America Is A Religion

"The death of Uday and Qusay," the commander of the ground forces in Iraq told reporters onWednesday, "is definitely going to be a turning point for the resistance." [1] Well, it was aturning point, but unfortunately not of the kind he envisaged. On the day he made his announcement, Iraqiinsurgents killed one US soldier and wounded six others. On the following day, they killed another three; overthe weekend they assassinated five and injured seven. Yesterday they slaughtered one more and wounded three.This has been the worst week for US soldiers in Iraq since George Bush declared that the war there was over.

Few people believe that the resistance in that country is being coordinated by Saddam Hussein and hisnoxious family, or that it will come to an end when those people are killed. But the few appear to include themilitary and civilian command of the United States armed forces. For the hundredth time since the US invadedIraq, the predictions made by those with access to intelligence have proved less reliable than the predictionsmade by those without. And, for the hundredth time, the inaccuracy of the official forecasts has been blamedon "intelligence failures".

The explanation is wearing a little thin. Are we really expected to believe that the members of the USsecurity services are the only people who cannot see that many Iraqis wish to rid themselves of the US army asfervently as they wished to rid themselves of Saddam Hussein? What is lacking in the Pentagon and the WhiteHouse is not intelligence (or not, at any rate, of the kind we are considering here), but receptivity. Theirsis not a failure of information, but a failure of ideology.

To understand why this failure persists, we must first grasp a reality which has seldom been discussed inprint. The United States is no longer just a nation. It is now a religion. Its soldiers have entered Iraq toliberate its people not only from their dictator, their oil and their sovereignty, but also from theirdarkness. As George Bush told his troops on the day he announced victory, "wherever you go, you carry amessage of hope - a message that is ancient and ever new. In the words of the prophet Isaiah, "To thecaptives, 'come out,' and to those in darkness, 'be free'". [2]

So American soldiers are no longer merely terrestrial combatants; they have become missionaries. They areno longer simply killing enemies; they are casting out demons. The people who reconstructed the faces of Udayand Qusay Hussein carelessly forgot to restore the pair of little horns on each brow, but the understandingthat these were opponents from a different realm was transmitted nonetheless. Like all those who sendmissionaries abroad, the high priests of America cannot conceive that the infidels might resist through theirown free will; if they refuse to convert, it is the work of the devil, in his current guise as the formerdictator of Iraq.

As Clifford Longley shows in his fascinating book Chosen People, published last year, the foundingfathers of the USA, though they sometimes professed otherwise, sensed that they were guided by a divinepurpose. [3] Thomas Jefferson argued that the Great Seal of the United States should depict the Israelites,"led by a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night".[4] George Washington claimed, in hisinaugural address, that every step towards independence was "distinguished by some token of providentialagency". [5] Longley argues that the formation of the American identity was part of a process of "supersession".The Catholic Church claimed that it had supplanted the Jews as the elect, as the Jews had been repudiated byGod. The English Protestants accused the Catholics of breaking faith, and claimed that they had becomethe beloved of God. The American revolutionaries believed that the English, in turn, had broken theircovenant: the Americans had now become the chosen people, with a divine duty to deliver the world to God'sdominion. Six weeks ago, as if to show that this belief persists, George Bush recalled a remark of WoodrowWilson's. "America," he quoted, "has a spiritual energy in her which no other nation cancontribute to the liberation of mankind."[6]

Gradually this notion of election has been conflated with another, still more dangerous idea. It is notjust that the Americans are God's chosen people; America itself is now perceived as a divine project. In hisfarewell presidential address, Ronald Reagan spoke of his country as a "shining city on a hill", areference to the Sermon on the Mount.[7] But what Jesus was describing was not a temporal Jerusalem, but thekingdom of heaven. Not only, in Reagan's account, was God's kingdom to be found in the United States ofAmerica, but the kingdom of hell could also now be located on earth: the "evil empire" of the SovietUnion, against which His holy warriors were pitched.

Since the attacks on New York, this notion of America the divine has been extended and refined. In December2001, Rudy Giuliani, the mayor of that city, delivered his last mayoral speech in St Paul's Chapel, close tothe site of the shattered twin towers. "All that matters," he claimed, "is that you embraceAmerica and understand its ideals and what it's all about. Abraham Lincoln used to say that the test of yourAmericanism was ... how much you believed in America. Because we're like a religion really. A secularreligion." [8] The chapel in which he spoke had been consecrated not just by God, but by the fact thatGeorge Washington had once prayed there. It was, he said, now "sacred ground to people who feel whatAmerica is all about". [9]  The United States of America no longer needs to call upon God; it isGod, and those who go abroad to spread the light do so in the name of a celestial domain. The flag has becomeas sacred as the Bible; the name of the nation as holy as the name of God. The presidency is turning into apriesthood.

So those who question George Bush's foreign policy are no longer merely critics; they are blasphemers, or"anti-Americans". Those foreign states which seek to change this policy are wasting their time: youcan negotiate with politicians; you cannot negotiate with priests. The US has a divine mission, as Bushsuggested in January, "to defend ... the hopes of all mankind", [10] and woe betide those who hopefor something other than the American way of life.

The dangers of national divinity scarcely require explanation. Japan went to war in the 1930s convinced,like George Bush, that it possessed a heaven-sent mission to "liberate" Asia and extend the realm ofits divine imperium. It would, the fascist theoretician Kita Ikki predicted, "light the darkness of theentire world".[11] Those who seek to drag heaven down to earth are destined only to engineer a hell.

George Monbiot's books Poisoned Arrows and NoMan's Land are republished this week by Green Books.

References:

1. Lt. Gen. RicardoSanchez, Commander, Coalition Ground Forces, 23rd July 2003. Briefing on the Confirmation of the Deaths ofUday and Qusay Hussein
2. President George W Bush, 1st May 2003. Address to troops on the USS Abraham Lincoln
3. Clifford Longley, 2002. Chosen People: the big idea that shapes England and America. Hodder and Stoughton,London.
4. Thomas Jefferson, cited in Longley, ibid.
5. George Washington, cited in Longley, ibid.
6. President George W Bush, 21st May 2003. Remarks to the United States Coast Guard Academy, New London,Connecticut.
7. Ronald Reagan, cited in Longley, ibid.
8. Rudy Giuliani, cited in Longley, ibid.
9. ibid
10. President George W. Bush, 28th January 2003. State of the Union Address. The US Capitol.
11. Kita Ikki, cited in Piers Brendon, 2000. The Dark Valley: a panorama of the 1930s. Pimlico, London.