The dangers of religious fervor in politicsROBYN E. BLUMNER, St. Petersburg Times, 3/26/06In a rare public outing in which he took spontaneous questions, President Bush was asked last week in Ohio whether he had a biblical view of the war in Iraq and saw it as an apocalyptic struggle for the Middle East. "The answer is, I haven't really thought of it that way," Bush responded. "First I've heard of that, by the way. I guess I'm more of a practical fellow."
This is a little hard to believe from our born-again president, who initially used the word "crusade" to define America's fight against Islamic terrorists and who justified going to war in Iraq with nomenclature straight out of the Left Behind series by preacher Tim LaHaye.
Former Republican strategist Kevin Phillips writes in his new book American Theocracy that Bush's call to remove Saddam Hussein included "jeering at the United Nations," proclaiming the evil of Saddam and pretending that democracy, not oil, was the motive. According to Phillips, that script followed nearly precisely what LaHaye had written in his Left Behind books (in which an evil Antichrist rose to power within the United Nations and was headquartered in New Babylon, Iraq).
Not to say that we are at war in Iraq solely or even primarily because the president thinks it will hasten the end times. Just that it did not escape the administration's notice that certain ideas resonate with Left Behind's 60-million readers, of which an estimated 15- to 20-million are American voters.
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