Behind Bush's drive to war - US Pres George W. Bush

Humanist, Nov-Dec, 2003 by Joaquin Cabrejas

In March 2003, despite unprecedented worldwide protest, President George W. Bush began a preemptive war on Iraq, arguing that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein posed an immediate threat to the security of the United States because he had weapons of mass destruction and ties to al-Qaeda. These claims have come under intense scrutiny with the Bush administration's failure thus far to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the recently released information that the administration lacked solid grounds for war in the first place.

For instance, this past summer the Bush administration declassified portions of the recent National Intelligence Estimate, unwittingly revealing intelligence that significantly weakened the case he had made for war. The possibility that an unprovoked Hussein would launch an attack was deemed unlikely and the report also cast doubt on Bush's assertions that Hussein had ties to al-Qaeda and was seeking to begin a nuclear weapons program.

The longer such deception continues, the more Americans will demand the true reasons the administration went to war. There are possible geopolitical explanations but such pragmatic considerations may have been accompanied by a subtler rationale involving Bush's deep religious beliefs and recent embrace of crucial neoconservative tenets.

Neoconservatism arose during the 1970s when a small group of politicians and intellectuals disagreed with the policy of detente, preferring to challenge the Soviet Union with U.S. power. Neoconservatives reflect this view today by advocating an aggressive projection of American might on foreign dictatorships and otherwise unfriendly regimes. They also stipulate that emerging powers must be dealt with vigorously. For instance, the Project for the New American Century, a neoconservative think tank, bluntly outlines its objectives in its policy paper Rebuilding America's Defenses. One section states, "The United States must retain sufficient forces able to rapidly deploy and win multiple simultaneous large-scale wars and also to be able to respond to unanticipated contingencies in regions where it does not maintain forwardbased forces."

Neoconservatives also place a high value on religion in society. Irving Kristol, a chief figure in neoconservatism, believes religion should play a much larger role in American society and that the framers of the Constitution made a serious error in emphasizing the separation of church and state. According to journalist Jim Lobe, Kristol's personal views on religion are irrelevant; Kristol believes that religion is necessary to keep social order and that without it society would degenerate into anarchy. This point of view is widespread among neoconservatives because much of their thought is derived from the late philosopher Leo Strauss, an advocate of religion who nonetheless thought of it as a "pious fraud." As Shadia Drury of the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada, puts it, "He agreed with Marx that religion was the opium of the masses. But he believed that the masses need their opium." In order to make war the people must believe in what they're fighting for and religion provides justifications.

While Bush isn't a neoconservative himself, nor is he simply their puppet, his foreign policy decisions are nonetheless being driven by the neoconservative worldview. A partial reason for this lies in his deep religious faith and the neoconservative view on religion. As Columbia University historian Randall Balmer points out, Bush's Christianity, unlike former President Jimmy Carter's (a fellow evangelical), is deeply rooted in the mores of the more severe Old Testament. In other words, rather than turning the other cheek one must actively fight evil.

There are historical parallels to this kind of messianic thinking. One notorious example is the doctrine of Manifest Destiny, which helped fuel westward expansion and was invoked to justify the wars against Mexico and many Native American nations. Then-President James K. Polk was able to cast the Mexican War in messianic terms, since without this doctrine the wars would have been seen as naked land grabs. A war against Catholic Mexico was only a chapter in the westward march of a superior race: New World Anglo-Saxon Protestants. Similarly, pagan natives had to make way for their sophisticated superiors. As Indiana University historian David Pletcher describes it, "Manifest Destiny was a conviction that God intended North America to be under the control of the Americans." Historian Ray Billington adds:

   Every patriot who clamored for Mexico's
   provinces would indignantly deny any desire
   to exploit a neighbor's territory. The righteous
   but ill-informed people of that day sincerely
   believed their democratic institutions
   were of such magnificent perfection that no
   boundaries could contain them. Surely a
   benevolent Creator did not intend such
   blessings for the few; expansion was a divinely
   ordered means of extending enlightenment
   to despot-ridden masses in near-by countries[
   This was not imperialism, but enforced
   salvation. So the average American reasoned
   in the 1840's when the spirit of manifest destiny
   was in the air.