BuzzFlash Reviews

May 2005

Crusade: Chronicles of an Unjust War by James Carroll

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There could not be a more timely book (even though it was released last year), because James Carroll eloquently and cogently makes the case that the Bush Administration has launched a religious Crusade wrapped inside the rhetoric of the War on Terrorism. The technicality of whether or not Korans were flushed down toilets at Gitmo is being used by the Busheviks to divert attention from the reality that this IS a war against Islam.

If the right wing of the Republican Party attacks "heretics" at home and has spokespeople that imply federal judges and liberals should be shot, why wouldn't they flush a Koran down the toilet? The extremist fundamentalists that run the White House -- and America -- don't tolerate dissent from their radical religious doctrines at home, why would they make an exception for members of the Moslem faith?

Carroll uses as a point of departure Bush's "slip" after 9/11 that he was leading a "Crusade" against terrorism. Although Bush's handlers quickly diverted attention from the slip -- which reflects Bush's real intentions -- the mission of extremist Christianity that is imbued in Bush's war on terror is well-documented in this book.

In riveting detail, and with deep insight, Carroll places Bush's "Crusade" in the historical context of the original Crusades and their emphasis on cruelty and death in the name of God. The truth, which the White House won't acknowledge (but comes out in the speeches from people like General "This is a Holy War" Boykin), is that the Busheviks, like the popes who launched the medieval Crusades, see the war on terrorism as a struggle of the "righteous" believers in Christ against Islamic heretics. The irony, of course, is that Islamic radicals see the conflict in just the opposite way. They are mirror perspectives of each other.

Carroll, a columnist for the Boston Globe, is a rare writer, who is informative, compassionate, revealing and deeply humanistic.

If you want to see a sample of his writing, read this May 17th column from the Boston Globe, in which he deplores how the United States Air Force Academy has become a have for intolerant extremist Christian cadets: "Now the uproar is about the academy's religious ''climate,' in the word used by an investigative task force. Christian cadets have been pressuring peers who believe differently, or who do not believe. Jewish cadets, in particular, have been targeted, charged with the murder of Christ. Academy faculty and chaplain's staff are reported to have joined in the pressuring."

Can there be any doubt that the Bush Administration used interrogation and torture techniques that humiliated believers in Islam? No, it is all documented in photographs and the Pentagon's own reports, and what we are seeing is only the tip of the iceberg, it appears. It's blowback time.

Carroll ends his May 17th column with these ominous words: "In the era of global warming, the link between human assumptions and climate is clear. The threat to the Earth of unintended climate change is a metaphor for the less tangible but equally grave threat arising from reasserted assumptions of religious superiority, polluting the human climate with intolerance, perhaps spawning winds of violence."

That is the reason for the violence in Afghanistan and much of the rest of the Islamic world today. It's the direct result of religious extremism and intolerance that emanates directly from the White House. This is a Top-Down Administration.

"Crusade" is a book that leaves no doubt about the Bush administration's religious intentions in regards to the Islamic world. Among the first people to fly into Iraq after the U.S. military were missionaries aligned with the Republican Party. It was no accident.

After all, to Bush and his religious right, this IS a Crusade. They just wrap it up in flowery words of democracy as they religiously humiliate their "opponents" in a Holy War.

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