BUSH AS GOD’S WARRIOR

Propaganda Trip of the US President. Religious Hatred and Megalomania in the Struggle against Fading Support for the Iraq War

By Raoul Wisterer

[This article published in: Junge Welt, 8/26/2005 is translated from the German on the World Wide Web, www.jungewelt.de/2005/08-26/004.php.]


The time for a new Iraq debate in the US is overdue. Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a fallen soldier between the Euphrates and the Tigris, has risen worldwide within a few weeks to the best-known opponent of the US war. She took the protest stage at exactly the right moment. Suddenly thousands of relatives of occupation soldiers are raising their voices against the political leaders of the United States and besieging the president’s ranch and other scenes of the Texan. On Thursday, the current approval ratings for George W. Bush were published: five-percent loss in the month of July alone, tagesschau.de announced.

Is the president in free fall? In any case, the vacationing Bush recognized the change in mood in the country endangering him and his war and set out on a propaganda trip on his vacation. He was impressive at the first two stations of his tour in the state of Idaho, particularly in the choice of his target group. First, he gave a patriotic speech before veterans of other long past US wars with the exception of Afghanistan and tried to take the wind from the sails of the fast-growing protest movement of former Iraq GIs. On Wednesday, he turned to relatives of soldiers of the National Guard facing Iraqi war action. They were patient recipients of fanatic endurance slogans. Bush in Idaho: “As long as I am president, we will remain, we will fight and we will win the war against terrorism.”

The religious fundamentalist gave the American superpower’s mission character to the megalomaniac worldview. Its soldiers bring “freedom” everywhere as “the gift of the almighty God for all people of this world, not as America’s gift.” This commission of the “Lord” must be permanently enforced “against the evil,” the self-proclaimed megaphone of God said anxious for frenetic applause. “We have experienced repeatedly that freedom prevailed against evil,” he said appealing to the Second World War. However he reconfigured the anti-fascist liberation character of the war against the Nazis into a supposedly necessary homeland defense: “We must win on all battlefields if we want to protect our people.”

The first war of the 21st century is “a world war.” This makes sense, Bush the preacher said. He had a special treat for the target group of relatives. He quoted from a letter by Tammy Priett whose husband and four sons were or still are in Iraq. If something should happen to one of them, the woman said, “then I know they died for a cause in which they firmly believed.” Whether Cindy Sheehan thought that when her son went to Iraq is unknown.

The US is expanding its occupation in the Tigris-Euphrates area. The US Defense Department ordered the dispatching of two infantry battalions of 1500 soldiers to Iraq. The strength of the US occupier has reached 140,000 soldiers. The goal is to “improve the security situation before the planned election,” as the AP news agency reported from military circles.

P.S. The vote on the constitution planned on Thursday in the Iraqi parliament has been postponed indefinitely according to news agencies.