"When Ronald Reagan's career in show business came to an end, he was hired to impersonate, first, a California governor and then an American president who would reduce taxes for his employers, the Southern and Western New Rich, much of whose money came from the defence industries. There is nothing unusual about this arrangement. All recent presidents have had their price-tags."
-Gore Vidal, Armageddon? (essay), 1987
In datzelfde hilarische en tegelijkertijd angstaanjagende essay beschrijft de Amerikaanse auteur Gore Vidal hoe president Reagan ervan overtuigd was dat Armageddon voor de deur stond. De christelijke gekte van sommige Amerikaanse presidenten is schrikbarend. Het komt voort uit het Amerikaanse puriteins messianisme met zijn expansionistische politiek gebaseerd op 'manifest destiny' oftewel 'the American idea of providential and historical chosenness'. De VS als het beloofde land voor een uitverkoren volk, door de allerhoogste 'selected for divine purposes,' aangezien 'God blessed this undertaking; a new order for the ages', zoals de Latijnse spreuk op de dollarbiljetten aangeeft. Een aanzienlijk deel van de Amerikaanse politieke elite is er diep van overtuigd dat 'through the New Israel, universal righteousness will return and the world will be regenerated. God and humankind will be reconciled at last.' Maar voordat het einde van de geschiedenis aanbreekt, zal er eerst nog een Armaggedon plaatsvinden, waarbij allen -- joden, progressieve christenen en islamieten -- die zich niet tot de juiste versie van het ware geloof hebben laten bekeren, zullen worden vernietigd. En de grote slachting begint in het Midden Oosten.
Bush's Shocking Biblical Prophecy Emerges: God Wants to "Erase" Mid-East Enemies "Before a New Age Begins"
By Clive Anderson, CounterPunch. Posted May 25, 2009.
Bush explained to French Pres. Chirac that the Biblical creatures Gog and Magog were at work in the Mid-East and must be defeated. The revelation this month in GQ Magazine that Donald Rumsfeld as Defense Secretary embellished top-secret wartime memos with quotations from the Bible prompts a question. Why did he believe he could influence President Bush by that means?
The answer may lie in an alarming story about George Bush's Christian millenarian beliefs that has yet to come to light.
In 2003 while lobbying leaders to put together the Coalition of the Willing, President Bush spoke to France's President Jacques Chirac. Bush wove a story about how the Biblical creatures Gog and Magog were at work in the Middle East and how they must be defeated.
In Genesis and Ezekiel Gog and Magog are forces of the Apocalypse who are prophesied to come out of the north and destroy Israel unless stopped. The Book of Revelation took up the Old Testament prophesy:
"And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, And shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them."
Bush believed the time had now come for that battle, telling Chirac:
"This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people's enemies before a New Age begins".
The story of the conversation emerged only because the Elyse Palace, baffled by Bush's words, sought advice from Thomas Romer, a professor of theology at the University of Lausanne. Four years later, Romer gave an account in the September 2007 issue of the university's review, Allez savoir. The article apparently went unnoticed, although it was referred to in a French newspaper.
