Conflict of Interest

Adam Trueblood Commentary	Index
Conflict of Interest As the United States moves away from its tradition of being a secular state, it seems reasonable to assess the true religious views of our president and analyze the potential implications for our national security. Regardless of one’s party affiliation or personal feeling about George Bush, one would have to extend recognition (though perhaps grudging) of his efforts to protect the country if he were acting based on real facts, valid intelligence assessments, and the wise counsel of those experienced in international affairs. How then, can we judge a man who is operating, by his own admission, out of his religious faith? Our president is a professed evangelical with a fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible as a literal document, and his actions in Iraq when viewed in the context of the evangelical’s belief in the Second Coming of Christ raise the unsettling question of whether the man with his finger on the button perhaps has a conflict of interest. Though Bush is certainly a political animal, if we can accept that his intimations of religious belief are genuine, the picture emerges of a president who sees himself as an instrument of God working to carry out the divine will in foreign policy. Iraq is the Babylon of old, land of sinners and pagans, and the reenactment of Biblical struggles in the holy land has surely been a lure to the president’s deployment of the world’s strongest military in the region. Based on his own comments and those of advisors who have conversed with him, the image of a man luxuriating in a messianic complex emerges. Bush’s public statements, particularly in the wake of 9-11, have been laced with references to evil and “evil ones”, and the president went so far as to momentarily describe the fight against terrorism as a crusade. His speechwriter, Mark Gerson, is a theologian who infuses Bush’s speeches with Biblical references and homey phrases that evoke the feel of evangelical sermons. Bush has referred to the nation’s security in the context of “God’s protection… a spiritual shield that protects the country” and described the nation’s duty “to rid the world of evil”. Bob Woodward, in his book Bush at War, described the president as seeing his role in the “grand vision of God’s master plan.” The troubling element of Bush’s faith is its overtly aggressive nature, for rather than express his religion in rhetorical turns of phrase or community activism, he has taken on an explicit mandate to alter the world based on his own interpretation of the teachings of scripture. Even members of Bush’s Methodist faith have expressed concern, including the United Methodists’ top official, Melvin Talbert, who has stated that “it’s clear to us that he is not following the teachings of his own church or the teachings of churches that believe in a ‘just war’ theory.” Whether it’s described as the End of Days, The Second Coming, Armageddon, or The Apocalpse, the end of the world is viewed by fundamentalists with longing as the opportunity to experience god, and perhaps as a way to demonstrate their own faith’s pre-eminence over all others. The man leading our country has now sent our armies to the holy land to battle the infidel Muslims, and given the president’s belief in fundamentalist evangelism, one has to wonder if there is a conflict of interest for the faithful finger resting on the button. Sept., 2004