OUT OF THE FRYING PAN (LEBANON) INTO THE FIRE (THE UNITED STATES): ON THE FUTURE USE OF CHURCHES AND SYNAGOGUES.

rough second draft

What do I care about the country
May God protect the children.

Fairouz -- from her song, "Kifak Inta." (My translation from Arabic.)

Taking on the world with wars and military bases should be a prescription for constant campaigns of mobilization at home for foreign wars. As Iraq has shown this mobilization domestically is likely to call on religious feelings and dogma – the force of churches and synagogues. How else mobilize? To tell Americans that we’re going to war because we want to assure that this or that oil or gas pipeline doesn’t go through Russia or Iran? Too sterile; It wouldn’t work. The people at the White House will need religion to mobilize effectively, as Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney have shown. Unleash the power of religion through faith-based initiatives and wars in foreign and Muslim lands.

I think there’s a good chance that the Bush Administration’s use of religion to mobilize for war will replicate in future administrations. We’ve seen that an oil grab can be called “war” and can be mobilized for through the political use of religious exclusivity and extremism. In the end the White House mobilized not the drivers of Urban Assault Vehicles but those who attended churches and synagogues. These, by definition and with help from Israel, are anti-Muslim and anti-Arab. Their mirror image: the mosques.

The political entrepreneurs are aware that the churches and synagogues are ripe candidates to mobilize against China and Russia, too, especially if evangelical preaching in these lands and access to Jews in Russia (or on behalf of the -- likely-- few left) isn’t made easy by the authorities.)

One backlash begets another: churches and synagogues versus mosques. And there are time bombs and rallying cries always ripe for mass mobilization. The rulers, friends and "assets" of the harmful idiots, in the Arab and Muslim Worlds already had been (and still are living) on edge, way before the Iraq oil grab. Why? the harmful idiots had proven repeatedly incapable at competently addressing the establishment of a Palestinian state, returning the Arab Joulan to Syria, putting a stop to the building and expansion of Israeli settlements (the Israelis and their right wing diaspora spokesmen in Washington are now trying to belittle the importance of those and of the Palestinian/Arab differenes with Israel compared to that between Sunnis and Shias, wishful thinking abounding), and attending to the financial/refugee/intelligence wars time bomb that is Lebanon.



The Iraq war has revealed that religious extremism isn’t the exclusive purview of the Islamic Republic and other Muslim and foreign regions. The Bush Administration has used religious extremism and zealotry to mobilize at home for the Iraq oil grab. And this extremism has spread to England where its former Prime Minister, a likely asset of ours, has felt the (in the end, political) necessity to (publicly) convert to Catholicism. The same religious extremism is spreading to France. The latter’s President, likely an asset of the harmful idiots/Israel’s diaspora, along with the Pope, seem to want to re-define (read: dilute) secularism and the separation of Church and State in that country. Sarkozi has welcomed with open arms a Pope who’s indifferent, maybe even uneasy and perhaps hostile, about relations with the Muslim World. The Pope and Sarkozi likely are worried about Muslims and Africans flooding Christian and blond Europe, what with these secular Europeans so averse to having children.

The country of Lebanon is the test tube for religious exclusivity and extremism. (Which had befuddled the US Marines, who were there in the early 1980s. And who were said to have been awed at the stated differences among the Lebanese, viewing the fact that the Lebanese “looked alike.” The Marines had come from a racial culture to a sectarian. Hence their befuddlement. But now: welcome to sectarian America, too!) Sectarian extremism, superficially, has led to an internecine civil war in Lebanon, made one hundred times worse by the irresolution of the reality of refugees, the corollary absence of a Palestinian state, and the non-return to Syria of the Arab Joulan.

We’re not like Lebanon, you might say. Our institutions should be able to withstand the unleashing of religious exclusivity and extremism, both Christian and Jewish. Perhaps that’s true. Likely it is. But, at a less superficial level, the Lebanon experience of religious exclusivity and extremism already may have proven significant in its application to the United States. Uncontrolled religious exclusivity and extremism in Lebanon has led not only to civil war but, more importantly for the long-term, to financial disaster and bankruptcy. A country of around four million in population faces a national debt of at least $40 billion. (Do the calculation for a country of our size: 300 plus million, divide it by 4 million, and multiply the result by $40 billion. You get the picture.)

One important (sectarian) observation: that while the U.S. seems more homogenous (Christian/Jewish; so called "Judeo-Christian -- excuse the cynicism: even as children in Lebanon we use to poke fun at Christian-Muslim flirtation, seeing it as a joke ) than Lebanon (18 officially-recognized sects), the fact is that there are groups (e.g., African American, Unitarian, Quaker) who would be so intent on defeating the use of the right-wing imperial Christian-Jewish churches and synagogues that they can be seen as “sects” of their own. That would make the Lebanon example yet more applicable.

The dynamics that result from unleashing religious extremism by a White House, I submit, are one-and-same as those found in a highly religiously mobilized smaller country like Lebanon. These dynamics pack the power to divert attention away from public policy issues that need to be addressed, direly; and which failure to address result in financial disaster and bankruptcy. (Not to mention the use of religion to nullify a politician's personal and professional achievements and even her intelligence. I'm familiar with two churches and in both the word seems to have been put out that Obama is Muslim.) It’s a world where political entrepreneurs find it easier to build on religious exclusivity and zealotry to draw votes than to face up to seemingly intractable issues such as national bankruptcy – issues which would require ( dare I say it) taxation. I see that in Lebanon (in its press) every day: that “country” is so consumed by religious exclusivity and identification that its politicians spend their time rallying the religious/sectarian forces and not attending to looming (it’s already in effect) financial disaster. They leave the time bomb that is their “country” 's financial crisis to the Central Bank. (My mechanic, an Arab man, told me that Lebanon is a country on paper only. I agree.)

Are we that different here? Haven’t American politicians so ridden the religious mobilization train that they’ve ignored the financial crisis and its roots and left it all to the Federal Reserve? And can the Federal Reserve manage a crisis about which it already has failed (e.g. ignoring the looming sub-prime mortgage crisis) without help from the politicians in the form of higher revenue for the bankrupt federal government?

Looking back, it could be that we should’ve read (correlated) eventual bankruptcy, both public (federal and state governments) and private (banks, investment outfits, and hedge funds) with the White House’s mobilization of religious extremism and zealotry. It could be, too, that we should look at the world with an eye on religious extremism as predictive of national banksrupcy for any country we study.

The future: more harmfully idiotic “wars” and oil grabs; more religious zealotry and extremism; and chronic national bankruptcy and bailouts by the Federal Government?