When Love of Country Means Hatred of Humanity

Now that the re-election of George W. Bush seems certain (God help us!), the question becomes, will the rest of the world be able to meet the danger America now poses to humanity? Make no mistake about it: The Bushites are intent on destroying the post-World War II international order, which the United States led and largely built.

These throwbacks do not believe there is or ever can be such a thing as international law. The United Nations, in their view, should either become a rubber stamp for American policies, or, better yet, the UN building should be turned into riverfront condos, as one conservative commentator put it recently.

The neocon’s hidden agenda is to mortally weaken the UN system, by allowing and even encouraging chaos to grow through their wrongheaded “global war on terror.” Their aim? They openly declare their desire and plans for world domination, believing without doubt in the goodness and purity of American power. The expansion of American bases in the last few years is proof of their intentions.

Exploiting what should have been seen as a crime against humanity on 9/11, the Bush Administration has fanned the hatred of America through its divisive, bigoted, and militaristic policies. When the next major attack in the West occurs, they will complete their self-fulfilling prophecy by saying we must prosecute 'the global war on terror' with even greater vigor and ruthlessness.

It’s a diabolically clever vicious circle--the greater the chaos, the more the need for American power to control it. Thus terrorists provide a perfect foil for Bush and his cronies to successfully propagandize for endless war at home, and American supremacy abroad.

The Iraq invasion was and is an essential component of this agenda, because without “fighting terrorists” there, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to sustain the war mentality at home. Thus by repeating ad nauseam “we are fighting the terrorists abroad so that we don’t have to fight them at home,” the Bush Administration is succeeding in equating the immoral war in Iraq with “protecting the homeland.”

That is why most Americans are quite willing to let Iraq continue to be a magnet for terrorists. ‘See, it’s working,’ the Bush Administration intones, ‘because they haven’t attacked us here again.’ As long as that lying logic holds, Bush’s followers will keep following him into hell, taking the rest of the country, and the world, with them. Does anyone really believe that this toxic crew, which sees war where there is none, and which makes war from father to son, will stay contained within the conveniently porous borders of hapless Iraq?

George W. Bush was an alcohol and drug abuser until he was 40, when he converted to fundamentalist Christianity. He has a world-view fully in accord with the extremist “last days” madness to which so many so-called followers of Jesus in this country now so fervently subscribe. Jesus would certainly be sick at how these hateful people have twisted his teachings. They are the mirror image of the deviant distortions of Mohammed rendered by followers of al Qeda.

John Kerry and the Democrats futilely try to distinguish between ‘the global war against terrorism’ and the war in Iraq. But the propaganda war and the real war form a Gordian knot that no amount of reasoned rhetoric by Kerry can untangle. The malodorous and malicious Bush Administration has cunningly merged the phony war with the forged war into a seamless web of deliberately fearful and fearsome xenophobia.

Patriotism, nationalism, and jingoism are gradations on a single spectrum of false virtue, culminating in the malediction that presently grips America. Patriotism is not the highest good. Indeed, patriotism is not a good at all when the love of country is put before the love of humanity. Germans in the 1930’s had a great love and loyalty to country, but it was very false and dark at its core.

The Bush Administration, and the vast majority of its supporters, are infected with the same virulent disease. Their sentimental love of country is actually a hatred of humanity.

- Martin LeFevre is a contemplative, and non-academic religious and political philosopher. He has been publishing in North America, Latin America, Africa, and Europe (and now New Zealand) for 20 years. Email: martinlefevre@sbcglobal.net. The author welcomes comments.

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