George W. Bush - Defiling religion, faith and hope

Jenna Bush is getting married at the Crawford ranch on Saturday. A "giant" limestone cross has been built for the occasion. This cross will serve as a landmark for the ranch for many years.

It is an appropriate symbol for Bush and company. Not, however, in the way he envisions.


The National Day of Prayer is all tied up with James Dobson's Focus on the Family and the coordinator for the event is none other than Shirley Dobson, spouse of James. The Dobsons are well-known Christian rightists and dominionists with little love for our cherished Constitution and the wall that separates church and state. Bush, however, believes this is a splendid event, and people all over the nation spend the day pleading with the Almighty to bless America.


The National Prayer Breakfast is sponsored by the Fellowship Foundation. The Fellowship Foundation is another name for The Family, the spooky, cultish, ultra-secret right-wing group that concentrates on achieving power by using Jesus as an agent of domination and strength. Originally, the organization had fascist ties, and today still attracts right wing dictators from around the world. Perhaps that's what makes it attractive to the Bushes.

This year's National Prayer Breakfast was held in the Hilton Washington's International Ballroom. Some 2800 people attended to nod to God.

George W. Bush remarked. George W. Bush thinks he's the pastor of the nation. A Christian pastor, naturally, for his Christian nation.

Bush said he likes prayer. Prayer is big with him. You can overcome denominational differences with prayer, he told the group, assuming, probably rightly, that everybody present agreed with him.

"The people in this room come from many different walks of faith. Yet we share one clear conviction. We believe that the Almighty hears our prayers - and answers those who seek Him."

Pastor Bush went on: "Through the miracle of prayer, we believe He listens - if we listen to His voice and seek His presence in our lives, our hearts will change. And in so doing, in seeking God, we grow in ways that we could never imagine."

Ignoring any non-Christians that might have been present, the pastor of the nation said that Christians have a special relationship with God, so "the more time we spend with God, the more we see that He is not a distant king, but a loving Father."


Now I don't care if Bush believes in Haysus, Jesus, Allah, Buddha, or the Easter Bunny! But I do care when he sticks his thumb in the eyes of millions of Americans who hold religious beliefs at odds with his fundamentalist Christian convictions.

He is not the "pastor" of the nation. As the president, he should not speak as to whether his God answers prayer or not, or infer that a relationship with the Christian God will improve our individual or national well-being.

We are all too aware of the fact that Bush heard God tell him to invade Iraq and depose Saddam. Look what that led to!

By preaching his little sermon at the National Prayer Breakfast, the president of the United States declared this to be a Christian nation, and ordained himself as it's leading clerical representative.


Much of the world thinks G.W. is a fool. His appearance and remarks at the this exercise in pious pedantry removes all doubt. His Prayer Breakfast appearance and remarks also remove any doubt as to the depth of the man's hypocrisy.

Dovbear hit it on the head, I think. When Pope Benedict XVI arrived in the U.S. recently, Bush said to him:

"In a world where some treat life as something to be debased and discarded, we need your message that all human life is sacred..."

For many of us, that was too much! Dovbear put it rightly by commenting thusly:

"The simplistic chutzpah of this imbecilic president never fails to amaze me. Where does the president find the nerve to declare that we need to hear from the Pope that 'all human life is sacred' when Bush has done nothing but disregard the Pope on this point. The pope [sic] opposes capital punishment, yet as Governor of Texas Bush presided over 151 executions. The Pope opposes the war in Iraq. The Pope opposed the execution of Saddam Hussein. The Pope has condemned the use of torture at all times and in all forms. The Pope, unlike Bush, is consistant [sic]. The Pope, unlike Bush, does not shrug his shoulders when soldiers and civilians are killed in the Middle East. The Pope, unlike Bush, does not make pious sounding noises about the towering moral value of zygotes while also embracing capital punishment. The Pope, for all his shortcomings, is a man of principle, and one of the scandals of this decade is how Rove and the media deceived the electorate into thinking that George W. Bush was one, too."


At this year's National Prayer Breakfast, Edward Brehm, chairman of the United States African Development Foundation praised Bush for giving additional money to help fight poverty and AIDS in Africa. This foundation was established in 1980 by the U.S. Congress and functions as a sort of Small Business Administration in Africa. Edward Brehm, a conservative evangelical, with some connections to the World Vision group, seems to have a true concern for the people of Africa.

But, the Bush administration has not helped the fight against AIDS in Africa; it has been a major detriment! Any organization working in Africa that so much as mentions abortion or hints at the use of condoms gets not a dime from good old God-loving G.W. Bush! The Religious Right has its clammy hands all over African aid, and will stop the flow even if it means millions more die from the disease...better they die than use condoms!


In the audience at the Hilton in Washington were the president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya; the president of El Salvador, Tony Saca; the president of Burundi, Pierre Nkurunziza; the president of the Federated States of Micronesia, Emanuel More; and the prime minister of Samoa, Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaol.

Manuel Zelaya, is a left-winger, friend of Fidel, who claimed the presidency of Honduras in 2005 just two hours after the polls closed. The Honduran media announced him to be the winner. He is also known as Manual Zelaya. It is reported he likes to strut about wearing cowboy clothing.

Many El Salvadorans consider Tony Saca a dictator and portray his presidency as illegitimate. They claim he is "presiding over a resurgence of death squads. Brutal police attacks on activists, street vendors, and other dissidents" are on the rise. Saca is blamed for the January 2008 murder of an opposition Mayor.

Until recently Pierre Nkurunziza of Burundi was a rebel leader fighting the Burundi government. In 1998 he was condemned to death, but was given a pardon. He is a born-again Christian but says he does not wear his faith on his sleeve.

Also sharing in the prayers and piety were Senator John McCain and Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. Other hypocrites basking in the slimelight of the prezident were Senator Joseph Lieberman (sitting with McCain), and our old friend of the bathroom stall, Senator Larry Craig.


Back to the limestone cross. The cross will indeed always be a landmark, not only of the Crawford ranch, but of the entire Bush administration.

It will remind people all over the world of the many lives crucified by Bush's stupidity, guile, and intransigence. The limestone cross will stand as a symbol of the country of Iraq, nailed to the tree of oily ambition, and sacrificed to the imperial ambitions of insane neocons.

The poor, the sick, the needy in this country can look upon the cross and think how Bush stripped them bare the better to feed the coffers of the rich and the very rich.

Terrorists all over the world will take delight in their vision of the limestone cross as a sign of Bush's weakness and impotence, as they roam freely through the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

And too soon, all of us will look at that cross and remember with sadness and anger that we had a chance to redeem our world by leading the charge against the coming environmental terror to be unleashed by unfettered global warming. That limestone cross will stand silhouetted against the Texas sky as a sign of our betrayal by the people we chose to show us what was required of us to provide a future for our children and grandchildren.


It's hard to imagine anything more defiling of religion and faith and hope than President Bush preaching his pious platitudes at a Christian National Prayer Breakfast!