This is a good editorial about the Bush family and religion.
Is the Pope Aiding and Abetting Terrorism?
A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL
Is the Pope Aiding and Abetting Terrorism?
According to the Bush Cartel, the answer is "yes."
John Ashcroft, Dick Cheney and Ari Fleischer have warned us: challenge the Bush administration's strategy in its war on terror and you are aiding the terrorists.
So, in the Orwellian Bush Cartel world, God's emissary on earth for Catholics -- and the world's most high profile religious leader -- is a dangerous man. What's the "heresy" the Pope is committing according to the Bush Cartel?
Well, the Pope is aiding and abetting terrorism because he wants a peaceful solution to the Iraq crisis. To the Bush Cartel, if you don't subscribe to the peculiarly perverse theory that war IS peace, then you are facilitating terrorism. Will the Pope be detained for questioning by Italian police? Stay tuned.
But the Pope's advocacy against an Iraq attack as violating the dictates of God's and Jesus' message of peace presents a more profound challenge to Bush. Just as the Bush cartel seized control of our democracy through a 5-4 Supreme Court decision -- despite another man winning the popular vote by more than a half a million votes -- Bush has seized the mantle of God. In has daily oozing of religiosity, Bush has claimed, in the most fundamental sense, that God is on his side, the side of the avenging, wrathful Crusader, the side of unending conflict, the side of the war with Iraq.
The problem for Bush is that just as he didn't ascend to the presidency by a democratic vote, he has no claim to be the vessel of God's will, except by his own declaration to that effect. Like all things Bush, the Bush family has an alarming capacity for wrapping their arrogance in a cloak of officious Godliness and feigned humility.
Poppy Bush is an expert at posturing himself as a humble servant of the Lord, a man of utmost integrity, even while he aired Willie Horton commercials, playing footsie with drug dealing dictators, and was neck deep in Iran Contra. This "nothing ever stains a Bush" sense of purity comes from their New England WASP background, where entitlement came with birth, allowing the Bushes to pal around with shady business figures and wallow in dirty politics, but claim to be insulted when anyone challenges their integrity or religious "choseness."
So it comes as no surprise that Poppy Bush would have no compunction about telling off the Bishop of the Episcopalian Church in America, Frank Griswold, implying that the Bishop is the one who is out of step with God, not the Bushes. Remember that the Episcopalian Church is Poppy and Barb's denomination. The Bishop is their religious leader. But no one is closer to God than the Bushes. They are, after all, as far as they see it, a dynasty installed in power by the will of God. In fact, George the Junior is apparently always going around telling White House staff that it was God's will that he became president (which is probably an understandable perception on his part, since he lost the election).
But back to Poppy and his one-on-one with Bishop Frank Griswold, spiritual leader of the Episcopal Church in the United States. Here is a little background into Poppy Bush taking on the Bishop, as covered in a Chicago Sun-Times article (See: suntimes.com
Among the growing number of religious voices opposing military action in Iraq, Griswold's has been one of the loudest.
Earlier this year, Griswold, who was Episcopal bishop of Chicago from 1987 to 1997 before being named presiding bishop of the United States in 1998, said, "We are loathed, and I think the world has every right to loathe us because they see us as greedy, self-interested and almost totally unconcerned about poverty, disease and suffering."
In a speech Jan. 31 in Stamford, Conn., former President George H.W. Bush, who is an Episcopalian, called Griswold's comments "highly offensive."
" We are the most generous, fairest nation in the world," Bush said. "How can this man of God think so little of the United States?. . . . Unlike the bishop, I never feel the need to apologize for this great country."
Griswold is unfazed by the elder Bush's complaints.
"Listening to Anglican voices in the Middle East, it's very clear to me that they sense it will be a complete destabilization of the entire Middle East. And what may be perceived here as a focused attack on one particular country is going to erupt into something involving the whole region, if not the whole world," the bishop said. "This is the climate in which we are living, and my own sense is we always fool ourselves that we think we're invulnerable."
"The focus on terrorism and fear and anxiety and heightened alerts make the populace more and more anxious and means we turn more and more inward and disconnect ourselves from the larger world," he said. "Our nation historically has been generous and so open to the rest of the world, and now it's all turned in on itself."
The bishop urged American leaders to reach out with compassion to alleviate suffering instead of using military might to stem the tide of anti-American sentiment abroad.
"If we are a nation under God ... then we have to adopt God's perspectives, which means a superpower must be a super servant. I think this is what we don't see clearly," Griswold said....
Religious leaders and people of faith need to be publicly and forcefully critical of America's foreign policy, particularly when the future of the world seems so precarious, he said.
"The voices that are being raised up now are equivalent to the prophets of old saying, 'Wait a minute; what is justice here rather than retribution and revenge?' How are we being called to be a people of mercy, a people of compassion, a people who see the world as God's world and that everyone in it is loved by God?" he said. "I think the church is called to be subversive, and I'm grateful when I see subversion in public values in favor of the values of the Gospel."
Poppy Bush also took offense at any slight of Junior by a man of God: "How can this man of God think so little of a nation that provides 60 percent of the world food aid does far more for AIDS than any other country?" Poppy Bush asked. "I found these particular quotes to be offensive. And knowing the president [Bush the Junior] as I do, I found them uncalled for."
And Junior, who officially changed from the Episcopalian Church to the Methodist Church when he married Laura (although he is really a Baptist fundamentalist at heart -- or for political purposes, whichever), doesn't fare any better in his own denomination, which believes the Iraq attack will not be a "just war."
"Listen to the voice of hundreds of thousands of Americans and citizens of other countries who demonstrate for peace and ask your utmost restraint," Bishop Sharon Brown, president of the House of Bishops of the United Methodist Church -- to which both President Bush and Vice President Cheney belong -- recently appealed to Bush. Methodist Bishop Melvin Talbert appeared in a television commercial sponsored by the National Council of Churches asserting that an attack on Iraq "violates God's law."
But Bush the Junior isn't listening. He believes that, as a "chosen one" of blue blood lineage, he is hot wired into the Lord. He doesn't need any uppity Bishop to tell him what is on God's mind. God is talking directly to Junior. End of conversation.
In fact, with the exception of the Southern Baptists and Evangelicals, almost every major denomination in the United States opposes the war in Iraq or has key clergy members who oppose the war. In fact a newspaper report the other day noted, "The National Council of Churches, which includes Presbyterian Church USA, the Episcopal Church, the United Methodist Church, the National Baptist Convention and more than 30 other Protestant, Orthodox and Anglican communions, has co-sponsored television ads against war with Iraq, saying it violates God's law...The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which isn't convinced war with Iraq would meet the 'just war' tests, endorsed a statement in November saying the bishops 'find it difficult to justify the resort to war against Iraq, lacking clear and adequate evidence of an imminent attack of a grave nature."
In short, the Bushes -- Poppy and Junior -- believe that they are closer to God than the leaders of the churches that they pray in. The Bushes believe that they can divine God's intentions better than the men of God who are the religious leaders of their denominations can.
That's not being Godly; that's being arrogant beyond comprehension.
So the next time you hear George talking about God being behind his little war, just remember that Bush hijacked the government -- and now he's hijacking God.
A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL
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BuzzFlash Note: In England, Tony Blair is also facing strong opposition from the church, although he doesn't generally claim to be doing the bidding of God. However, Blair has, like Bush, repeatedly tried to make the case for the untenable position that this neo-colonial adventurism is a "just war." (See: 212.2.162.45
"Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and Catholic Archbishop of Westminster Cormac Murphy-O'Connor today issued a joint statement expressing doubts about the 'moral legitimacy' of a war on Iraq and calling for a continuation of weapons inspections.
The churchmen's intervention came as a setback to Tony Blair, who responded to last week's million-strong march in London by vigorously asserting the 'moral case for removing Saddam.'"
BuzzFlash guesses that the God who Poppy and Junior Bush call for support is the same God that Tony calls. We're just not sure what God that is.
A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL |
