If you haven’t read it yet, get thee to The Nation to read this artice by Max Blumenthal about how much power to shape foreign policy the Christian Zionists have. Religious wingnuts, under the leadership of a San Antonio minister who’s close to Tom DeLay and pulls himself quite a bit of cash in the business of feeding right wing politics and fairy tales to the sheep, have formed a political organization called Christians United for Israel. CUFI has had multiple meetings with the White House to offer foreign policy advice. From the article, it appears that on top of the usual motivations behind Christian Zionism—hatred for Muslims, a desire to bring the end of the world, political opportunism and a chance for ministers to make their congregations feel like they are a part of something dramatic and important so their pocketbooks fall open—is seems to bug John Hagee, the founder of CUFI, that he most powerful lobby is D.C. is a Jewish organization, not a Christian one.
Hagee recently united America’s largest Christian Zionist congregations and some of the movement’s most prominent figures–including the Rev. Jerry Falwell, Gary Bauer and Rod Parsley, an Ohio preacher instrumental in launching Republican Ken Blackwell’s gubernatorial campaign–under the banner of CUFI, creating the first and only nationwide evangelical political organization dedicated to supporting Israel. Hagee says he would like to see CUFI become “the Christian version of AIPAC,” referring to the vaunted pro-Israel group rated second only to the National Rifle Association as the most effective lobby in Washington.
Hagee is also pushing for a nuclear showdown with Iran. He’s got a solid taste for drama and violence, which is typical of the leadership of the fundie right. And of course, though it causes all sorts of defensive squawking on the right when I point out the obvious, Christian Zionism is genocidal at its core. Lobbing nuclear weapons at an unarmed Iran is basically a mass execution of thousands, possibly millions, of innocent people for the crime of being Iranian. Thought I doubt very seriously that the Republicans are actually listening to his more extreme suggestions, the fact of the matter is that we have a foreign policy advisor running around the country suggesting that we decimate Iran. If we don’t want Iran developing nuclear weapons, we would be well advised not to make them think they have no choice because American leadership wants to kill them all.
The article also covers the involvement of David Brog, a Jewish Republican lawyer who used to be Arlen Specter’s chief of staff and who can put the smiley face on the front of an organization that most of us rightly suspect is, despite its Zionism, anti-Semitic at its core. The truth of the matter is I do understand why it’s tempting for people who lean to the right on the issue of Israel to make political alliances with fundie Christians, even though they know that said Christians have less than pure hearted intentions on this, since their main goal is ushering in Armageddon.
Brog might be well-intentioned, but his willingness to gloss over the fact that Christian Zionist view Israel as both a way to bludgeon Muslims in the Middle East and as sacrificial lamb in their road to Rapture is troubling, to say the least.
Brog dismisses concerns about the Christian Zionists’ fixation on end times as a “misreading of Christian theology. “One sign of the Second Coming is that there will be widespread moral decay in society,” Brog told me. “If Christians really thought they could speed the Second Coming, then why aren’t Christians out there opening brothels and selling drugs? Quite to the contrary and quite to the chagrin of many liberals, they are doing the opposite.”
This is a disingenous statement, and unless he’s completely brain dead, he knows it. You don’t get Raptured if you’re a sinner in their mythology and if there’s one thing your average fundie is counting on, it’s avoiding the big war that they want other people to fight. They want to hurry it along, but they aren’t going to take the chance of not getting sucked into heaven beforehand. It’s probably really tempting for a lot of people who lean right on the topic of Israel to welcome the Christian Zionist support. I’m sure they seem harmless, that while they’re undoubtably anti-Semitic (with their belief that all Jews are hellbound), their plan for Israel to be the battleground for the end of the world isn’t actually going to happen, so it probably seems fine to indulge their fantasies in exchange for political support.
However, it’s not harmless. The truth of the matter is that this disdain and disregard for actual Israelis infects the Christian Zionist worldview and makes them very eager to sacrifice Israeli lives to fulfill their two missions of ushering in Armageddon and killing off Muslims. They view Israelis as “free” lives (non-American) they can “spend” to get these goals so Americans don’t have to get our hands dirtier than necessary. In every way, their myth of the coming Armageddon is shaped so that believers can be stoked by the drama of it without ever experiencing genuine fear that they themselves might die violently. They believe that they’ll miss the final battle because of the Rapture. Hagee advocates nuking Iran because he’s not interested in warfare that has a cost to Americans that could reduce its popularity. And that extends to Israel.
And that’s why it’s best for people on both the left and the right to condemn Christian Zionists and withhold our support from any politician who listens to them. Christian Zionists do not care how many Jews die from warfare in the Middle East. They are chickenhawks and de facto untrustworthy.
11 Responses to “Chickenhawkery on steroids”
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I just read the most wonderful essay by a Lebanese writer aiming to awaken at the religious convictions of real Zionists (not these Christian fakers). You can find it here.
A sample: Moses had it right, perhaps because he accumulated much wisdom during his 120 years of life. Meet the legitimate demands of both parties to a dispute, he said, and a fair, lasting resolution will emerge. Ignore the centrality of justice and equal rights for both parties, and you will be smitten by divine fire - or fated to fight your adversaries forever, as Israel seems to have opted to do.
Sorry if this is off topic. I am seared by the destruction of Lebanon and have filled my site with images of that lovely country before and after. There must be a way to peace or annihilation confronts us.
According to an interview with Seymour Hersh on DemocracyNow! this morning, the civilans in the DoD (Rumsfeld, etc.) were pushing for using the “nuclear option” with Iran this spring. It was the Generals who put their foot down and said, “No way.”
If we don’t want Iran developing nuclear weapons, we would be well advised not to make them think they have no choice because American leadership wants to kill them all.
That’s always seemed like such a wierd bit of foreign policy insanity, to me. If you’re really afraid of others having nuclear weapons, wouldn’t the best plan be to convince them that they don’t need them to protect themselves from you? Has nobody learned anything from the whole Iraq vs. North Korea thing?
Not to mention that Christian Zionists think that when the Rapture Comes, all the Jews are given a choice between conversion or death. So bassically, they want the Holocaust to happen again, only replace Hitler with Jesus.
These people are so crazy there aren’t words for it.
And please, janinsanfran, let’s remember that the real Zionists are basing their convictions on a fictional document that depicts a group of displaced people entering Isreal and commiting genocide against it’s indigenous inhabitants. Not exactly a lovely model.
Jewish Extreme Zionism is based on the same kinds of moral double standards as Christian Fundamentalism. That’s why they make such good bedfellows.
OK, deep breath, step back, and look at the big picture. Not the Fundie big picture, we know what that looks like, we’ve seen the tracts and the Bible Story in the dentist’s office. (I actually had the whole set at home–it had the older-fashioned Bible-like pseudoleather covers instead of the big printed picture covers).
But if we want to make sense of what our Dear Leaders are up to, I think we need to assume they have a Lifeboat Mentality. They figure that the underlying cause of global conflict is a scissors between the limited resourse base/ecological carrying capacity of Earth versus the rising demands of the developing populations of the world, and the crunch is upon us. The only way that all of humanity could survive this is for us to cooperate, share, plan, all that good stuff, and as the Haves and Have-Mores they have zero intention of doing this. The only alternative is to plan on being the top dogs after the dogfight.
Rapturist and other millenarian mentalities are a mythed-up version of this same cynical attitude, of course, substituting cheap “belief” for the attributes of wealth, connection, and ruthlessness that most realistically would be the survivalist assets in the coming crunch. Same plotline, different illustrations, but much the same at that.
So, if you believe that no matter what deals we broker now, in 15 or 20 years we’ll be fighting to the death over the last drops of oil anyway, it makes sense to start the fighting early and kill off potential future enemies now, and set the survivors against each other. I believe if we assume this is the attitude of our rulers, that we can make sense of their every move.
not to mention sadistic, psychotic misanthropes (to be restrained about it). sadly, not - nothing so dramatic (that might focus minds and efforts) - not annihilation, but perpetual, low-intensity butchery, dribbling on eternally.Keep in mind that the only reason some Orthodox Jews align with evangelical Christians on this issue is because they think that the Christians will be the ones left holding the bag when the Messiah comes.
It’s like an episode of Babylon 5.
You can’t anticipate war if you don’t know what causes it…
The Blue State
Yesterday, President Bush made one of the most ignorant comments about the Middle East, underscoring his lack of understanding about the international system in general:"It’s no coincidence that two nations that are building fre…
I went to the rock to hide my face, but the rock cried out “no hiding place”
And we all know what visuals accompanied that little sing-along, don’t we?
He’s got a solid taste for drama and violence, which is typical of the leadership of the fundie right.
I’ve seen Hagee. He’s also got a solid taste for Krispy Kremes.