Bush's "Born Again" Policies

In a complete capitulation to the very Clinton policies conservatives have often attacked, the White House finally did what it should have done weeks ago: dispatch its secretary of state to the Middle East and vow deeper U.S. involvement. Nothing, however, can make up for the bloodshed on both sides in recent weeks that might have been avoided had the U.S. been more engaged, both recently and since the Bush administration’s inception. The suicide bombings have been horrific, as has been the lack of condemnation from Arab leaders. Just as appalling has been the rampage by Israel (as well as its longtime refusal to pull out of the occupied settlements). But long before things came to such a boil, George W. Bush should have been doing what he promised shortly after Sept. 11: helping to establish a Palestinian state, showing the Arab world that he meant what he said when he implicitly promised as much in exchange for support of any kind in the war on terrorism.

Mary McGrory in The Washington Post got it right last week when she observed that Bush has been "putty in [Ariel Sharon’s] hand." I’d go one better: Bush is putty in the hands of anyone–the faith-based cultists, the military hawks, the anti-environmentalists, the tax-cutters, the corporate interests–who can frame an issue to him in the language of Christian evangelism, as a struggle of "good" over "evil." (And you better believe that’s how Sharon described the Arab-Israeli conflict to him back in 1998, when then-Gov. Bush visited Israel and Sharon was his personal escort.)

Some have attributed the White House’s difficulties in offering a coherent policy in recent weeks to the fear of contradicting "the Bush doctrine"–that is, routing out terrorists, and certainly not negotiating with them. But the more plausible explanation for why this administration tragically bungled the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for weeks is simply that the solutions require creative thinking, something contrary to the black-and-white absolutism of "born-again" evangelical Christianity. Some might think it’s a cheap shot, even intolerant, to bring up Bush’s faith in this regard–but it is Bush himself who has made his faith a public and political issue, exploiting it in speeches about the war on terrorism, referring to God and religion and attacking "evil."

With the lack of a complex and nuanced diplomatic approach on the part of the President above and beyond the simplistic "good" vs. "evil" strategy, Bush’s advisers spent weeks fighting amongst themselves, trying to steer him one way or another while the killing continued. Only with criticism from around the globe, angry reactions from inside and outside his party and pressure from an oil industry fearful of a destabilized Arab world did Bush finally act. And still, Bush’s actions seem reluctant and tentative, which may lead many in the region to believe he’s just offering more lip service.

Since day one of his presidency, Bush has only been passionate about issues when he has been able to view them through the prism of born-again Christianity. His faith, he has said, is what saved him from his own personal evil, alcoholism. He became an evangelical Christian, turning to Jesus to confront and conquer that evil.

Talk to people in the rank and file of the Christian right–as opposed to its more calculated and powermongering leaders–and you often find simple, frightened people who see the world around them as an unstable place prone to depravity and injustice; many are struggling with their own or larger societal demons, whether they be economic problems or more personal ones, such as sexual issues (for example, feeling homosexual urges that they have been taught to believe are wrong), alcoholism, drug addiction, or some other problem. For many of these individuals passion of any kind is a sign of weakness and can trigger fears of being out of control. The only thing they feel they have a license to be truly passionate about is their faith itself.

And that seems to describe Bush. Only when he can channel politics through his faith does he even remotely seem to have a passion for politics. Policy wonk Bill Clinton–love him or hate him–was passionate about politics, and even more so about the issues and the details. Not so for Bush, who shows more passion for the things that help him maintain self-control in his own life–exercising daily, sleeping right–than he does for, say, getting campaign finance reform (something he claimed to be adamantly against) squashed.

All of which is why Bush responded passionately to Sept. 11. His faith became the guiding force for his politics in taking on the daunting challenge presented, as he dubbed Osama bin Laden an "evildoer" who had attacked good people. For the initial stage of the war on terrorism this strategy served Bush spectacularly well. The public was fearful and gravitated toward the message. And a military response was black-and-white enough to fit that message: invade Afghanistan and get the evildoers, end of discussion.

But like all religious zealots on a mission, Bush began taking the "good" vs. "evil" shtick a bit too far, eventually identifying the "axis of evil" and threatening to nuke alleged evildoing countries from here to kingdom come. That was bound to come back to haunt him. And it has, in the form of Arab countries like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait–our supposed allies–actually pledging two weeks ago at the Arab League Summit that any attack on Iraq would be an attack on them. Arab leaders had already told Dick Cheney in his tour of their region that they wouldn’t back military action against Iraq and wanted the Israeli-Palestinian problem to become a U.S. priority. But now they were frighteningly making a pact with Iraq to protect it against any action by the U.S. as well. Surely they didn’t appreciate a threat from the U.S. to nuke any Arab peoples–even those living under the government of their unruly cousin Saddam Hussein–and perhaps they were letting Bush know that.

And now, applying the good vs. evil strategy to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, Bush has seen it blow up in his face entirely. Religious-right ideology contends that Israel rightfully should control all Palestinian lands, according to the Bible–conservative Republican Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma actually noted that on the floor of the Senate last month–and religious conservatives have supported Israel’s military actions. But backing Israel’s further push into Palestinian-controlled land not only wasn’t going to help in getting the Arab countries on board for an Iraqi adventure; there were growing concerns in the White House and in the oil industry that the widening tensions threatened to adversely affect the oil market. (Only a threat to his and his family’s livelihood, it appears, jars Bush from his religious fervor.) Not to mention the complicated, perhaps catastrophic, effects that the growing conflict would unleash over time in the region and around the world.

Bush is learning the hard way–and a lot of people are paying the price for it–that the world is more complicated than what they teach in evangelical Bible class. The world is actually more akin to how they explained it while Bush was at Yale, when he wasn’t paying attention, out boozing it up and getting bad grades. Unlike the Afghanistan actions, most future international crises will be as complicated as the Israeli-Palestinian one. And they will require a lot more complexity than "born again" foreign policy.