http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1367149,00.html
Save us from the politicians who have God on their side
These American hijackers have made the world a more dangerous place
Max Hastings
Monday December 6, 2004
The Guardian
A week in the United States, such as I have just spent, is enough to
make anybody feel a trifle fed up with God, or rather with the
relentless invocation of the deity by American politicians, led by their
president. No public occasion would be complete without the blessing of
the Almighty being besought for whatever endeavour tops the agenda, most
prominently the war in Iraq. The appeal to faith, seldom mere ritual, is
usually founded upon conviction.
There is an attractive rationalist case for insisting that candidates
for election anywhere in the world are required to sign a declaration
forswearing religious affiliation. Had this been done in Ireland a
couple of generations ago, think what we would have been spared.
Few modern political careers are compatible with religious principle.
Government by atheists would relieve us of the irksome moral conceit
that impels George Bush and Tony Blair to do deplorable things while
remaining convinced that slots are kept open for them in heaven.
Even among the enemies of democracy, at the extreme end of the scale it
is easier to deal with the IRA, whose ambitions are political, than
Osama bin Laden, with whom there can be no negotiation, only global
submission to Islam.
I am not in the least anti-religious. If pressed I would describe myself
as a social Anglican. Yet I find myself increasingly eager to be
governed by politicians who profess no pretensions to a hot line to a
higher power.
The west may find that the struggle against militant Islam is an
inescapable challenge of the 21st century, extending far more widely
than the present engagement with a few thousand fanatics. Most of us
wish to explore every avenue of accommodation before reconciling
ourselves to armed conflict. Yet we now face another four years at the
mercy of a US president who perceives his own God as foremost among
White House advisers and regards the contest with Islam as already begun.
The last British prime minister before Blair to perceive himself in a
special relationship with the Almighty was Gladstone. Yet, oddly enough,
Gladstone strongly resisted General Charles Gordon's attempts to force
Christian Britain into military confrontation with Islam, in the Sudan
in 1884.
British foes of the Mahdi used many of the same arguments for deposing
him as were deployed by Bush and Blair against Saddam Hussein: shocking
tyrant; unspeakably brutal to his own people; threat to the stability of
the region. Yet Gladstone rejected calls for intervention until Gordon,
by calculated self-immolation in Khartoum, excited British public
opinion to such a pitch that the prime minister felt compelled to act.
A relief force was belatedly dispatched up the Nile, which failed to
reach Gordon in time, and withdrew amid much public anger at home. This
might be described as Gladstone's first Gulf war. Its anticlimactic
conclusion provoked bitter criticism, for the failure to finish the job
and depose the Mahdi.
The Mahdi died, of course, leaving his Sudanese empire in the hands of a
successor, the Khalifa. The British launched their second Gulf war
against Sudan in 1898, in a spirit of unfinished business not dissimilar
from that which prevailed in the 2003 White House. Kitchener duly
disposed of the Khalifa and his Dervish followers at the battle of
Omdurman, with an application of firepower ruthless enough to delight
Donald Rumsfeld.
The British thereafter ran the Sudan for half a century. Their benign
stewardship became the best excuse for an imperialist adventure that
otherwise possessed no justification whatsoever. Interestingly, while
the British felt pleased with themselves for having squashed Mahdism,
they did not represent Omdurman as a triumph for Christianity. It was
perceived simply as a victory for the Union flag.
Some of us would feel more comfortable today if American and allied
foreign policy could be discussed solely in temporal terms, without
bringing God into the deal at all. One of the more grotesque landmarks
of the Bush presidency was established this time last year, when the Los
Angeles Times revealed that a top general was touring Christian
fundamentalist churches assuring congregations that he knew "our side"
would prevail in the struggle with Muslim extremism "because our God is
a real God" and the other side's is a phoney.
Now, every army has its share of lunatics. The litmus test is how their
political masters treat them. The world waited in vain for Rumsfeld to
sack this grotesque Strangelovian, whose words seemed to undermine every
possibility of constructive engagement with Islam.
It never happened, of course. I was in Washington while the little drama
was being played out. A defence academic said to me sardonically: "This
administration will never sack a general for saying things that every
senior figure in the cabinet believes," and so it proved.
Bob Woodward vividly records in his book Plan of Attack an exchange with
Bush, in which he asked whether the president had discussed the Iraq
invasion with his father before making the decision to act. No, said
Bush. He preferred to consult his "higher father".
Many of us at the mercy of America's president, which means most of the
world, tremble in the face of this sort of thing. Even in the darkest
days of 1940, Churchill never seriously invoked the deity, though he had
vastly better reason to do so than either Bush or Blair. Nor did
Margaret Thatcher.
Today, the distortion of biblical teaching by American Christian
fundamentalists, almost all allies of Bush, to support Israeli
imperialist claims on the West Bank, significantly increases the
difficulties of achieving a settlement in the Middle East. The political
leverage exerted by the fundamentalists in the US against any surrender
of biblical territory to Muslims is likely to grow greater, not less.
Most of us recognise that constructive action to rescue the Palestinians
would do far more for the west's long-term security than the draconian
anti-terrorist legislation introduced by Bush and now by Blair. Yet no
prominent western statesman dares publicly to question the role that
God's American hijackers play in making the world more dangerous.
I am not making a case for the appeasement of the west's Islamic critics
and enemies, but merely for policies likely to diminish the fertility of
terrorist recruiting prairies, based upon treating their religion with
common respect. Christian Crusaders were a menace to international peace
in the 12th and 13th centuries, Christian missionaries in the 19th. God
spare us from assertively Christian - or Muslim or Jewish - national
leaders in the 21st, if that request is not blasphemous.
· Max Hastings is a former editor of the Daily Telegraph and the London
Evening Standard
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