THE DANGERS OF FUNDAMENTALIST BELIEFS ON
GEORGE BUSH AND ON U.S. FOREIGN POLICY.

ISLAMIC & ISRAELI FUNDAMENTALISM AND
HOW THEY INTERACT WITH EACH OTHER AND WITH U.S. POLICY

by Larry Ross, Secretary, New Zealand Nuclear Free Peacemaking Association.
Researcher into nuclear, peace and religious issues.

Delivered to The Christchurch Unitarian Fellowship, Sunday March 21, 2004

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

George Bush is the most powerful man in history. President of the world's only superpower or hyper power, the United States, he controls an arsenal of conventional and nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and their delivery vehicles capable of destroying all life on earth many times over. With the end of the cold war no other country rivals the U.S. and George Bush has announced the US will never allow a challenger to arise.

Bush considers God a key political ally, according to an article from Capitol Hill Blue as reported by Scripps Howard News Service March 5, 2003. He wrote: Bush told a conference of lawmakers that people cannot "claim to know all the ways of Providence"
"Yet we can trust in them, placing our confidence in the loving God behind all of life and all of history" he said "May he guide us now"
(LR Comment: Whatever happens' whatever I do, could be due to Providence. So place your confidence in God, as he is behind all of history. Trust them, trust us. God, or Providence is really responsible for anything that happens)
"Bush has constantly prayed about the Iraqi situation and come to the conclusion that the man (Saddam Hussein) must be disarmed for the safety and security of the American people" (LR Comment: I claim that God has instructed me through prayer, to disarm Saddam Hussein. That means I can go to war and kill thousands of people and that this is the result of what God told me to do in my prayers)
Bush said "he is sustained by the prayers of the people." (LR Comment: Bush is claiming that the prayers of the people help him make the decision to go to war)

"Le Monde, the influential Paris daily, said in one editorial that Bush "is convinced he is inspired by God, and he is dangerous"" (LR Comment: As he claims to read the Bible and pray every day and thereby claims to get divine guidance, he can claim to follow that divine guidance whatever he may do. Even launching a nuclear armageddon could be an act of divine guidance as he says we "cannot know all the ways of Providence"

"Bush is a self-described born-again Christian, at least in part because of a battle with the bottle. Born an Episcopalian, he is now a Methodist. He prays daily and often participates in West Wing Bible studies." Bush said "I pray for strength, I pray for guidance, I pray for forgiveness. And I pray to offer my thanks for a kind and generous almighty god. (LR Comment: Is it strength and guidance to bomb, knowing you will kill and maim thousands of innocent people who you know are no threat to you. Do you really believe that a kind and generous almighty God will forgive you these horrendous crimes? Or is that just the cynical wishful thinking of a duplicitous war criminal?)

Bush said "We're being challenged. We're meeting those challenges because of our faith" (LR Comment: How he meets those challenges is with 'shock and awe' massive bombing campaigns and spreading tons of DU weaponry that will kill, and cause mutations is innocent people for 4.5 billion years. That's not really me doing it he might claim. It is "because of our faith and providence" he says)

One of the best papers I've read is on this subject is:
"BUSH'S ARMAGEDDON OBSESSION, REVISITED" http://www.counterpunch.org/hill01042003.html
by Michael Ortiz Hill. Author of Dreaming the End of the World
I will quote a lot from it but suggest you get the original from the above website.
To quote: " The man is delusional and the shape of his delusion is specifically apocalyptic in belief and intent. That Bush would attack so many vital systems on so many fronts from foreign policy to the environment may seem confusing from the point of view of Realpolitik but becomes transparent in terms of the apocalyptic worldview to which he subscribes. All systems are supposed to go down so the Messiah can come and Bush, seemingly, has taken on the role of the one who brings this to pass."

"The Reverend Billy Graham taught Bush to live in anticipation of the Second Coming but it was his friendship with Dr Tony Evans that shaped Bush's political understanding of how to deport himself in an apocalyptic era. Dr Evans, the Pastor of a large Dallas Church and a founder of the Promise Keepers movement taught Bush about "how the world should be seen from a divine viewpoint"
"S.R. Shearer of Antipas Ministries writes, "Most leaders of the Promise Keepers embrace a doctrine of 'end times (eschatology) known as 'dominionism. Dominionism pictures the seizure of earthy (temporal) power by the people of God as the only means through which the world can be rescued…

"It is the eschatology that Bush has imbibed; an eschatology through which he has gradually (and easily) come to see himself as an agent of God who has been called by him to 'restore the earth to God's control' a 'chosen vessel' so to speak, to bring Restoration of All Things. Shearer calls this delusion, "Messianic leadership" - that is to say usurping the role usually ascribed to the Messiah.

"In the book Bush at War, Bob Woodward writes, "Most presidents have high hopes. Some have grandiose visions of what they will achieve, and he was firmly in that camp. "To answer these attacks and rid the world of evil" says Bush. And again he said:

"We will export death and violence to the four corners of the earth in defense of this great nation"

"Woodward comments, "The president was casting his mission and that of the country in the grand vision of Gods Master Plan.

All the objections from the highest Republican and International and Allied authorities, including the Pentagon, to his war on Iraq "is in the least relevant to Bush." His advisors are the extremist neocons that he has surrounded himself with and agree with him and "his mandate is from God"

"The scriptured text that informs Bush understanding of and enactment of the End Of Days (Revelations 19) depicts Christ returning as the Heavenly Avenger. Revelations is the only New Testament book that justifies violence of any kind, and this it takes to the limit

"…Out of his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. And I saw an angel standing in the sun who cried in a low voice to all the birds flying in mid-air - come gather together for the great supper of God, so you may eat the flesh of kings, generals and mighty men, of horses and their riders, and the flesh of all people, free and slave, small and great"

"Such is "the glory of the coming of the Lord. Truth, carnage, and the ecstasy of vultures. In a ruined world the Messiah slays the antichrist and creates "a new heaven and a new earth" The dead are judged, the Christians saved and the rest of us damned to eternal torment. The new Jerusalem is established and the Lord rules it with an iron sceptre"

"It is not inconceivable that Bush is literally and determinedly drawn consciously and unconsciously, toward the enactment of such a scenario, as he believes, for God's sake. Indeed the stark relentlessness of his policy in the Middle East suggests as much"

The well-known American author Gore Vidal, commenting on previous US Administrations made similar comments about Bush in his article "The Erosion of the American Dream" 19/3/03 http://wwwcounterpunch.org/vidal03132003.html
"No, he certainly is worse(than previous Administrations). We've never had a kind of reckless one who may believe - and there's a whole history now that he's inspired by love of Our Lord -that he is an apocalyptic Christian who'll be going to Heaven while the rest of us go to blazes.
"..we have been at war steadily since 1950. I did a pamphlet "A Perpetual War For Perpetual Peace"...we have the Enemy of the Month. One month its Noreiega-king of drugs. Another one, its Gaddafi - we bombed and killed his daughter. We've moved from one enemy to another and the press and media has never been
more disgusting….The censorship here is so tight in all of the newspapers and particularly in network television. So nobodies getting the facts…"

Michael Oritiz Hill found that Revelations was more of a pagan myth 2000 years before Christ and rewritten into Biblical text some 300 years after Christ's death. Martin Luther found the vindictive God of Revelations incompatible with the gospels and relegated it to the Appendix of his translation of the New Testament. All Protestant Reformers except Calvin regarded apocalyptic millennialism to be heresy.

"This pagan myth recycled as a suspiciously unchristian Biblical text found new credence in the 19th century when John Darby virtually revived the Montanist heresy and invested it with a passionate literalism. Darby left the priesthood of the Church of Ireland and preached Revelations as both prophecy and imminent history. In this he inaugurated a lineage in which Bush's mentors, the Reverend Billy Graham and Dr Tony Evans are recent heirs.

PREPARING FOR THE APOCALYPSE?

In the 2002 Nuclear Posture Review, Bush lowered the barrier against the use of nuclear weapons, and decried they may be used as part of the conventional weapons mix, as needed to win a victory.
In violation of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, he also arranged to make a new generation of nuclear weapons - called mini-nukes or bunker busters. He announced the right to wage pre-emptive war against any country suspected of harbouring terrorists, or was otherwise deemed to be a threat to US interests of US allies. He also claimed the right to use nuclear weapons against nuclear or non-nuclear states - whether or not they had attacked the U.S. The 7 countries named in the Pentagon's Nuclear Posture Review in the March 10, 2002 Los Angelos Times were the so-called "axis of evil"
Iran, Iraq, North Korea, and 4 others ; Libya, Syria, Russia and China.

President Bush has demonstrated that he will knowingly tell a number of lies, in order to fool the US Senate and US public into supporting a major war against a small country - Iraq. He and his allies, the UK, Australia, Italy and Spain will defy the United Nations and even threaten to use nuclear weapons in some circumstances against Iraq - thus, possibly precipitating a series of events which could culminate in a nuclear world war that could end humanity. Gambling with the very future of humanity is a very big gamble to take based on known lies. They knew that Iraq could not strike back, had no nuclear weapons, did not participate in the 9/11 attack, had no links to Al-Qaeda and no weapons of mass destruction.
In spite of extensive counselling by other states and intelligence experts in the US and top Republicans and international experts that his claims were not true or were exaggerated, Bush surrounded by his Administration of neoconservative war planners was not moved. He went ahead with his unjustified, illegal war in defiance of the United Nations and the majority of people everywhere. For example; 90% of the Spanish public opposed Spain going to war with Iraq. Last week democracy prevailed and the Spanish people voted out of office the Government that took them into that war. Will this happen in England, Italy and Australia?

As the famous author, Johnathon Schell said in The Nation 29/3/04, " 549 American soldiers and uncounted thousands of Iraqis, military and civilian, have died; some $125 US billion has been expended; no weapons of mass destruction have been found; the economy is a disaster; electricity and water are sometime things; America's former well-wishers, the Shiites, are impatient with the occupation; terrorist bombs are taking a heavy toll; and Iraq as a whole, far from being a model for anything, is a cautionary lesson in the folly of imperial rule in the 21st century….yet all this is only part of the cost of the decision to invade and occupy Iraq"

Arundhati Roy, another famous author said in her brilliant article The New American Century in the 9/2/04 issue of The Nation, The "new Imperialism is already upon us. It's a remodelled, streamlined version of what we once knew. For the first time in history , a single empire with an arsenal of weapons that could obliterate the world in an afternoon has complete, unipolar, economic and military hegemony."

FUNDAMENTALIST INFLUENCES ON BUSH AND FOREIGN POLICY

The question is how much do Bush's Christian fundamentalist beliefs influence his decisions to tell a pack of lies to fool people into supporting his phoney war and killing thousands of people; spreading tons of depleted uranium weapons to contaminate Iraq causing countless deaths and mutations there and in neighbouring countries for 4.5 billion years, making new far more dangerous nuclear and pre-emptive war doctrines, ushering in a new nuclear weapons and nuclear proliferation era, thus increasing the dangers of a nuclear war, spurning environment crisis such as global warming and the Pentagon's vitally important report on "abrupt climate change that could precipitate nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine etc", withdrawing from international treaties, record US deficits, suppressing US civil liberties and the militarisation of space to protect American dominance and many other issues.

Is all this a manifestation of Christian Fundamentalism? Was Bush chosen by God to dominate the world as he claims? Or is his professed Christian Fundamentalism mixed with appeals to patriotism a cloak to get the support of the uninformed, misinformed and religiously confused? Can he use protestations of Godly communication to excuse and divinely justify his crimes?

Are we to believe that its all necessary to support Bush's so-called war on terrorism? Tony Blair, PM of Britain and John Howard, PM of Australia apparently think so. They seem ready to follow Bush into any war he chooses to launch against any new enemy he cares to name, with any excuse he cares to make, and any risks he cares to take - even a nuclear war that could end humanity. Now that's an imbecilic dog-like devotion worthy of the Guinness Book of Records. I've never seen the like of this kind of dedicated infantilism in politics before. I hope people support Helen Clarke's position enough to ensure she doesn't buckle any more than she has already in sending so-called nation-building humanitarian military forces to Iraq and Afghanistan. It must be hard as leader of a small state to keep a sane head and an even policy when your three much more powerful major allies are going war crazy - apparently with 'skies the limit' 'whose next' support for Bush's insanely dangerous pre-emptive nuclear policy.

Bush's $125 billion strategy simply makes many more terrorists
and piles up horrendous debts for America's grandchildren to repay. Terrorist reactions provide violent tangible excuses for Bush and his English and Australian poodles to strengthen their war on terrorism. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy - the Bush PR man's dream scenario.

As a born again Christian fundamentalist, it suits Bush's strategy to mix religious terminology with his military/political message. It resonates with the majority of the US public - 70% of whom believed his lies, endlessly given, as fact by the media. Thus they supported his war.

In his brilliant article in The Guardian Weekly 3/10/03, George Monbiot explores how US leaders now see themselves as priests, with a divine mission to rid the world of its demons - so 8)many of whom have been created and supported by the U.S. - like Saddam Hussein.

Monbiot mentions "Clifford Longley and his book Chosen People in which he says the American founding fathers sensed they were guided by a divine purpose. For example George Washington
claimed, in his inaugural address, that every step towards independence was "distinguished by some token of providential agency." …The American revolutionaries believed that the English had broken their covenant: the Americans had now become the chosen people, with a divine duty to deliver the world to God's dominion… (The Jews actually got in their claim before the Americans. They claimed to be god's chosen people. Perhaps the Americans had not heard in 1776 about the Jews prior heavenly claim. Maybe the Americans should apply for a franchise) " It's not just that the Americans are God's chosen people; America itself is seen as a divine project. In his farewell address, Ronald Reagan spoke of his country as a "shining city on the hill", a reference to the Sermon On The Mount. But what Jesus was describing was not a temporal Jerusalem, but the kingdom of heaven. Not only, in Reagan's account, was God's kingdom to be found in the United States of America, but the kingdom of hell could also now be located on earth: the "evil empire" of the Soviet Union, against which His holy warriors were pitched….The flag has become as sacred as the Bible; the name of the nation as holy as the name of God. The presidency is turning into a priesthood. So those who question Bush's foreign policy are no longer merely critics; they are blasphemers. The US has a divine mission, as Bush suggested in January 2003…'TO DEFEND…THE HOPES OF ALL MANKIND"

"The dangers of a national divinity scarcely require explanation. Japan went to war in the 1930's convinced, like Bush, that it possessed a heaven-sent mission to "liberate" Asia and extend the realm of its divine imperium. It would, the fascist theoretician Kita Ikki predicted, "light the darkness of the entire world"

It didn't. It created a series of hells on earth. What would the divinely inspired Japanese have done with nuclear weapons?. What will the born again, divinely inspired Bush Administration, with the new nuclear permissiveness and lowered nuclear barriers, do with the greatest nuclear arsenal in history, against its various named "axis of evil" states and other named enemies.?

The Billionaire, George Soros, writing in The Guardian January 26, 2004, said "I contend that the Bush Administration has deliberately exploited September 11 to pursue policies that the American public would not have otherwise tolerated….the country is in the hands of a group of extremists whose strong sense of mission is matched only by their false sense of certitude. This distorted view postulates that because we are stronger than others, we must know better and we must have right on our side.
That is where religious fundamentalism comes together with market fundamentalism to form the ideology of American supremacy."

Sometimes the very rich are also very smart, smart enough to think of other things than their King Midas preoccupations of adding yet more wealth. You don't have to be a Rhodes scholar to know that a nuclear war can atomise all your wealth, as well as you, your children and grandchildren - quickly - and make the planet uninhabitable for the few remnants of population. The few rich powerful fundamentalist Christians who believe in the end-times and that they will be raptured up to heaven may be working for this kind of nuclear armageddon. But for the majority of mankind, they want this world to continue and for man and human society to achieve its expanding potential.

Israeli and Islamic Fundamentalism

Michael Oritz Hill in his article (above) said "Revelations is much believed by Muslim fundamentalists, and like their Christian compatriots they also thrill to redemption through apocalypse. Jewish fundamentalist of course do not believe in Revelations but have nonetheless made common cause with the Christian Right.
"It's a very tragic situation in which Christian fundamentalists, certain groups of them that focus on Armageddon and the Rapture and the role of a war between Muslims and Jews in bringing about the Second Coming, are involved in a folie a deux with extremist Jews," said Ian Lustick, author of "For The Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel". The Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition (and yes it is a single tradition) is being led by it's fringe into the abyss and the rest of us with it.

"The world has been readied for the fire but the critical element is the Bush Administration. Never in the history of Christendom has there been a moment when this rogue element has carried anything like the credibility and political power that it carries now."

In another article: "Bush's Armageddon Obsession" by Michael Oritz Hill in Counterpunch Oct 19, 2002, he writes of the influence of Hal Lindsay's book "The Late Great Planet Earth" (sales 15 million copies) "shaping fundamentalist thoughts on apocalyptic matters. Written within the geopolitical fantasies of the cold war, Lindsey writes "As Armageddon begins with the invasion of Israel by the Arabs and the Russian confederacy, and their consequent swift destruction, the greatest period of Jewish conversion to their true Messiah will begin" I'd rather not believe that Bush is moving according to Lindseys' game plan but the simple fact is we don't know.
The Administration's systematic alienation of our Arab allies ( soon leaving Israel as our only viable ally in the Mideast) raises disturbing questions."

(My analysis: Bush has not only lowered the nuclear barrier and created pre-emptive doctrines to attack any other state, he has named 2 nuclear powers in the Nuclear Posture Review, as potential targets - Russia and China. Ask yourself what leaders in their right mind would plan and tell their own people and the world, that America with about 10,000 nuclear weapons, (and possibly with Britain's 1,000 nuclear weapons if Tony Blair goes along, as he has to date, with Bush's vision), would contemplate attacking Russia and/or China, who also have about 10,000 nuclear weapons. To put it mildly that could mean the end of the world many times over. But to devoted Christian Fundamentalists like Bush and his supporters, they think (or let others think for them) that it is end-times soon, the promised day of judgement, the final Armageddon which they interpret as promised in the Bible. Fundamentalists believe they will be raptured to heaven while the rest of us will suffer the eternal fires of hell. As a believer, Bush may feel quite pleased to be playing such a key role in God's plan. It's difficult to prove. More research is needed because of the many indicators about these supremely important questions.
Bush and his PR team are too cunning to spell it out, as they must know it would wake the sleeping giant - the American public. However the extraordinarily Bush mideast policies do line up and set the stage for something like Hal Lindsey's predictions to come true.

Oritz goes on to write about Islamic Fundamentalism:
" Lindsey's book influenced not only American Fundamentalist culture, but had a pervasive effect on fundamentalist Islams' apocalyptic worldview. According to David Cook, the American expert on Islamic apocalyptic literature, until the late 80's this element of Muslim culture had been fairly static for centuries. "The contemporary Muslim" says Cook, "sees the present world turned upside down by Christian millennialism…In defense, Muslins make heavy use of the Bible, or as one might say, the Bible seen through the eyes of Hal Lindsey. There are Muslim readings of the book of Daniel, Ezekial and Revelation. The only difference is that the 'good guys' are Muslims, not Christians" This strange cross-fertilisation between cultures has placed us in the situation in which the current administration and Radical Islam share a common worldview in which peace descends after Evil is defeated in an apocalyptic battle. Both parties sing the same song: God will lead our warriors to victory against the forces of darkness. We are at an extraordinary and critical historical moment….It is clear, that we should be afraid for we are profoundly endangered by the passions of both Christian and Muslim fundamentalisms."

In the article 'THE WIDENING CRUSADE" by Sydney H. Schanberg in the New York Village Voice, he says:
"The Israeli bombing raid on Syria Oct 5 , 2003 was an expansion of the Bush policy, carried out by the Sharon government but with the implicit approval of Washington. ( This underlines what I said before about Bush setting the stage in the Mideast for a Hal Lindsay Armageddon script) "People close to the president say that his conversion to evangelical Methodism, after a life of aimless carousing, markedly informs his policies, both foreign and domestic. In the soon to be published "The Faith Of George W. Bush (Tarcher/Penguin), author Stephen Mansfield writes ( in the advance proofs) that in the election year 2,000, Bush told Texas preacher James Robison, one of his spiritual mentors: "I feel like God wants me to run for president. I can't explain it, but I sense my country is going to need me….I know it won't be easy on me or my family, but God wants me to do it.
Mansfield reports: "Aides found him face down on the floor in prayer in the Oval office"….he framed America's challenges in nearly Biblical language "Saddam Hussein is an evildoer Bush said, He has to go" "….policy… will be processed in terms of the personal, in terms of the moral, and in terms of a sense of divine purpose that propels the present to meet the challenges of its time"
"Most of the men and women who are advocating the Bush Doctrine…are not opportunists in search of power, most of them truly believe in their vision of a world crusade under the American flag. They are serious, and they now have power at the top.

( My analysis on this is that Bush knew about the neocoms global domination plan in 2,000 and that is why he said what he did to Texas preacher James Robison in 2,000 " I sense my country is going to need me…I know it won't be easy….but God wants me to do it" From this and the other papers quoted herein, I conclude that Bush believes that all his decisions and actions are part of a divine plan, or God's instructions, and that as President, he does not have to answer for them to anyone. Lying prostate on the floor praying is another indicator of Bush's mental condition or mindset. His long litany of decisions that spell big problems - even catastrophes in the short and long term, is another indicator that he believes that as end times are almost upon us, God will soon be taking over the fate of the world for the final judgement and Armageddon. So why worry about such details as catastrophic rapid climate change - he might think. In fact his policy decisions do reflect a crazy kind of consistency, if considered in the context of a Christian apocalyptic fundamentalist philosophy. Also, his quite appalling series of lies used to justify the war with Iraq, so convincingly parroted by Tony Blair and John Howard, can all be excused by Bush, as simply following divine orders - part of the divine plan. Who are we to question or know what is so clearly (to Bush) God's will?
For Bush, mentally armed with the Christian Fundamentalist religion, anything is possible and everything can be divinely justified, No wonder he doesn't take advice from some of the best minds in the U.S. and elsewhere. These are mere mortals. Bush has God telling him what to do and his fundamentalist vision. Bush, in daily communication with God through prayer, does not question what is obviously God's will and plan.

Another excellent article by Sydney Schanberg "George Bush , Make Believe President" appeared in the Village Voice February 18, 2004.
He said Bush is "not qualified, not truthful, not wise and…a limited man missing many qualifications for the job…who has made a mess of almost everything and put the country at risk in many ways… He seems addled and stunned….with reckless spending and record deficits"

Another excellent article in the same vein is
"Bush and God Scam: Don't Buy It" available in:http://www.commondreams.org/ on March 10, 2003 , just before the US invasion of Iraq.

by Ira Chernus, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder
He said the Whitehouse " is mounting a massive campaign to paint the president as a man on a divine mission, a man who sees himself as an agent of God….Wrap the flag around God, and who can question your moral credibility? If Bush stands with God, those who actively oppose his war must be down below with Satan….nothing can stop this Christian soldier from marching out to war."

The essentials of fundamentalist thought and doctrine is told by Gary North in his article "The Unannounced Reason Behind American Fundamentalism's Support for the State of Israel" written in July 19, 2,000. He is also the author of "Conspiracy: A Biblical View" . It can be downloaded at http://www.freebooks.com
"According to premillennialists, who are known as dispensationalists, Jesus will come secretly in the clouds and raise deceased Christians - and only Christians - from the dead. Immediately thereafter, every true Christian will be transported bodily into the sky, and from there to heaven: the Rapture event….
The Rapture-based escape from history is now universally believed by fundamentalists to be imminent. Generations of fundamentalists have believed that they will escape bodily death. They will be transported into the sky, like Elijah, though without benefit of chariots. When? The answer: Soon…..Everyone wants to go to heaven but nobody wants to die. The doctrine of imminent rapture allows Christians to believe seriously that they can go to heaven without dying. Millions of Americans believe this today.
The fundamentalist movement thrives on the doctrine of the imminent Rapture, not the indefinitely postponed Rapture.

( My analysis. As mentioned in various quotes, George Bush identifies himself as part of the evangelical Christian fundamentalist movement... thus he must see the rapture as coming soon when he and other fundamentalists will go bodily to heaven. Again, this helps establish why George Bush seems so unconcerned by such trivia as global warming, huge deficits, (Bush's)God's divine lies to extend (Bush's) God's kingdom by war, and thousands - maybe millions of dead. It's all part of the plan as prophesied)

Israel's Fundamentalist Policies

14) Since about 1948, US policy has been to unstintingly support the state of Israel. This has sometimes proved difficult, especially today when Israel is so obviously expanding its territory into Palestine in defiance of international law and many UN resolutions. Orthodox Jews believe God gave them the territory called Palestine and that they have a right to occupy it. Thus there is continued expansion of Jewish settlements in Palestine territory. Sharon is building a great wall in Palestine territory in order to steal more land under the guise of protecting the illegal Israeli settlers from terrorism. He has stepped up military raids into Palestine as well as increasing assassination and bombings in Palestine. All this in the name of making war against terrorism. However it is the illegal Israeli occupation, persecution, and murder of Palestinians which provokes terrorism . The U.S. and Israel call any opposition to this murderous program "anti-sematic". The US continues to give Israel at least $3 billion US a year, so identifying itself in this any many other ways as Israel's chief ally and sponsor. Fundamentalists give unwavering support to "the nation of Israel in order to keep the Israelis alive until after the Rapture." Gary North wrote. Fundamentalists are so powerful in the US, and are so entrenched in the administration, and Israel is so essential to the fundamentalist vision, that support for Israel will go on even though it may seem to others to be very much against U.S. real interests. It's very easy to see how the fundamentalist script for Armageddon is being made a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Although this Unitarian paper is long, it only skims the surface of the thousands of available articles on the subject you can find on Internet.

I don't have the time today to explore the other interacting influences for war on the Bush Administration. In addition to (1) the Christian Right or fundamentalist influence there is (2) the military - industrial- scientific- academic-intelligence-political complex warned about by President Eisenhower in his valedictory address in 1961 when he left office, (3) the very powerful neoconservative individuals in high policy-making positions in the Bush Administration, their publications and Think Tanks and (4) the mutually supportive interactions between them.
When you can see the total picture of mutually supporting, financially dedicated rich individuals and organizations, you can understand how large and powerful is the American momentum, like 15) some giant machine out of control, that is racing us all toward Armageddon. It surely is the great tragedy of our known Universe, that such a promising race of beings, with such a glittering, shining potential future, may blow it all away because of their flaws.

What Can We Do As Individuals and Organizations to Prevent A Nuclear Armageddon?

1. Write anti-war and nuclear-free peace letters to media and politicians
2. Vote for the most peaceful anti-war nuclear-free politicians
3. Give financial support to those working for peace
4. However I think that preventing an armageddon will take a lot more than this - a lot more money - a lot more organisation and people - a lot more ideas. Remember we are facing a divinely self-anointed huge empire marching toward global domination or nuclear self-extinction.
5. Unitarians should have a special interest in this task. Whereas Christians believe they have a better world to look forward to,
   Unitarians and many others know they only will ever have one world.
   If we destroy it - then that's the end of the story. No more humanity
   No more future. No more grandchildren - just a burnt out orb for billions of years. So lets get busy and see if we can save it.