The Bully Christian Pulpit
By SEAN HANNON

April 17, 2004

Dear Editor,

 President Bush was determined to exude confidence and assurance to the American people at his recent press conference, but the telling moment was when CBS News held their cameras for a long, ten-second closeup on an unguarded Condi Rice. In stark contrast to her cherubic upbeat attitude before the 9/11 Commission, her face was drawn into a morbidly depressed expression that said it all. Perhaps she was instructed to appear “somber” for the occasion. More likely it was because, as the questions got harder, sharper, and less forgiving, the president sounded like the king in Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood of Make-Believe. As he continued to evade most of the probing questions with poorly cobbled and stale soundbites from the past, he issued his latest decree: we will absolutely give sovereignty back to some unknown “entity” on June 30th, and that will make things all better in Iraq. I heard no huzzahs from the crowd in attendance.

 Condi might have taken heart toward the end of his ordeal, however, when the president finally began to work himself up into a passionate lather about what he “believes”.  Striking the podium with the flat of his hand, he declaimed, “I believe so strongly in the power of freedom... I also have this belief, strong belief, that freedom is not this country’s gift to the world, freedom is the Almighty’s gift to every man and woman in this world... We have an obligation to bring freedom to the world. That is our calling.” It was no longer a press conference, it was a tent revival meeting. My 13 year old son, who had come in to watch with me, turned to me and asked “So now our soldiers are missionaries?”

 Our crusader-in-chief, a man incapable of owning any mistakes, but whose eyes hath seen the glory, continues without a clear plan to loose the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword. And 1.48 billion muslims are watching with keen interest. Undeterred, we will continue to alienate an already hostile Iraqi population with more collateral atrocities and call it pacification. At the behest of the Almighty, we will continue to try, behind the scenes, to install the corrupt and controllable puppet Ahmed Chalabi, and dress it up as freedom and democracy. Despite the preponderance of evidence that the President lied every step of the way to get us where we are, his “truth” goes marching on. 

---- Sean Hannon

 P.S. Recently, I drew comparisons between the “Lord of the Rings” and the current battle for the presidency. At the risk of appearing to trivialize important national events, I urge everyone to take a look at Otto Preminger’s film “The Court-martial of Billy Mitchell”, starring Gary Cooper (1955). I just saw this on AMC, and I have to say that the parallels to the 9/11 Commission, with all the tremendous obstacles and hostile resistance encountered by the victims’ families (and a certain high-profile witness for counter-terrorism), is truly uncanny and mind-boggling.