How Religion Drove George W. Bush's Decisions: An Interview with Biographer Jean Edward Smith

[trotsky]

http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/163602

Professor Jean Edward Smith’s in-depth and incisive new biography of the 43rd president, Bush (Simon and Schuster) begins with this striking sentence: “Rarely in the history of the United States has the nation been so ill-served as during the presidency of George W. Bush.” He proves his case in the following pages.

In Bush, Professor Smith recounts W’s childhood in Texas; lackluster academic career at Andover, Yale, and Harvard Business School; Air National Guard service; business ventures; alcoholism; marriage to Laura; embrace of born-again Christianity; and term as Texas governor. But the bulk of the book is devoted to Bush’s presidency and his disastrous foreign policy.

...

Robin Lindley: His religious beliefs must have affected that Korean decision and his crusade in the Middle East.

Professor Jean Edward Smith: Exactly. Bush felt he was God’s agent here on earth to defeat evil. If you believe that, you don’t have to worry about all of the other restrictions. The clearest example of that is when he called President Chirac of France just before the invasion of Iraq, and he wanted France to be with us in that. He told Chirac that this was conflict against “Gog and Magog before the final judgment”—from the book of Revelation. Chirac didn’t know what Bush was talking about. When it was explained to him, it made Chirac all the more certain that he didn’t want any part of it.

[saltpoint]

1. I love Professor Smith's opening sentence.

Understated though it be.

I also love that Chirac wasn't catching the Revelation vibe in his meeting with Dubya, and that he was admirably unfamiliar with the specific literature of psychotic apocalypse alluded to by the treacherous pseudocowboy nincompoop in his office.

Stanley Kunitz believed that putting power in the hands of people who are not spiritually great was dangerous. I think Kunitz was right.

[Jerry442]

3. Chirac also probably ignorant of the Cthulu mythos. Arrogant of him. NT

[saltpoint]

5. I never quite got aboard the Chirac

raft, but no matter how deep or superficial his thinking may have been running that day, I'm guessing he was raising an eyebrow or two about the jabbering fool talking to him.

The meeting featured two countries with a decidedly colonial presence. Hard to imagine too much good coming out of a confab like that.

[trotsky]

4. Understated indeed.

There was such an opportunity after 9/11. We had the world behind us. What could have been a transformational global event for the better was instead flushed down the toilet because a delusional Christian soldier and his band of war profiteers had other plans.

[saltpoint]

6. Agree, trotsky. A lost moment, and

much lost with it.

[catbyte]

2. Oh, God...