Armageddon, the Temple Mount, and George W. Bush's Foreign Policy. (04/16/2002)
I heard an opinion expressed many years ago, from a source now forgotten, like an old shoe in a closet that you cannot remember anymore whose foot it fit, that claimed the final battle between Good and Evil would not commence until the Jews had rebuilt their Temple in Jerusalem. That event, as I recall, was a primary sign that the beginning of the end, Armageddon, was at hand. To religious conservatives, of course, the rebuilding of the Temple has long stood as a sign of hope that the end of the world and the annihilation of all human life on the earth would in fact some day be achieved. People actually pray for that to happen. As bizarre as it seems, to me at least, that a significant number of people, mostly Christians, actually look forward to the destruction of all life on the earth, one can understand the concept, after a fashion, by taking note of the fact that certain promises were made in the Bible (Revelations 5: 9-10, for instance, that says the faithful would be transformed into "a line of kings and priests,/ to serve our God and to rule the world.") that suggest why a down-trodden, heavily persecuted Christian living in the 1st Century would embrace the idea of ruling the world even if his kingdom had to be utterly destroyed before-hand by the wrath of God. Ruling over smoking piles of God-blasted rubble, apparently, is a better hope than having to live a miserable life under the heel of a godless Roman emperor, Nero say.
An impediment to this hope, however, exists at the present moment. The Temple Mount in Jerusalem is currently occupied by the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa mosque which were built on the site where Muhammad was thought to have ascended into heaven when he "died." This Islamic barrier to rebuilding the Temple needs to be removed before any future progress toward world destruction can be accomplished in the final battle between Good and Evil. Ariel Sharon, of course, started the current intifadeh when he visited the Al-Aqsa mosque 18 months ago. What is curious, to me at least, is that most conservative Christians, even those identified as occupying the far-far-right of the movement, and people always identified as the political power base of George W. Bush, have recently taken up positions in staunch support of Ariel Sharon's invasion of the West Bank and have become increasingly critical of Bush's attempts to broker a peace agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Elizabeth Bumiller (NY Times 04/16/2002) has recently observed that "Religious conservatives, who believe that Israel is 'covenant land' that was promised by God to the Jews, have in the last decade grown increasingly pro-Israel." Why would it matter to Christian conservatives whether Israelis or Palestinians control Jerusalem and with it the future disposition, and/or fate, of the Temple Mount? Many Palestinians are Christians themselves. Why would Christians take the side of the Jews and encourage Sharon to kill more and more Palestinians, even some of whom are Christians? It almost seems that Muslims are so abhorrent to some Christians that they are willing to slaughter some of their own to rid the world, or maybe just the Temple Mount, of anything that can be called Islamic.
The Bush administration either does not have a coherent policy toward the crisis in the Middle East or does not intend to develop one in the near future. It is easy enough to believe that Bush and his advisors are out of their depth when trying to deal with situations that have more than a few weeks or months of history behind them. After 9/11, Bush seemed to be unaware of the fact that the Christian-Islamic conflict was considerably older that his youngest child, that the conflict had, in fact, been raging off and on for at least 1400 years before any of it fell on his head. He assured us he would end the conflict through military reprisals against the evildoers even if it took several years. Early on he denied that the attacks against the US had anything to do with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He still denies that proposition but now has sent Colin Powell to the region to negotiate a peace agreement between the warring parties. His reason for doing so, however, has little to do with Israel and Palestine; rather, Bush is responding to the fact that Arab leaders, even universally, told him, through Dick Cheney, that they would not support US military action against Saddam Hussein unless, and/ or until, the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians was favorably resolved. So now Bush is looking for peace in an area of the world where he ignored the conflict raging there for the first 16 months of his administration. Powell's peace efforts have been reviled by Bush's far-right supporters. But why? Apparently, they want Sharon given a free-hand in the hope that he will return to the place where the intifadeh began, that he will come back to the Temple Mount and destroy the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa mosque so that the Israelis can begin construction on the Temple which is supposed to signal the beginning of Armageddon and the end of all life on the earth.
That seems at best a ridiculous idea. Such a view would carry more weight were it not for the fact that some of Bush's other foreign policy initiatives have been no less questionably stupid than the way he has handled the crisis in the Middle East. For instance, word has recently surfaced that the people responsible for the attempt to overthrow the democratically elected government of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela have been conferring with senior White House aides since January in order to enlist the administration's acquiescence, if not outright assistance, in their plot to expel him from office. After Pedro Carmona Estanga seized control of the government, and immediately suspended the legislature, the judiciary, and the Constitution, no one in the Bush administration said a single public word in condemnation of those actions. In fact, Carmona was praised. Two days later, when the people of Venezuela restored Chavez to power, Condaleeza Rice, Bush's national security advisor, thought it would be appropriate to warn Chavez that he must "respect constitutional processes" (Paul Krugman, "Losing Latin America," NY Times, 04/16/2002). Any time Bush promises to protect democratically elected governments, even our own, even especially our own, it might be prudent to check the Constitution to see how many of our rights he has managed to erase since the last time anyone bothered to look.