Idolatry

Tom Engelhardt writes about the idolatry of the Cheney-Bush administration in Bush's Faith and the Middle East Aflame TomDispatch.com 07/16/06:

In fact, they believed themselves uniquely in possession of an ability to project force in ways no other power on the planet or in history ever could. While hardly elevating the actual military leadership of the country (whom they were eager to sideline), they raised the all-volunteer American military itself onto a pedestal and worshipped it as the highest tech, most shock-and-awesome institution around. They were dazzled by the fact that it was armed with the smartest, most planet-spanning, most destructive set of weapons imaginable, and backed by an unparalleled military-industrial complex as well as a "defense" budget that would knock anyone's socks off (and their communications systems down). It was enough to dazzle the administration's top officials with dreams of global domination; to fill them with a vision of a planet-wide Pax Americana; to send them off to the moon (which, by the way, was certainly militarizable).

Force, then, was their idol and they bowed down before it. When it came to the loosing of that force (and the forces at their command), they were nothing short of fervent utopians and blind believers. They were convinced that with such force (and forces), they could reshape the world in just about any way they wanted to fit their visionary desires.

And then, of course, came 9/11, the "Pearl Harbor" of this century. Suddenly, they had a divine wind at their back, a terrified populace before them ready to be led, and everything they believed in seemed just so… well, possible. It was, in faith-based terms, a godsend. Not surprisingly, they promptly began to prepare to act in the stead of an imperially angry god and to bring the world -- particularly its energy heartlands - to heel.

Reading this reminded me very much of Steve Earle's song, "Ashes to Ashes":

So the sea gave birth and it crawled up on the dirt
And stood up and took a look around
Said "I'm the next big thing, the gift that I bring
Comes directly from God so ain't no holdin' me down

So he crowned himself king, now no one remembershis name
But the seed that he sowed took the shore road
Now there's blood on their hands and a plague on the land
They drew a line in the sand and made the last stand

Said, "God made us in his image, and it's in God that we trust"
When asked about the men who had died by their hands
They said "Ashes to ashes and dust to dust"

But the idol the Bush-Cheney crowd worships looks much more like Ares the war god than Yahweh or Jesus.