US attorney general invokes God in "war on terrorism"


J. Charles
Press Release No. 1201/05/02
HEINZREPORT 2002
May 14, 2002
 



THE WAR MANIPULATORS




US attorney general invokes God in "war on terrorism"

By J. Charles
15 May 2002

Since the September 11 terrorist attacks, the Christian right
and its allies in the Republican Party have sought to stoke up
religious intolerance. US Attorney General John Ashcroft still
refuses to issue a forthright apology or disavow anti-Islamic
comments he made last fall. In an interview with syndicated columnist
and radio commentator Cal Thomas, Ashcroft declared, “Islam
is a religion in which God requires you to send your son to die
for him. Christianity is a faith in which God sends his son to
die for you.”

Christian Coalition founder Pat Robertson, an ideological soul
mate of Ashcroft, declared on his television program, the “700
Club,” that Islam “is not a peaceful religion that wants
to coexist.” Robertson continued: “They want to coexist
until they can control, dominate and, if need be, destroy....
And the Koran makes it very clear, if you see an infidel, you
are to kill him.”

The remarks of Ashcroft at the National Religious Broadcasters
(NRB) Convention last February in Nashville, Tennessee, where
he invoked religion in support of Bush’s “war on terrorism”
and attacked the democratic and secularist underpinnings of the
US Constitution, deserve particular note.

The NRB, which represents 1,400 Christian broadcasters, is
an influential body of the religious right. It counts among its
members such high-profile preachers as Jerry Falwell and James
Dobson. The organization forced out its recently installed president,
Wayne Pederson, for his suggestion that the group not identify
itself so closely with the “far Christian right.”

Ashcroft is himself a member of the Assemblies of God Church,
the largest US Pentecostal denomination. It practices faith healing
and believes that the Holy Spirit gives the baptized the ability
to speak in tongues. The Assemblies of God considers abortion
and homosexuality to be sins and believes social dancing to be
a “great moral risk.” It opposes coexistence with non-Christian
religions, declaring on its web site [www.ag.org] that the Assemblies
of God “disavows universalism and the toleration of world
views that do not require entering the kingdom of God through
the narrow gate of the God-man, Jesus Christ.”

In his speech to the NRB, Ashcroft attempted to supply a religious
justification for US military intervention in Afghanistan and
other third world countries. Ashcroft declared, “We are a
nation called to defend freedom—a freedom that is not the
grant of any government or document, but is our endowment from
God.”

The attorney general asserted that religion is the underpinning
of all human culture. “Civilized people—Muslims, Christians
and Jews—all understand that the source of freedom and human
dignity is the Creator. Civilized people of all religious faiths
are called to the defense of His creation,” he declared.

He repeated the simple-minded dictum that the Bush administration’s
war on terrorism is a fight between good and evil. He sought to
support this claim by quoting from the Bible, including the following
passage from Deuteronomy 30:19: “I call heaven and earth
to record this day against you, that I have set before you life
and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both
thou and thy seed may live.”

Ashcroft attempted to link the names of George Washington and
Thomas Jefferson, leaders of the American bourgeois democratic
revolution, with the ideas of Christian fundamentalism. He even
quoted the opening of the Declaration of Independence, which declares
that men are “endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable
rights,” to suggest that the American Revolution was inspired
by Christian fundamentalist principles.

However, the founders of the United States were opposed to
the state sponsorship of religion. They were motivated in no small
measure by the fact that state-enforced religion, far from fostering
civilized relations, had provided the ideological grounds over
the previous centuries for devastating wars and persecutions.
Kings, princes and popes had sent millions to their deaths, from
the Crusades to the Thirty Year War, on the basis of biblical
citations.

Absolute monarchs, backed by church hierarchies, had justified
their rule on the grounds that their power flowed from God’s
will. Early attempts at scientific investigation of man’s
place in the universe were suppressed.

The greatest leaders of the American Revolution recognized
that the struggle against monarchy and despotism required a battle
against the identification of the state with organized religion.
The secularist viewpoint of the US founders reflected a long development
of critical thought. The thinkers of the Enlightenment—Rousseau,
Locke, Diderot and others—challenged the concept that the
political power of monarchs derived from the will of God. They
made an attempt to analyze social and political relations from
the standpoint of human reason, not revealed truth.

Locke’s work is particularly well known. He ridiculed
the concept of the divine right of kings. In its place he asserted
the principle that governments derived their authority from the
consent of the governed. Systems of laws, he said, were instituted
for the purpose of advancing the common good. When a government
abused its powers, the people had the right to change that government.

The revolt of the American colonies dealt an enormous blow
to the ties between established religion and the state. While
many people had come to America seeking religious freedom, the
early colonies had established their own forms of religious tyranny.
In pre-revolutionary America, “heresy” was a capital
crime and individuals could be imprisoned for expressing differences
over points of religious doctrine.

The influence of the Enlightenment helped foster a more tolerant
attitude toward divergent religious viewpoints. By the mid-1700s,
religious freedom had become a major issue.

The founders of the United States were hostile to attempts
to legislate codes of thinking and personal conduct based on religious
teachings. The American Revolution and its aftermath undermined
the concept that there existed a “unitary set of values formulated
by God and readily ascertainable by man” ( The Americanization
of the Common Law, William E. Nelson, University of Georgia
Press, 1994, p. 115). In its place developed the view that the
discovery of truth was a complex process involving the open clash
of opposing ideas. Thus, society had no business attempting to
impose one set of beliefs, religious or political, that all had
to accept.

In the period following the American Revolution the prosecution
of individuals for violations of a purely moral character declined.
The principle that personal beliefs and personal ethics, so long
as they did not harm others, were not to be dictated by the state,
but reserved for the individual, became embedded in popular consciousness,
marking a major advance in democratic rights.

Contrary to Ashcroft’s claim that the United States was
founded on Christian belief, Jefferson and a number of other founding
founders were deists. Jefferson and James Madison, in particular,
sought to embed the separation of church and state in the structure
of the United States. The Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom,
drafted by Jefferson in 1777, banned the state from any role whatsoever
in religious affairs.

The statute declared, “No man shall be compelled to frequent
or support any religious worship, place or ministry whatsoever...
[to] compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation
of [religious] opinions which he disbelieves is sinful and tyrannical.”
Jefferson rated the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom second
only to his authorship of the Declaration of Independence in his
list of personal achievements.

James Madison in 1784 opposed an attempt by the Virginia legislature
to levy a tax to support religious education. In his famous Memorial
and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments he insisted that
the principle of the separation of church and state was fundamental
to democratic rights as a whole.

Madison wrote: “Either then, we must say, that the will
of the Legislature is the only measure of their authority; and
that in the plentitude of this authority, they may sweep away
all our fundamental rights; or, that they are bound to leave this
particular right untouched and sacred: Either we must say, that
they may control the freedom of the press, may abolish the trial
by jury, may swallow up the Executive and Judiciary Powers of
the State; nay that they may despoil us of our very right of suffrage,
and erect themselves into an independent and hereditary assembly:
or we must say, that they have no authority to enact into law
the Bill under consideration.”

The secularization of government was considered so fundamental
for democracy by the founders of the United States that the prohibition
against the establishment of religion was incorporated into the
first amendment to the US Constitution, drafted by Madison, which
also guarantees freedom of speech, press and assembly.

By framing the right-wing policies of the Bush administration
in terms of religion, Ashcroft seeks to develop, on reactionary
foundations, a new ideological framework for unifying the population
behind the policies of the US ruling elite. It is an attempt to
mobilize ignorance and superstition in the service of American
militarism.

Ashcroft’s views lead toward the creation of an authoritarian
state based on the establishment of some form of theocracy. The
logic of his position is barely distinguishable from that of Christian
Reconstructionism, a wing of the religious right that advocates
“universal development of Biblical theocratic republics,”
based on Old Testament law (Christian Reconstructionism: Theocratic
Dominionism Gains Influence, by Frederick Clarkson, part 1, www.publiceye.org).
Non-Christian religions would be banned as idol worship, and so-called
“immoral behavior” such as homosexuality and abortion
would be outlawed. Adherents of this viewpoint call for Christians
to “take back government from the state.”

In summarizing the role of Ashcroft, it is worth recalling
the words of Jefferson: “In every country and in every age,
the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance
with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection
to his own” (Thomas Jefferson to Horatio G. Spafford, 1814).
J. Charles. mailto:  cee@post.com