could also be used to trigger a nuclear weapon, which was why international nuclear inspectors had kept a watch on the material, and even sealed and locked some of it. The other components of an atom bomb - the design and the radioactive fuel - are more difficult to obtain.

"This is a high explosives risk, but not necessarily a proliferation risk," one senior Bush administration official said.

The International Atomic Energy Agency publicly warned about the danger of these explosives before the war, and after the invasion it specifically told United States officials about the need to keep the explosives secured, European diplomats said in interviews last week. Administration officials say they cannot explain why the explosives were not safeguarded, beyond the fact that the occupation force was overwhelmed by the amount of munitions they found throughout the country.

You know, invadin' a country is HARD, HARD work. But it's made a lot harder when you just believe that God is not going to allow casualties and you make no plans for the aftermath because you have the audacity to believe you are God's instrument.

I think it's pretty clear that not only does Bush view himself as God's messenger, he also seems to have this feeling that the Almighty is the charter member of the "League of Justice" with a really cool golden, body hugging spandex outfit, with a big ol' blue "G" on it and a flowing cape of silver.

Back in the Fall and Winter of 2002/2003 you can just see Dear Leader sitting there thinking that, if necessary, God would come down to Iraq and put his "Holy Forcefeild o' Justice -- Yahweh's No-way" upon all the danger spots. Further, you have to figure he got down on his knees to pray up the "divining rod of Antioch" to help David Kay ("the "K"-man") help find those nasty weapons of destruction that Saddam was hiding for Lex Luthor, Satan, and the rest of the Legion of Doom.

You think I'm joking?

Think about Bush for a minute, and his halting, foolish explanations when he is brought out of his cocoon filled with his fealty swearing toadies, bused from around the tri-state area. The explanation above is as logical as any other explanation, maybe it's a bit of a stretch, but not much.

It all gets down to the disturbing statement he made to the also disturbing Pat Robertson. Bush, with all the logic of a "faith-based" stooge insisted there'd be no casualties, that God would protect American Troops.

What utter bullshit.

Lincoln certainly came to believe that there was some sort of religious element in the effects of the civil war, but that wasn't what justified the war before hand, it became so later...It became so because it had cost so many, many lives. The tragic blood-letting of the "Civil War" had to mean something because of the sacrifice. But Lincoln did not think that God was protecting the North, he thought God was PUNISHING US for our sins, and that out of it came the reckoning for those sins. Read the Second Inaugural Address, and you will see the most religious speech ever given by an American President, from a man that was certainly no biblical fundamentalist.

But that attempt to find some guiding reason for a nation's punishment is not part of Bush's make up. No, in his messianic beliefs he thinks that American Soldiers, and Iraqis are mere instruments to the will of God, one that is acting through him. There is no lesson to be learned, he is the punishing angel of the Lord whose divine justice is seen as being wielded by him. He is not, like Lincoln, the surveyor of what has been wrought, he is the avenging tool of God's justice.

THAT, is fucking scary.

Because it is the same core belief that a murderous nut job possesses in the mountains of Pakistan.

Lincoln, would, in my opinion, also see a divine message in what has been wrought, rather than a divine mission to be the instrument. The message he would see is similar to the same message he gave in the Second Inaugural:

Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both...pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh."

Lincoln never thought he was God's instrument, God was inscrutable. But then again, Lincoln was a thoughtful man, a complex man, a man who felt responsibility for the men he sent to the slaughter. Every day of the Civil War was an ordeal for Lincoln, a psychological torture. But, of course, Lincoln was a man who was truly great, not a man who operated by having others proclaim his greatness.

But Dear Leader? He sleeps well at night, because he truly believes in what Robert E. Lee used to say as a salve, but never use as an excuse, "God's Will". Bush (and Osama too) thinks that he has done what Lincoln could not do (nor would never have had to hubris to believe he could do) know the very thoughts, intent, and desires of GOD.

America, George Bush accepts no blame, because he truly doesn't believe he need accept it. To him, the responsibility is all on God. When things work well, of course, he accepts the credit of being the "divine messenger"; when things are fucked up of course, it's simply God's will, how could the messenger be responsible?

So when a son or daughter dies; when an Iraqi child's brains are splatterd by the result of an alleged "smart bomb"; when some 21 year old kid loses his right-hand; and when these results are brought about as a direct result of weapons' caches being unprotected by mere mortals, it is all the will of God.

So take it up with the Big Guy, not with Dear Leader.

Think that is fucked up?

Me too.