Iraq War: Fundamentalists and Iraq

I'm referring to Christian fundamentalists, in this case.  Via Cursor.com, I came across this piece by Mark Taibbi at Alternet.com:  Babylon a Go-Go 10/13/04.

It has some interesting apocalyptic kitsch emerging from the fundamentalists trying to fit the Iraq War into their theories of the apocalyptic End Times.  SEE a soldier being baptized in a munitions crate!  SEE Saddam as leader of the new Babylon!

Taibbi's article is not, I should emphasize, a reverent look at the topic, as this excerpt suggests:

There are some general themes, of course. In general, the Christian right strongly supports the war, and is deeply concerned with Saddam Hussein's persecution of Christians. It has suddenly become very worried about human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. It Supports The Troops, who are vaguely supposed to be doing God's work. And of course the fundamentalists are in a hurry to send Bibles by the hundreds of thousands, so that they can be read as soon as the electricity comes on. But with regard to the question of what the war is all about, where it's leading us, and why, the picture is much more confused.

There is absolutely nothing in the world funnier than a fundamentalist Christian in a state of high spiritual agitation, happily injected into the middle of a grotesque secular disaster. Hand him a pen, camera or guitar in these situations, and he is likely to outshine even the pre-rehab Sam Kinison for pure comic power. He becomes a resource the country should really treasure.

David Neiwert at his Orcinus blog has been rolling out a five-part series on "The Rise of Pseudo-Fascism."  For political-science-nerd reasons I won't go into right now, I wish he had used a term like "authoritarianism" instead of "fascism."  But it's a good series, and worth checking out.  His fourth installment, on The Apocalyptic One-Party State (10/10/04), includes this observation:

The apocalyptic foundations of the Bush "war on terror" have been undergirded throughout by a closely related feature of Bush's carefully constructed image: namely, his fundamentalist religiosity. In the face of a distinct lack of actual charisma, this image has served as a way for Bush to inspire extreme devotion to his every pronouncement and policy among movement followers. After all, he is being divinely guided in his every step, according to the mythology in which the movement has shrouded him. ...

What's important to understand is what the nature of these appeals -- and their self-evident success -- tells us simultaneously about the nature of the audience. Because the very nature of fundamentalist apocalypticism is profoundly dualist -- entirely contingent on a black-and-white Manichean worldview -- it is clear that the majority of at least the religious followers of the conservative movement are what is known as "totalists". (my emphasis)