The Religious Right as all-purpose bogeyman

In what is otherwise a valuable article, Chris Hedges repeats a charge that has become something of a commonplace among critics of the Bush administration’s foreign policy:

This myth, the lie, about war, about ourselves, is imploding our democracy. We shun introspection and self-criticism. We ignore truth, to embrace the strange, disquieting certitude and hubris offered by the radical Christian Right. These radical Christians draw almost exclusively from the book of Revelations, the only time in the Gospels where Jesus sanctions violence, peddling a vision of Christ as the head of a great and murderous army of heavenly avengers. They rarely speak about Christ’s message of love, forgiveness and compassion. They relish the cataclysmic destruction that will befall unbelievers, including those such as myself, who they dismiss as “nominal Christians.” They divide the world between good and evil, between those anointed to act as agents of God and those who act as agents of Satan. The cult of masculinity and esthetic of violence pervades their ideology. Feminism and homosexuality are forces, believers are told, that have rendered the American male physically and spiritually impotent. Jesus, for the Christian Right, is a man of action, casting out demons, battling the Anti-Christ, attacking hypocrites and castigating the corrupt. The language is one not only of exclusion, hatred and fear, but a call for apocalyptic violence, in short the language of war.

Whether or not this is a fair characterization of at least some members of the “Religious Right,” the idea that the RR is the decisive force in determining the shape of American foreign policy is, to put it mildly, baloney.

Despite what Democrats would have us believe, very little of President Bush’s foreign policy can be said to represent a radical break with previous administrations. The Clinton administration had signed on to regime change in Iraq and intervened unilaterally without UN approval (or with a “coalition of the willing” if you like) in other countries such as (ex-)Yugoslavia. Does anyone think the RR was a major force in shaping policy in the Clinton administration? And recall that most of John Kerry’s criticisms of Pres. Bush’s foreign policy were on points of process or efficacy, not critiques of overall aims.

The thing is, the US has more or less been pursuing a bipartisan policy of “global hegemony” at least since the end of WWII (who was the last genuine non-interventionist to sit in the Oval Office? Hoover?) Whether or not such a policy is a good idea is a matter that can be debated. And while there’s plenty to criticize the “Relgious Right” about, it’s silly to blame them for something whose roots go much, much deeper.