catapult magazine

“God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me I will act, and if not, the elections will come and I will have to focus on them.”

— President Bush, according to Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=310788&contrassID=2&subContrassID=1&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y

Dan, I AGREE WITH YOU (hold the gasps) that the sinners comment can only be taken that way.
Grant, how do you think he intended the comment?

Should we start a new thread re: Bush’s comment on homosexuality?

I was actually pretty pleased with the way he handled that issue in the press conference.

I think what bothers me about a person claiming that God has told him to do what he has done (I say “a person” because whether Bush said it is still in question) is that it essentially claims infallibility. It’s one thing to say that you’re convicted that a particular course of action is God’s will, and then to perform that action, standing firm on your convictions. it’s another thing to say “God told me to do it.” Has anyone wondered just HOW God tells a person to do something?

But issues change in light of new evidence, and with them our convictions about the “rightness” of a particular action may change. I’d rather have a president who says, “I believe that this is God’s will,” than one who says, “God told me and I did it.” The first is subjective (but RESPONSIBLE!). The second is objective and questionable.

Good point, Anton,

I has often seemed to me that we need to add a new fallacie to the ancient list — an appeal to the gods — or something like that. I have noticed at Church meetings that someone wanting to get theri way will often preface their remarks with some comment about how they have prayed about this decision for a long time and…. This seems to imply that their position is favored by God. If one could prove that one had prayed for longer than the first person had, then maybe one’s thoughts might be given greater weight. The problem here, of course, is that I have no way of knowing how God feels about the color of the tiles in the church bathroom and no matter how long you prayed, I don’t know that I agree with you.

in an ancient history class a number of years ago we were talking about OT israel, its military activity, and the context that the Bible places it. one of the members of the class quiped that it sounded like ‘god sponsored imperialism’. grant you brought up israel’s military activity in the context of bush’s claims that god told him to do so and so. i am not certain that ‘god sponsored imperialism’ is true of israel’s military action but what bush says sounds like an attempt at ‘god sponsored imperialism’. i am not thinking of an european 19thc. imperialism but more of an updated american version. the u.s. didn’t really get involved in imperialism on the same level that europe did in the 19thc; it didn’t take over masses of countries for economic purposes. rather the u.s.’ acts of imperialism were contained to the american continent and the two countries it did take over (philippines and cuba) the gov’t rationalized to the public as acts of bringing the ‘blessings of america’ (democracy, capitalism, etc.) to these primative, underdeveloped, and dictatorship countries. the rational the u.s. used to justify these acts and the continued u.s. expansion into indian lands out west generally is referred to as manifest destiny and the modern equivalent historians refer to as american exceptionalism. i have to wonder if the american need to expand, exhibited over and over in the 19th and 20th c; bring ‘the blessings of america’ to iraq is another instance of americans believing that their way of life is more sanctified, exceptional, and blessed than the way of life of others. therefor, i would think the belief in american exceptionalism more than anything else is the source of bush’s godspeak or ‘god sponsored imperialism’.