Nobodaddy Wants to See Some Bombings

There appears to be a great deal of irrelevant debate over whether Bush believes God personally told him to invade Iraq and Afghanistan. The White House says that the claims made in an upcoming BBC documentary that Bush told the then Palestinian foreign minister, Nabil Shaath, that God told him to end the tyranny in Iraq are absurd. Although the White House has been quick to deny that the reborn George ever made the statements, they haven't answered the question of whether Bush believes its true.

As frightening as the notion that Bush thinks he speaks directly to the almighty may be, I have to question whether this is really a revelation. Bush certainly has made his devotion to Christ well-known and has claimed before that his actions are based primarily on his faith. Certainly no one questions whether Bush is an ostensibly religious man, although his motives to be so are certainly debatable. I absolutely love dilemmas such as this though, because it puts moderate Christians in a very awkward position. They are forced to pretend that Bush is speaking metaphorically when he truly isn't and, in fact, often can't due to an inability to grasp the concept and because metaphors make his brain hurt.

However, is it really any more insane to believe that God would ask our current slow-witted President to invade some country than to think he debated Abraham the pros and cons of infanticide or sent an Israeli snake-oil salesman (which may or may not have been himself or his son or both - that eternally unsatisfactory Athanasian solution) to wander around Judea and Samaria with his desertbilly entourage or that he actually gives a shit whether you use his name in vain and yet neglected to explain when and what that entailed? If God was communicating through the heavens to us lowly mortals, as true Christians must certainly believe he at least a few times did, why wouldn't he talk to George W. Bush? In fact, to the world's everlasting shame and Jesus' cringing embarrassment, Bush is probably the number one pseudo-Christian in the world that God would speak to if he were so inclined to tortuous conversations, if only because Bush is currently the most powerful man on earth and what not.

In addition, it would be strangely naive to assume God, at least the version to be found in the old testament, would not counsel our mad George in support of imperialistic wars of aggression. He has always had a fondness for them in the past, as they continually help to line the pews of his congregations and of coarse make begrudging converts of anyone unfortunate enough to find themselves inside a foxhole - at least if the cliches of so many armchair warriors are to be taken as true.

But let us assume that the big G did not tell Bush to invade anyone. So what? Someone obviously did, lest it was simply an unfortunate coincidence that virtually every known neoconservative championing the Iraq invasion over the last decade somehow found foreign policy positions in this Administration. If I had to guess, I would say that someone just led Bush into an empty room in the west wing with a trail of Cocoa-puffs and that old prankster Richard Pearle, hiding in the closet, did his best "God-voice" through the White House PA system and was all like "Dubya, why don't you invade, that means attack, Iraq in March, it's the country that's just like Iran, but with more oil...ah, just ask Dick to show it to you on a map. Anyways, you should invade them in the name of peace and justice because contradiction is good politics, Saddam tried to kill your Dad and because I want you to….ooohh....ahhhh. Oh, and do this and I will forget all about that dead hooker incident." George: "you know about that?" God (winking): "Know about what George?" Bush: "Uh, that thing you just mentioned about the hooker.." God: "Yeah, no, I know, I was showing you how I forgot about...oh never mind."

Plus, even if George can hide behind the asininity of a divine mandate, what's Congress' excuse? Did the Senate and House hold a conference call with God before they all voted in favor of the Iraq war resolution? I don't particularly care who the giant asshole, metaphysical or not, telling the idiots in Washington how to most swiftly ruin the world, I just want them to stop listening. The problem is God is a notoriously unpredictable bastard and he absolutely loves fucking with people. You have to treat him like so many war-praising, jingoistic, thoughtless media pundits who love so dearly to hear their own voices in the service of faux-patriotism, you just have to tune him out.

"Then old Nobodaddy aloft
Farted and belched and coughed,
And said, "I love hanging and drawing and quartering
Every bit as well as war and slaughtering."
[William Blake]