Bush’s alledged claim that ‘god made me do it’ [Iraq & Afghanistan that is] has, naturally attracted a considerable amount of attention in various places.

Over at the Daily Ablution, Scott Burgess offers his usual take on matters - whatever it is it’s all the fault of the ‘orrible lefties at the BBC/Guardian/Independent - in fact all three on this occasion.

Unfortunately, this time around he’s missed a little something along the way - although the disputed claims as what Bush actually said are indeed two years old and have had new life breathed into them by their appearing in a three-part BBC 2 documentary about the ‘Palestinian question’, the first of which is aired tonight, the first reports of Bush’s ‘comments’ this week - which may or may not be a product of ‘losing something’ in translation - came not from the Beeb, itself, nor indeed from either the Guardian or the Independent but from that well known hot-bed of loony liberalism and goddamnned commie bastards…

…ITN.

Oh well, better luck next time, Scott.

Moving swiftly on past the mutual appreciation society that is Normblog and Harry’s Place, where we get the usual ‘bet you wouldn’t say that if you were talking about a Muslim‘ - really guys, the ‘Cannon and Ball’ of the blogosphere act is getting a bit tired now - and the obvious but still amusing Blues Brother’s reference from Curious Hamster - Elwood for President in 2008 is what I say! - we come finally to Tom Hamilton who, as per the title of his blog, quite sensibly points out that, by and large, references by politicians to being told to do something by god tend to be rather more metaphorical than literal in meaning.

Tom’s point - which is essentially no more that “what’s all the fuss about anyway?” - is well made but as with pretty much everyone else who’s commented on this, admittedly, non-story, Tom overlooks a couple of intriguing and important subtexts at work here, ones which do merit further consideration.

First of all it’s worth considering just what this says about the way we see Bush himself.

Were it any other recent US president making such comments - other than, perhaps, Reagan - then the idea that a Palestinian delegation might have informed that the President - be it Clinton, Carter or even Bush Sr - might have said something to suggest that divine inspriration was playing a part in US foreign policy decisions then it’s unlikely that such a comment would have attracted any particular attention at all, even coming from a notably devout Christian like Carter. In the case of those other presidents one would automatically have assumed things to be just as Tom suggests; that being ‘told by god’ - if that is what was said - was no more than a metaphorical reflection on decisions reached after a period of contenplation and prayer. In the case of Clinton and possibly even Bush Sr one might also, given the [Palestinian] audience to which the comment was allegedly made, suspect that a little careful diplomacy might well have shaped the President’s comments; that the President was reaching for a common frame of reference with his Palestinian counterparts, a bit of mutual understanding on which to hang him claims to sincerity in promising to bring about a settlement to Palestinian question.

In the case of Bush, and of Reagan before him, such comments - even if they are misquoted - provoke an rather different reaction, a clear double-take. Where one could not have conceived of his father making such a statement and meaning it literally, in the case of the son one can’t quite shake the uneasy feeling that maybe he is on level with his comments; that maybe, just maybe, Bush really has been sneaking out in the Whitehouse gardens for the occasional chit-chat with the ornamental shrubbery in belief that god has been addressing him personally.

Anyone who’s seen Michael Moore’s documentary ‘Fahrenheit 911′ can’t help but have been rather disturbed, if not alarmed, by the the opening sequence of the film which showed Bush’s immediate reaction to news of the Al-Qaeda attack on New York; the piggy-eyed imbecility on his face as he sat before a class of primary school children looking for all the world like a guilty seven year old sat outside the headmaster’s office awaiting punishment for pulling the pig-tails of a classmate. Bush, when caught away from his inner cabal of trusted advisors - as shown by his misplaced bonhomie in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina - is a rather unnerving sight to behold, an innocent abroad in a hostile world he cannot fully comprehend. One sees Bush in such circumstances and one cannot help but be reminded of Peter Sellers in ‘Being There’ - of Chance the Gardener, the simple-minded reclusive illiterate cypher whose empty-headed platitudes are taken as profound insights by a society desperate for simplicity in ther face of an increasingly complex and hostile world. Therein lies, I suspect, much of Bush’s appeal within his natural constituency amongst the Christian right of America, yet for the rest of us that ‘appeal’ provokes more a barely suppressed shudder of anxiety and alarm - whatever else one expects from someone who is, nominally, the single most powerful man on the planet one, at least expects, the sense that, by and large, they know what they are doing and understand the world around them, a sense one rarely gets when Bush is left out there on his own without Cheyney, Rumsfeld and Rice around to watch his back.

Underpinning anxieties about Bush is, however, an entirely more serious set of issue arising from a deep-seated an, in my opinion, well-founded unease at the increasing overt influence of evangelical protestantism and the ‘religious right’ in US politics.

In part this comes from a recognition that across large swathes of the American heartlands of the Mid-West, a President with the right kind of religious credential could justify almost anything with a well-place appeal to god backed up with a few well chosen scriptural references. Bush may or may not believe that god literally told him to invade Afgahnistan and Iraq - giving him the benefit of the doubt, let’s presume he was misquoted and/or speaking figuaratively - but there are many across Middle America who are credulous enough in matters of religion to take him at his [literal] word, who will genuine believe, on the basis of such comments, that in the Oval Office there really is a red telephone under a belljar which serves as Bush’s personal ‘batphone’ to god.

However, the credulity of a hardcore of believers is really nothing when compared to the extent in which the US government, ostensibilty a secular government as required by the constitutional separation of church and state enforce under the first amendment, has been ‘inflitrated’ since the 1980’s by overt right-wing christian interests, interests which today operate openly as a self-identifying ‘fifth column’ within US society with the clear objective of christianising the otherwise secular US state.

Within the context of the ‘War on Terror’ we’re told constantly that we should be fearful of fundamentalism and hard-line religiosity - but only so far as such things exist within Islam. Yet, in truth we have little to really fear from such things. Revolutionary terrorism from its origins within early 20th Century Russian anarchism, through its European propenents of the 1970’s (Bader-Meinhoff, Red Brigade) to its modern incarnation, Al-Qaeda, is littered with utopian pipedreams of a perfect ‘new world order’ to be brought about through spectacular acts of violence. Yet such movements are inevitably short-lived and lack the kind of substantive majority support required to turn their fantasies into reality - the greatest barrier to Bin Laden’s dreams of a transnational umma lie not in western opposition but within the Islamic world itself, which no more sees its future as one in which it is subjugated under a single theocratic government as does the rest of the world.

Age-old ethnic, religious, political and national divides remain as strong within Islam as they ever have been; counties like Eqypt, Libya, Indonesia, Turkey, Iran and so many others are no more inclined to divest themselves of their national sovereignty, identity and independence to join a single Islamic super-state than we are. In Europe we cannot agree on a move towards a single liberal democratic form of super-statism, one in which the majority of the democratic an human rights we take for granted would be preserved. What, then, makes us think that Islamic nations would willingly submit to the rule of a fundamentalist transnational Islamic state in which, in the case of most countries, many of the already limited rights citizens currently possess would be denuded by the introduction of hard-line sharia law?

Would the majority Shi’a population in Iran willingly submit to a new Sunni/Wahabbi-led Caliphate when it disputes the legitimacy of the original Caliphate and has done so throughout it’s entire history as a defined sect within Islam? Of course not.

As alarming as the idea of a cellular global terrorist network with revolutionary aim might seem in light of the 2001 attack on New York and this attacks in London, the truth is that across most of the Islamic world, the Sunni-based brand of hard-line fundamentalism espoused by Al-Qaeda lacks the kind of mass popular support necessary to wrest power from the existing political leadership of the Islamic world and full-blown Islamic republics, such as that exemplified by Iran, remain the exception and not the rule having developed in very different religious conditions and political circumstances to those which exist across most the the rest of the Islamic world. If anything, the evidence we have to date, from the Lebanon, Somalia, Afghanistan and now Iraq, suggests that radical Islamism leads not towards the creation of a global Caliphate but rather to the development of failed states in which warlordism, terrorism and civil war are the norm.

By complete contrast, when we come to consider the growing influence of evangelical protestantism and the fundamentalist Christian right in America, the world’s sole remaining ’superpower’ - for the time being, at least - and the dominant economic and military force on the planet in this early part of the 21st Century things look rather different.

For one thing, the Christian right can lay claim to mass support; it’s generally been accepted that alongside electoral chicanery in Ohio, it was Bush’s clear appeal to and support from the Christian right that delivered his second term as US President. Whether that translates into majority support is another matter entirely - voter turnout at the last Presidental election ran to just over 55% of the total electorate, which means Bush’s 62 million votes saw him being returned to office on the votes of a mere 28% of Americans - and even that figure is somewhat questionable given that voter registration in minority communities, mainly Black and Hispanic, remains problematic and an estimated 4.7 million voters, which includes 1.3 million black men - 13% of the black male electorate - are either temporarily or permanantly disenfranchised under state laws which remove the right ot vote from ex-felons.

Nevertheless the votes of the Christian right are now a significant factor in the US political system. If we look at the list of States which voted most heavily for Bush then its not difficult to see patterns emerging:

‘Bush Country’ is an overwhelmingly god-fearing place in which the influence of the christian right is writ large on the political and cultural landscape and which encompasses not only the badlands and the prairies, which have traditionally been clear Republican territory, but the Bible Belt of the deep south, once a Democrat preserve but now all too likely to swing according to the religious credentials of the respective candidates.

However, there’s more, far more to this than simply the matter of a President trading on his religious faith to swing marked religious voters to his corner. The influence of the Christian right extends far past the mere matter of the Presidency, far beyond even the full scope of elected Federal government in the US, taking in both the Senate and the House of Representatives, as evidenced during the recent Schiavo case where politicians on both sides were clearly guilty of falling over themselves to display their pro-religion, pro-life credentials to the electorate in the hope that some of the ‘magic’ which took Bush to victory would rub off on them when next their political careers become subject to the whims and uncertainties of the electorate.

Over the last 20-30 years, certainly from the Reagan era onwards, the Christian right has made significant inroads not only into elected government but into the very machinery of the state itself. Through Christian funded home-schooling networks, private schools and even a full blown college, the Christian right has developed its own private education system geared to teaching two things: theology and politics, one which, in its promotional literature boasts extensively of its track record in place alumni into internships and jobs within governmental institutions with the objective of ‘Christianising’ the US state at every possible level of the administration. Over the latter part of the 20th century, right-wing Christian groups have been systematically infiltrating to ensure that its agenda runs the entire breadth of US civic society.

And you though the Islamists were scary.

In all measurable respects we are far closer to seeing a hard-line fundamentalist [Christian] government in the United States than we are or ever will be to seeing a transnational Caliphate develop in the Islamic world - some would argue that such a government already exists under Bush.

What has become clear since Bush became President in 2000 is the Christian right has become increasingly emboldened - and demanding of rather more quid pro quo - since delivering one of its own into the White House with the result that constitutional separation of Church and State has come increasingly under open attack by Christian interests, not just in terms of their usual bugbears [Roe vs Wade, Darwinism] but even right to the heart of that consitutional separation itself; the First Amendment. That their arguments are pure sophistry and based on an unprovable claim to knowledge of the ‘real’ intent of the founding fathers - that America should be a Christian nation as they two were Christians seems of no concern in their pursuit of the goal of establishing Christianity as the state religion in the US; it simply doesn’t occur to them that the fact that Jefferson et al were Christians makes their real intent, that the US should be a secular state, all the more obvious and certain simply by virtue of their having specifically ruled out the adoption of an official state religion in the first place.

Yet for all that the Christian right has invested heavily in the development of its own political elite and their insertion in government at every conceivable level it remains a movement which relies heavily of the promotion of ignorance, deliberate and often wilful ingorance, amongst its rank and file supporters. If its political elite are given the best education that donations can buy, its attitude to majority of its supporters is altogether less enlightened - it’s basic message being ‘don’t think - the Bible has all the answers’, a message that is constantly reinforces by the equating of liberalism with intellectualism, to which its supporters are actively encouraged to cultivate an attitude of rabid loathing. For all that the Christian right is founded, theologically, in evangelical protestantism it modus operandii is drawn straight from medieval Catholicism - educate the elite into the real ‘mysteries’ and indoctrinate the rest not to question and to do as they are told.

Where radical Islam lacks both the means and the support necessary to realise its objects, the Christian right in the US has both in abundance and, moreover, is now beinging to see itself as being in such a strong and unassailable position as to make concealing its true motives increasingly unnecessary. Thus we get not only are we increasingly seeing more obvious and overt expressions of anti-intellectualism and anti-rationalism - ‘Intelligent Design’ being a clear expression of both - but there is also an increasing amount of ‘chatter’ within the Christian right which aims to characterise democracy, itself, as being ‘divisive’ and as working against their interests which would be far better served were government centralised around ’strong moral leadership’ - by now, this should all be getting depressingly familiar.

Should we really be concerned at the idea that Bush ‘talks to god’? Probably not - but what we should be deeply concerned about is when Bush, as he has done, makes speeches in which he talks of America having a duty to protect christians, and by extension christianity, around the globe as though it were a legitimate foreign policy objective.

There is much about America and the direction it has been heading in since the 1980’s about which we we should have serious concerns.

America’s economy is far from being the powerhouse it purports to be, being saddled with crushing government debt and heavily dependent on inward investment from abroad to sustain it - America is, quite simply, the largest net importer of capital on the planet. By contrast, Britain, at the height of its empire, was actually a net exporter of capital; we may have got rich on the proceeds of empire but as those proceeds flowed into Britain’s coffers so they flowed outwards as investment in the colonys which made up its empire.

America’s consumption of foreign capital is matched only by its consumption of resources; oil being chief among them - as a crude estimate, the US consumes as much as one third of total world resource production per annum and, under Bush, show little real sign of seeking to reduce its level of resource dependence, preferring instead to rely on the twin fictions of long-term sustainable growth and the belief that the ‘market will provide’ while, on an altogether more unnerving note, identifying access to resources across the as a key national and foreign policy interest that, at the very least, its present government is prepared to use military force to protect.

America has, in addition, the world’s largest ‘defence’ budget coupled to the world’s largest arms industry which, in turn, is one America’s largest employers - I’ve not seen any recent figures but clearly recall that during the Reagan era it was estimated that the US arms industry was, in total, the second largest employer in the US after Federal/State Government.

Just taking those four things together - massive debt, massive dependence on foreign capital and resources to sustain its economy and a massive industrial-military complex which occupies a key position in the US economy and you already have a recipe for trouble should things not the US’s way at some time int he not too distant future. Forget making crass political comparisons between the US and Nazi Germany, here we have the makings of a direct economic comparison between the two states - the US today, like Germany in the mid-late 1930’s, has what is markedly a ‘war economy’ which is sustainably only so long and investment and resources flow inwards - if, in future, the world chooses to take its money and resources elsewhere, which with China on rise economically is a growing possibility, who knows where that might eventually lead.

Yet for all that, it still remains unlikely that the US would follow the same road as once walked Nazi Germany - if America can be a trifle arrogant in its belief that its society embodies the best universal principles of humanity and rationalism, principles that we all should aspire to, that belief should also act as brake on its potential for excess - an America ‘Hitler’ or ‘Mussolini’, a homegrown despot, has first to get past the American people before gaining the opportunity to inflict themselves on the rest of the world and even in the face of the rise of the religious right one still has to consider that the majority of Americans are still, at heart, a basically decent, peace-loving and often altruistic lot unlikely to accept a political leader, any leader, who would openly take them down that same path marked out by fascism in the Europe of the 1930’s.

Still, the religious right and their growing influence in government and in Us civic society, give cause for genuine unease and concern as they embody a set of values not only at odds with America’s deepest and most important traditions; democracy, freedom of thought and freedom of expression, but which serve to loosen the brakes which should otherwise protect us from an American descent into despotism and dictatorship to the point that one is, today, much less certain of America than was once the case.

And that is the really worrying part, that when I look at the growing influence of fundamentalist Christianity across the ‘great pond’, it’s not that I begin to fear America so much as I begin to fear for it and its future…

…and how that, in turn, might affect our own.