Rhetoric in the Air; Reality on the Ground

[reprehensor]

Rhetoric in the Air; Reality on the Ground

By Rev. WILLIAM E. ALBERTS

President Bush inaugurated his second term with these words: "By our efforts, we have lit a fire . . . and one day this untamed fire of freedom will reach the darkest corners of our world." (Transcript of President Bush's Inaugural Address, The New York Times, Jan. 21, 2005). Bush's "fire of freedom" could not even reach the brightest corners of Washington, D.C., never mind "the darkest corners our world."

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Like the Inauguration in Washington, D.C., security was the order of the day for the election in Iraq. The military power of 150,000 American soldiers was on the ground and Apache choppers in the air, with about 15,000 more US troops deployed during the run-up to the election. If a fraction of such security had been provided in Florida to insure fairness during the 2000 presidential election, thousands of voters, especially Black Americans, would not have been disenfranchised. George Bush would not have been installed president by a Republican-favored U.S. Supreme Court. And there would not have been a manufactured need for a pre-emptive war against Iraq.

It did not matter that armed Iraqi resistance to the American occupation and its arranged election prevented many voters from knowing the names of the candidates and their policies before entering the voting booth. Nor did it matter that the Sunni Arabs, over 30% of the population, planned to boycott the election. What evidently mattered was getting large numbers of the Shias majority to the election booth-and of having television and other cameras film and photograph their long lines and voting for American consumption.

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"In the name of Exxon" or "Halliburton" obviously would not summon working class mothers and fathers to offer up their sons and daughters for global corporate domination and profit. Nor would they readily sacrifice precious loved ones "in the name of Christ" as "god's gift to the world." "Freedom," a revered, universal value, and fear provide the necessary patriotic and providential appeal to seduce Christian people especially into killing rather than loving their neighbor as themselves as Jesus commanded.

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