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John McCain’s Serious Foreign PolicyJohn McCain was on a conference call with right-wing bloggers yesterday and boasted:
I think that people should understand that I will be Hamas’s worst nightmare.
What possible reason would a U.S. President have for turning himself and our country into a “nightmare” for Hamas, let alone its “worst nightmare”? Hamas is a single-issue Palestinian group, focused exclusively on its “territorial dispute” with Israel (and, in light of its victory in the U.S.-demanded election, is also now preoccupied with governing the Palestinian Authority). Is there anyone who thinks that Hamas has tried to, will try to, or ever could attack the U.S.? Hamas is an enemy of Israel, not the U.S. Is that a distinction we even recognize any more?
What exactly is the point of feeding Israel billions of dollars every year in military aid if we’re going to deem every one of its fights to be our fight, and every one of its enemies to be our Enemy? Is that actually what Americans want to do: insinuate ourselves even more into other endless, intractable religious and ethnic conflicts in the Middle East?
More disturbingly still, this chest-beating threat from McCain is merely the latest in a long line of adolescent, mindlessly belligerent war cries emanating from the Serious foreign policy candidate. In a GOP debate in May of last year, he bellowed that he would “follow [Osama bin Laden] to the gates of hell” only thereafter, according to ABC News, to then “crack[] a smile which gave the impression to some viewers that perhaps he viewed his own answer as being over the top.” But he’s since repeated that demonic formulation on numerous occasions, followed by the same creepy, self-satisfied smirk:
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And here was McCain’s sober, Serious prescription in 2006 for ending sectarian warfare in Iraq:
One of the things I would do if I were President would be to sit the Shiites and the Sunnis down and say, “Stop the bullshit.”
Add to that his merry singing of the joys of dropping bombs on the Iranian people, and it’s clear that McCain’s foreign policy approach seems even more childishly bellicose than the current occupant of the Oval Office. There’s a reason that Bill Kristol and Joe Lieberman are such ardent supporters.
Is there anyone outside of Lieberman and John Bolton who thinks that what we need are more cartoon-like imperial threats to the world about how we’re going to pummel and smash everyone if they don’t step into line? Is that mentality going to reduce complex religious and geostrategic threats or severely worsen them? McCain’s foreign policy approach actually seems to be a less restrained and less complex rendition of Bush’s “Bring-em-on” swagger that has really worked miracles in Iraq. Whatever adjectives might describe McCain’s barren, cliched tough guy decrees, Serious — or “moderate” — isn’t it.
Neil Cavuto the nice soft spoken lunaticOn the April 23 edition of Fox News' Your World, host Neil Cavuto interviewed Floyd Brown, creator of the infamous Willie Horton ad, who recently released an ad that attacks Sen. Barack Obama over a 2001 vote he cast in the Illinois Senate in opposition to H.B. 1812, which would have, among other things, made defendants eligible for the death penalty for committing a murder in furtherance of the activities of an organized gang. The ad concludes by asking about Obama, "Can a man so weak in the war on gangs be trusted in the war on terror?" During the interview, Cavuto noted the ad's question about Obama and terrorism and asked: "[Y]ou are implying, since he was presumably ineffective at dealing with some of these issues in his own home turf, how could he deal with guys meaning us harm, I guess terrorists. It's a bit of a leap, don't you think?" Brown replied: "I don't think so at all. What you have is a pattern of weakness, a pattern of a man who hasn't been able to stand up against tough situations. I mean, just this past weekend, Neil, in Chicago, we saw six people killed and over 31 injured. People were stabbed. This is, you know, like Baghdad. And he was the state senator there, and he didn't do anything to clean it up, and I think it's a legitimate issue." Cavuto gave no indication that Obama had responded to the ad, much less provide Obama's response.
Obama's campaign issued a statement in response to the ad, which said in part: "Floyd Brown and the garbage he puts on TV represent everything the American people hate about politics, and we look forward to John McCain denouncing this shameful effort to boost his candidacy using Willie Horton ads." The campaign also posted a Fact Check, which, among other things, listed legislation Obama voted for in the state senate targeting gang violence:
* HB4788 (5/13/04): According to its synopsis, the bill "[c]reates the offense of criminal street gang recruitment on school grounds. Provides that a person commits the offense when on school grounds he or she threatens the use of physical force to coerce, solicit, recruit, or induce another person to join or remain a member of a criminal street gang, or conspires to do so. Provides that criminal street gang recruitment on school grounds is a Class 4 felony."
* HB506 (5/7/03): The bill provides "that if the State presents evidence that the offense committed by the defendant was related to or in furtherance of the criminal activities of an organized gang or was motivated by the defendant's membership in or allegiance to an organized gang, and if the court determines that the evidence may be substantiated, the court shall prohibit the defendant from associating with other members of the organized gang as a condition of bail or release."
* HB2529 (5/13/03): "Amends the Illinois Streetgang Terrorism Omnibus Prevention Act," so that it "[i]ncludes in the definition of 'course or pattern of criminal activity', acts of criminal defacement of property if the defacement includes a sign or other symbol intended to identify the streetgang."
* SB400 (3/18/1999): "Permits the court, as a condition of probation, to require that the minor undergo a medical or other procedure to have a tattoo symbolizing allegiance to a street gang removed from his or her body."
* HB2287 (5/9/97): "Makes it unlawful for a peace officer or correctional officer to knowingly commit an act in furtherance of gang-related activities, except when acting in furtherance of an undercover law enforcement investigation."
When Will Young Americans Get Angry About the War?
The last major anti-war demonstration, more than a year ago in Washington, was remarkably tame. There were the obligatory celebrity appearances — Sean Penn, Susan Sarandon — but nothing occurred that might make President Bush toss in his sleep, nothing like during the darkest days of the Vietnam War, when students poured into the streets across the country demanding, “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?”
American students have an obligation to be outraged about the war in Iraq — not just disapproving of it. We need to make this administration and the remaining pro-war lawmakers start to worry.
Young people need to get involved — and soon. We must organize protests. We must write letters to the editor. Most important, we must vote for a president who will acknowledge and act upon our anti-war sentiment. We have wavered too long on the fringe of electoral irrelevance, and 2008 is the year to fix this problem.
The grim benchmark of 4,000 U.S. military deaths in Iraq came and went here without notable consternation. I asked another student recently whether he had heard about the new death toll. His reply: “Has it really been that many?”
‘War in abstractions’
I have begun to understand that we deal with this war in abstractions. We see Iraq as a distant problem, and it’s difficult to summon outrage because we have not been asked to sacrifice anything. Is it possible to summon deep-rooted anger for a war for which we were never asked to sacrifice anything? I continue to hope that it is.
It occurred to me last month, on my 18th birthday, that the soldiers dying in Iraq are my age. They are college-aged, anxiety-filled kids. Kids — members of my generation — are dying in Iraq.
Kurt Vonnegut was right, I finally realize. War is a children’s crusade.
There’s Only Toxic Waste at the End of Yucca Mtn. RainbowThe recent op-ed (by Chuck Muth, April 11) calling on Nevadans to embrace nuclear waste was a little like listening to someone talk about living on Mars with no mention of how you get there from planet Earth (Nevada should profit from Yucca gold mine, April 11).
In his piece, Chuck Muth conveniently glosses over the reasons Yucca Mountain is bound to fail both scientifically and because of its $80 billion price tag. He seeks to paint a utopia in which nearly all of Nevada’s most pressing economic needs can be met by turning our home into an epicenter for nuclear waste disposal.
Visions of nuclear power plants dotting the Nevada landscape and pipelines to the Pacific are false promises to two of our most pressing needs - clean energy and a steady water supply. And the author fails to acknowledge the myriad of dangers his plan would create, not only for Nevada and the nation, but for global efforts to limit terrorist access to dirty bombs and nuclear weapon-making materials.
The nuclear industry and others have been selling this same tale of overnight riches for decades. They peddle these claims in an attempt to chip away at intense opposition from Nevadans to the dumping of toxic radioactive waste 90 minutes from Las Vegas - our state’s largest community and most powerful economic engine. We didn’t believe it in the 1980s and ’90s and we still aren’t buying the idea that this is a new radioactive “Comstock Lode” for the 21st century.
Nevadans know a bad bet when we see one and that is the reason we remain overwhelmingly opposed to Yucca Mountain. Remember, there is no pot of gold at the end of the Yucca Mountain rainbow and no magic wand to wave over toxic radioactive waste that will simply make the dangers disappear.
The reason for Nevada’s well- founded opposition to Yucca Mountain is that the proposed repository is designed to fail. Volcanoes and earthquakes have rocked the area around Yucca Mountain in the past and there is every reason to believe these threats will strike again. At the same time, canisters placed inside the mountain will rapidly corrode, allowing radioactive waste to escape and contaminate drinking water supplies for families living near the proposed dump site.
The fact also remains that you cannot reprocess much of the waste the nuclear industry and its allies like President Bush and U.S. Senator John McCain are desperate to ship our way. Defense waste from the U.S. military and the oldest spent nuclear fuel from commercial power plants cannot be reprocessed, leaving Yucca Mountain as the only place on the books slated to store these toxic remnants.
Waste buried in Yucca Mountain will not even hit peak danger levels for 300,000 years, the prime reason a federal court struck down Bush administration radiation standards for failing to protect against deadly releases far into the future.
Appeal readers should also recognize that reprocessing waste does not eliminate the need for a repository under any scenario, leaving Nevada as a prime target today and in the future for efforts to ship waste to Yucca Mountain on a “temporary” basis only to see this fool’s gold stay forever.
Such a reprocessing scheme will, however, create dangerous new materials that could be used to build a nuclear weapon. This very real proliferation threat is why reprocessing regimes, such as the one promised by the author as our new road to riches, remain illegal under U.S. law.
Economist Fears Historic Loss of Assets for Minorities
Editor's Note: The current economic downturn could lead to the greatest loss of assets for communities of color that's ever happened, says Alan Fisher, executive director of the California Reinvestment Coalition since 1992, which advocates for the right of low-income communities and communities of color to have fair and equal access to banking and other financial services. Alan Fisher was interviewed by NAM Editor and host of UpFront, Sandip Roy.
Whether we call it a recession or not, what's the effect of what's happening in the economy on the low-income communities who are part of your coalition?
I think low-income people and people of color have been struggling for many years now. The "recovery" has not helped them. Recent reports say that income levels for families are the same dollar-wise as they were in 2000, which means they are worth much less now. Food prices are going up, gas prices are going up and we have a huge housing crisis.
How many people are impacted by the housing crisis?
The housing crisis doesn't just impact those who are in the homes that are in trouble -- who in California may be half a million households -- but it impacts all of their neighbors and their city. Their neighbors' houses lose value, as their houses lose value. The cities are losing tax base, our whole state has been relying on home sales to keep going. The state says it has an $18 billion deficit in a fiscal year that ends June 30. I think we are in a deep crisis and whatever the economists may call it, regular people are suffering and having great difficulty.
Can you give an example of how regular people are suffering and what are the first signs of recession in these communities?
I think the signs of recession are people having to cut back on the basic things that they buy, on less meat, not being able to buy clothes for their children -- but much of this has been masked because of easy access to credit cards. Many people are in huge debt on their credit cards and have substituted those, or have taken out payday loans, to try to keep going. So, it's a dangerous situation that's been masked by the wealth of the most wealthy -- corporate profits -- while the people who are our neighbors are in tremendous trouble.
But wouldn't something like a recession rip this mask off, with the way people have been relying on credit cards and payday lenders to get by?
I think, whether we call it a recession or not, that it would be something that happens as people are unable to pay their credit card bills, as people are being forced to go into bankruptcy. With the new bankruptcy laws, it's even more punitive. Yet at the same time bankruptcies are going up.
Homelessness is also on the rise. There are many people who are tenants in homes, and if those homes are foreclosed on, then, even though they pay their rent every month, they are forced out. They don't get their security deposit back, and where do they go to look for housing? Rental prices are going up, so it's a tremendous squeeze on families.
There has been so much coverage of homeowners, but we haven't seen much on what has been the impact of the economic downturn on tenants.
I think we are just beginning to hear that. It's sort of hidden because you don't see it in the same aggregated fashion. We know it's happening; we're hearing it more and more. We're hearing from homeless organizations that it's impacting folks that are becoming homeless, but there are no numbers at this point that I know of.
Are you seeing a new profile of homeless people? Are homeless organizations reporting on new kinds of people who are becoming homeless and are coming to them for help?
I think it's just starting, so I haven't heard that yet. I've heard concerns about tenants and we've tried to get state legislature to do something about tenants, but the opposition from the mortgage industry and the bankers pushed it out of the bill.
The Bush Admin's How-to Guide for Using Religious Warfare to Destroy IraqImagine if the greatest minds this country has to offer were assembled in a conference room and tasked with drawing up a post-invasion plan that would lead to sectarian bloodshed in a country like Iraq -- where different groups had long lived side-by-side, intermarried and thought of themselves first and foremost as Iraqis, rather than as Shiites and Sunnis.
Their first recommendation would probably be to create an environment in which conflict would be likely to flourish. It would be a good idea to go into the country with enough heavy weaponry and air power to defeat the national army, but too few troops to provide security on the ground after the fact. When anarchy reigns, people look inward -- to their family, neighborhood and, yes, their religious community -- and develop a distrust of members of other communities.
If some military experts -- say the Army Chief of Staff -- said that the planned force would be insufficient for providing day-to-day security, one would probably want to humiliate and undermine him publicly. Maybe announce his successor 14 months before the end of his term so that he appeared before the world as some batty lame duck without any support from his superiors.
Then, dismantle the entire government, instead of just the senior leadership, and fire all of the country's bureaucrats, police and security personnel -- even if there were a half-million of them. But don't disarm them -- those weapons will come in handy later.
It would be good to destroy the country's infrastructure, too -- people get pissed off when they lack reliable electricity, working sanitation facilities, clean running water and the like. Make sure not to get those things up and running within five years of the invasion, either. That's a challenge, especially if one wants shovel tens of billions of dollars of American tax-payers' cash into the reconstruction effort.
The best way to achieve that trick would be to create enormous umbrella contracts with dozens of projects within their scope -- far too many for any firm to complete without farming out projects to dozens of subcontractors -- and hand those out to well-connected firms -- firms with terrible track records if possible. Make those contracts "cost-plus" - guaranteeing a profit regardless of the quality of the work -- add in minimal oversight and you've created excellent incentives for graft, corruption and incompetence (this solution would likely come from an economist sitting on that prestigious panel).
While you're at it, it would probably be best to rapidly privatize the large state-run companies that guaranteed employment for a large portion of the population. Make sure to ship in tens of thousands of foreign guest workers from places like India and the Philippines, and, if possible, pass a binding law that prevented any new government from giving preference to domestic firms or firms that employ large numbers of locals in its contracting. Otherwise, with a huge influx of foreign investment coming in, it's unlikely that there'd still be an unemployment rate of between 25-50 percent five years after the invasion.
If a working group within the government -- say at the State Department -- recommended that a job program be created for the newly-unemployed -- including those heavily armed members of the former regime's security forces -- ignore it at all costs. Idle hands are, after all, the Devil's tools.
When chaos first breaks out, as it inevitably will, dismiss it with a sound-byte -- maybe just say, "democracy is messy."
Make sure to leave dozens of large weapons caches unguarded for easy looting -- they'll come in handy later.
With the stage set, now comes the tricky part. How would that group of August thinkers replace a strong national identity -- one of the strongest in the region -- with a fractured sectarianism?
It would require some sophistication -- the key task is taking a population that has had all the "ancient blood-hatreds" that one finds among American Lutherans and Methodists, and deepen that sense of sectarian identity to a very large degree.
That group of experts might come up with something like this: encourage the formation of political parties on sectarian rather than ideological lines. Discourage the formation of any nationalist parties that might draw support from all of the country's ethnic and sectarian groups. Then hold an election before establishing any neutral democratic institutions -- no credible electoral commission, no functioning judiciary. Do it while there's still chaos on the ground -- that way, it will be far too dangerous for the candidates to be listed by name and people will only be able to vote for sectarian-based "lists." What will be achieved is not an exercise in democracy, but an ethno-sectarian census. If done right, this will effectively replace the population's concrete political and economic interests with a sense that their futures are explicitly tied to their sectarian or ethnic group.
The Torture Drawings the Pentagon Doesn't Want You to SeeSami al-Haj is a journalist, but one unlike any other. For over six years since December 15, 2001 -- when he was seized by Pakistani soldiers on the Afghan border while on assignment as a cameraman for the Qatar-based broadcaster al-Jazeera -- he has been in a disturbing but unique position: a trained journalist held as an "enemy combatant" on the frontline of the Bush administration's "War on Terror," first in Afghanistan, and then in Guantánamo.
The outline of Sami's story should be familiar to readers; last summer AlterNet published a detailed article by Rachel Morris: "Prisoner 345: An Arab Journalist's Five Years in Guantánamo," which made clear how Sami was seized because of the erroneous claim that he had interviewed Osama bin Laden, and the disturbing fact that his many interrogations in Guantánamo have focused solely on the administration's attempts to turn him into an informant against al-Jazeera, to "prove" a connection between the broadcaster and Osama bin Laden that does not exist. As his lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith of the legal action charity Reprieve, noted bluntly and accurately in his book Eight O'Clock Ferry to the Windward Side: Seeking Justice in Guantánamo Bay, "Sami was a prisoner in the Bush Administration's assault on al-Jazeera."
Less well known is Sami's frontline reportage from within Guantánamo. Stafford Smith recalls that when he asked Sami for information, he "would assemble important facts on almost any topic in the prison relying on the incredible prisoner bush telegraph." These have included reports on the religious abuse -- primarily of the Qu'ran -- that preceded a series of hunger strikes and suicide attempts, and a pioneering assessment of the number of prisoners who were under 18 at the time of their capture.
Since January 7, 2007 (the fifth anniversary of his detention without trial by the US), Sami has been on a hunger strike. Although he is strapped into a restraint chair twice a day and force-fed against his will and despite the fact that he is "very thin" and "[h]is memory is disintegrating," according to Stafford Smith, Sami continues to seek ways to publicize the plight of his fellow prisoners. During the most recent visit from his lawyers in February -- with Cori Crider of Reprieve -- he produced a number of morbid, and almost hallucinatory sketches illustrating his take on conditions in Guantánamo, which he described as "Sketches of My Nightmare."
Fearing that they would be banned by the military censors, Crider asked him to describe each sketch in detail and when, as anticipated, the pictures were duly banned but the notes cleared, Reprieve asked political cartoonist Lewis Peake to create original works based on Sami's descriptions.
"The first sketch is just a skeleton in the torture chair," Sami explained. "My picture reflects my nightmares of what I must look like, with my head double-strapped down, a tube in my nose, a black mask over my mouth, strapped into the torture chair with no eyes and only giant cheekbones, my teeth jutting out -- my ribs showing in every detail, every rib, every joint. The tube goes up to a bag at the top of the drawing. On the right there is another skeleton sitting shackled to another chair. They are sitting like we do in interrogations, with hands shackled, feet shackled to the floor, just waiting. In between I draw the flag of Guantánamo -- JTF-GTMO -- but instead of the normal insignia, there is a skull and crossbones, the real symbol of what is happening here."
In recently declassified testimony, Sami described more of his recent experiences of the force-feeding process:
On the Monday before last [February 11] a white male came to do the force-feeding. They gave him only ten minutes training, then he did three of the eight men being fed that day, including me. He screwed the tube into my nose, not slowly, and not using lotion. I had flu at the time and my nostril was closed. It made it much harder. I was in the chair. I could barely talk, and my mouth was covered with the mask they put on. I was waving my hands.
"That's very painful!" I eventually said. There were tears streaming down my face. "I am meant to do this to you," the man said, harshly. "If you don't like it, don't go on strike." He would not look me in the eye. He did not look in the least bit ashamed. He never said sorry, or paused when I was in pain. I almost thought he seemed happy that he was doing it.
They used my feeding tube for another man last Monday [February 18]. This, even though they have marked the boxes for each tube. I have been getting a sore larynx, maybe from the infection of another person using my tube. I requested a spray but it was denied.
Sorry we was wrongThe Ambassador to Iraq just admitted that Iraq is not the central front in the war on terror. He just admitted that the potential for Al Qaeda to gain a beachhead in Iraq should the United States withdraw is miniscule compared to the already-established beachhead along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. He admitted that the global fight against terror is currently misdirected.
All Aboard the McCain ExpressBack when the Republican presidential race was still competitive, the insults against John McCain from leading conservative voices were so extravagant they almost constituted a new literary genre. Rush Limbaugh said McCain threatened "the American way of life as we've always known it." McCain's Senate colleague Thad Cochran said, "The thought of him as President sends a cold chill down my spine." Ann Coulter charged the most unforgivable sin of all: McCain was, in fact, "a Democrat." Coulter's employer, Fox News, seconded the smear on February 7 by printing the words "John McCain (D-AZ)" under footage of the Arizona Republican.
That day was no ordinary one in the history of McCain-hate. On that afternoon, most of these figures' preferred candidate, Mitt Romney, announced at CPAC, the big annual conservative conference in Washington, that he was dropping out of the race. McCain, now the presumptive Republican nominee, was booed. The next morning the conservative magazine Human Events sent out a weekly roundup of its top ten stories to its e-mail list. Eight were anti-McCain jeremiads. One called the McCain ascendancy "the new Axis of Evil." Michael Reagan's article "John McCain Hates Me" posited a "huge gap that separates McCain--whose contempt for his fellow humans is patently obvious--and my dad, Ronald Reagan," and concluded, "He has contempt for conservatives who he thinks can be duped into thinking he's one of them."
Michael Reagan, for one, would not be duped. He would not defile his father's sacred memory. At least for a week. Eight days later Reagan's article for Human Events argued, "Assuming that John McCain will be the Republican nominee, you can bet my father would be itching to get out on the campaign trail working to elect him even if he disagreed with him on a number of issues."
Such are the strange McCain contortions Republicans have been forcing themselves into in recent weeks. Tom DeLay used to fret that he "might have to sit this one out" if McCain won the nomination. Now he's stumping for the presumptive nominee with apparent enthusiasm. At a March 1 "Reagan Day" dinner (Republicans used to call them "Lincoln Day" dinners), Texas Senator John Cornyn likened the base's swing to McCain to the grieving process: "You come to acceptance."
What you think you know about them is likely wrong -- and that's dangerous
How much do Americans know about the views and beliefs of Muslims around the world? According to polls, not much. Perhaps not surprising, the majority of Americans (66%) admit to having at least some prejudice against Muslims; one in five say they have "a great deal" of prejudice. Almost half do not believe American Muslims are "loyal" to this country, and one in four do not want a Muslim as a neighbor.
Why should such anti-Muslim bias concern us? First, it undermines the war on terrorism: Situations are misdiagnosed, root causes are misidentified and bad prescriptions do more harm than good. Second, it makes our public diplomacy sound like double-talk. U.S. diplomats are trying to convince Muslims around the world that the United States respects them and that the war on terrorism is not out to destroy Islam. Their task is made infinitely more difficult by the frequent airing of anti-Muslim sentiment on right-wing call-in radio, which is then heard around the world on the Internet.
Finally, public ignorance weakens our democracy at election time. Instead of a well-informed citizenry choosing our representatives, we are rendered vulnerable to manipulative fear tactics. We need look no further than the political attacks on Barack Obama. Any implied connection to Islam -- attending a Muslim school in Indonesia, the middle name Hussein -- is wielded to suggest that he is unfit for the presidency and used as fuel for baseless rumors.
Anti-Muslim sentiment fuels misinformation, and is fueled by it -- misinformation that is squarely contradicted by evidence.
Starting in 2001, the research firm Gallup embarked on the largest, most comprehensive survey of its kind, spending more than six years polling a population that represented more than 90% of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims. The results showed plainly that much of the conventional wisdom about Muslims -- views touted by U.S. policymakers and pundits and accepted by voters -- is simply false.
For instance, Gallup found that 72% of Americans disagreed with this statement: "The majority of those living in Muslim countries thought men and women should have equal rights." In fact, majorities in even some of the most conservative Muslim societies directly refute this assessment: 73% of Saudis, 89% of Iranians and 94% of Indonesians say that men and women should have equal legal rights. Majorities of Muslim men and women in dozens of countries around the world also believe that a woman should have the right to work outside the home at any job for which she is qualified (88% in Indonesia, 72% in Egypt and even 78% in Saudi Arabia), and to vote without interference from family members (87% in Indonesia, 91% in Egypt, 98% in Lebanon).
Get Rich for Jesus?Researcher Sarah Posner has been following the Religious Right for several years and writes a blog called The FundamentaList for the American Prospect. Her new book, God's Profits: Faith, Fraud, and the Republican Crusade for Values Voters (PoliPointPress, 2008) examines the role advocates of the "prosperity gospel" play in the Religious Right.
Posner talked recently with Church & State about her research and the status of the Religious Right today.
Church & State: Many people think of the prosperity gospel as a movement that attempts to link Christianity to hypercapitalism and the collection of wealth. You assert these ministries play a political role as well. What role does the prosperity gospel play in the Religious Right?
Posner: When George H.W. Bush was preparing to run for president in 1988, his evangelical advisor, Doug Wead, prepared a list of 1,000 "targets" -- religious leaders of influence worth courting for the votes of their followers. The list included a lot of names you'd expect -- Robertson, Falwell, and other household names, but also included some of the most prominent prosperity gospel evangelists, notably Kenneth Copeland and Paul Crouch, the head of the Trinity Broadcasting Network. The courting of these prosperity televangelists by politicians continues today, as we have seen Mike Huckabee touting his close relationship with Copeland, and John Hagee and Rod Parsley campaigning with John McCain. In tune with the Religious Right, they take ultraconservative positions on issues like abortion, gay marriage, separation of church and state, and other social issues, and actively encourage their followers to vote.
In your new book, God's Profits, you discuss Ohio pastor Rod Parsley, who has labored to make an impact on statewide politics. Parsley's favored candidate for governor, Ken Blackwell, was soundly defeated in 2006. Does this mean Parsley has lost political influence? What are his goals, and what are the chances he could become a national figure as well-known as the late Jerry Falwell?
It's certainly Parsley's goal to be a successor to Falwell. He proudly accepted an honorary doctorate from Liberty University last year. (Parsley doesn't even have an undergraduate degree, so this was quite an honor, to say the least). He has said he sees his Center for Moral Clarity, the political arm of his church, as the successor to Falwell's Moral Majority.
Certainly many observers thought Parsley's influence was on the wane after Blackwell was trounced in the 2006 gubernatorial race. And although Blackwell's defeat could be chalked up to other factors -- particularly the raft of corruption scandals plaguing Ohio Republicans -- there was a group of prominent moderate Republicans who came out against Blackwell because of his religion-baiting.
That said, Parsley's name is still on the tips of conservative tongues as a religious kingmaker in the race for the White House, and McCain campaigned with Parsley, whom he called a "spiritual guide," in Ohio in March.
