Nasir Khan, August 8, 2015
“God speaks through me. Without that, I couldn’t do my job.”
— George W. Bush, quoted in Lancaster New Era, July 16, 2004
Such was the claim of the former US President. He said this after the
US armed forces had invaded and occupied two large countries,
Afghanistan and Iraq. At that time, he was the most powerful leader of
the mighty militarist superpower as well as a ‘divinely’ elevated person
because God communicated with him. To my knowledge, in modern history
we do not find another instance when a mortal man and the immortal God
joined forces for U.S. to unleash two destructive wars! However, the
implications of his pronouncements had a direct bearing on his political
stature and his policies. Even though, he made his policies and issued
his executive orders with the help of his close neoconservative advisers
and secretaries but in doing so he was doing God’s work. God was
speaking through him; therefore, God mandated whatever he did. God had
chosen the right man to do His work!
If we accept the claims of divine guidance, for the sake of argument,
that he, in fact, made on many times, then we can point to the results
he achieved by his genocidal wars. Under his leadership, the US armed
forces invaded and occupied Afghanistan and Iraq in the most brutal way.
They killed hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis and Afghans who
had no quarrel with the people of the United States or posed any threat
to the global U.S. hegemony and power. The destruction of Iraq was
systematic. The Bush administration undertook the destruction of Iraqi
state and its infrastructure as a necessary step to imposing the
imperial diktat in the Middle East. It uprooted the social and
administrative structure of Iraq and replaced it with sectarian puppet
regimes that followed the orders of Washington and the Pentagon.
To make the imperial take-over easy and to neutralise any resistance
to the new geopolitical order in this vast and oil-rich country,
imperial masters used sectarian discord of the population as a
convenient tool. How did it matter to Bush if Sunni and Shia turned
against each other and started terrorist violence against their own
people – the people of Iraq? Religious fanatics and miscreants were free
to weaken Iraq while the occupiers could have an easy task to control
the country and its resources. Thus, the US occupation could continue
with greater ease while the country was drenched in bloodshed and mayhem
that is still going on.
Through his destructive policies in the occupied Iraq, the Bush
administration destabilised the whole region and played with the lives
of millions of Iraqis by reducing them to destitution, poverty,
homelessness and helplessness. The rampant killings in Iraq have claimed
the lives of uncountable victims. In the first 7 years of US
occupation, about 1.3 million Iraqi died. The main source of this
incredible catastrophe that engulfed Iraq in 2003 was the US invasion.
The ultimate responsibility of the present cycle of violence and
bloodshed remains with Mr Bush.
Mr Bush’s military invasion and occupation of Afghanistan resulted in
large-scale deaths of Afghans. The brutal treatment of the prisoners of
war and the innocent victims in the process of occupying Afghanistan is
a dark chapter in the history of twenty-first century. The occupying
power violated the Geneva Conventions regarding the treatment of
prisoners of war, international humanitarian conventions and all norms
of international law. All this happened because God said to Bush to do
so! In fact, this is a preposterous assertion that even Al Capone would
not have resorted to! Let us take a common sense view of his claim and
its consequences. What that means is that the former president is not
responsible for the wars and war crimes but someone else is! In legal
terms, he is implying that God is vicariously responsible for his wars
and war crimes. In this way, he absolves himself of any responsibility
for his actions and his policies as the head of US Government! A very
convenient but cheap method to deceive the world, no doubt!
There is no need for us to enter into any lengthy theological
discourse on God and his attributes. It is common knowledge that most
believers see God as a kind, merciful and loving power. For having such
attributes, believers hold Him in high respect and praise Him. It is
hard to think that the Heavenly Father, as Christians call God, could
have asked or encouraged Mr Bush to start major wars of aggression and
commit the most heinous crimes against other weaker nations in this
century. In brief, to impute such designs to God or because of
fulfilling a mission from God is a reprehensible act on the part of Mr
Bush. In the eyes of any sincere believers, he is maligning God in a
vicious way if he believes in Him as he seemingly professes to do.
Alternatively, what if he really believed in what he asserted about
God? That is something, which we can look at cursorily from a legal
point of view. In criminal law, the actions of the alleged offenders are
primarily judged for the mens rea – that is, their state of mind and
intentions when they committed some indictable offence. In some cases,
they are entitled to the defence of diminished responsibility or
diminished capacity if their mental condition was impaired in such a way
that they did not fully understand what they did. If such a defence is
successful, the accused are given mitigated sentences or sent for
medical treatment, depending on the gravity of offences involved. In an
old case of acute insanity, one person beheaded a sleeping man just to
see what he would do when woke up in the morning but didn’t find his
head!
There are many cases when people hear sounds or messages from some
unknown sources exhorting them to do something that may amount to a
criminal offence. A hallucination is a perception that is not based on
objective reality. It is very much a subjective condition of mind and in
this condition, people may see or visualise things that having nothing
to do with reality. In this age, we come across cases when some people
say they have heard God or God has given them some message. If Mr Bush
is sincere in his claims about God speaking to him, then that is
something for which only the professional psychologists can offer their
expert views.
In case a judicial miracle (which I don’t see taking place!) takes place and the world sees the former US president, G.W. Bush, being
prosecuted for his wars and the alleged war crimes in a court of law
then the question of hallucinations would certainly be an issue in any
legal process. However, facts point to a different direction: That he
acted with deliberation and premeditation in pursuing his policies and
his destructive wars.
