CAIRO, 28 September 2004 — America is split down the middle when it comes to the re-election of George W. Bush. Passions on either side of the divide are running high with those who believe they are the true American patriots fiercely defending their beloved leader.

Those are the “them and us” guys and gals with “them” being those envious terrorist enemies of America who hate freedom, and “us” translating into the flag-waving, gas-guzzling, gun-toting, French-bashing believers in the natural supremacy of the US with all that entails for the rest of the planet.

Bush’s black-and-white rhetoric plays nicely to this group, which looks to its Texan commander-in-chief to keep America free from swarthy foreigners, Kumbaya-humming tree-huggers, death penalty opponents, the pro-choice brigade and anything with the label “Made in France”.

At its core are eschatological evangelicals, many of whom are waiting anxiously for the battle of Armageddon as a prelude to the Second Coming. In their eyes, their Creator-invoking president can do no wrong. For them it is almost blasphemy to delve deep into the years when Dubya sowed his wild oats or, heaven forbid, hold his early service record up to scrutiny. He’s their “born-again” main man.

Not for them an analysis of the jobless figures, the deliberate alienation of America’s traditional allies, and the rampant anti-Americanism on city streets from Manila to Mexico since Bush grabbed office from under the nose of the obscenely willing to capitulate Al Gore. People like Michael Moore only too willing to point that out in his documentaries and books are worse than the devil incarnate in their “see no evil around their president” alternative universe.

And who cares if Ken Lay, former CEO of Enron was once the most frequent “drop-in” visitor to the White House, the Carlyle Group, where Bush cut his teeth and his father once took a considerable cut, has made a packet out of the “war on terror” or that Cheney’s “former” company Halliburton was doled out “no-bid” Iraqi reconstruction contracts and is currently being investigated for overcharging the US taxpayer to the tune of over a billion.

The gurus of this group are not intellectuals but ideologues. Their standard bearers encompass the hawkish, pro-Israel founder members of the “Project for a New American Century”, many of which are prominent members of the administration. Or, Islamophobic preachers, such as Pat Robertson Jerry Falwell, Franklin Graham and Jerry Vines, along with influential right-wing finger-waggers like Fox’s Bill O’Reilly, who compared a university’s student introduction to a book entitled “Approaching the Qur’an: The Early Revelations” with the teaching of Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” during World War II.

Responsible for relaying the message to the faithful are writers, such as Michelle Malkin, author of “In Defense of Internment: The Case for Radical Profiling in World War II and the War on Terror”, or the unashamedly anti-Islamic syndicated columnist Ann Coulter, who commented “I think it might be a good idea to get them on some sort of hobby other than slaughtering infidels”.

Admittedly, the entire Bush camp isn’t made up of such fanatics. Indeed, the vast majority are your average Ma and Pa who have fallen hook, line and sinker for the party line.

They are the ones who truly believe their country is under terrorist siege and wake up each morning expecting a dirty bomb to go off outside their local Walmart. They are the ones who proudly wave goodbye their uniformed sons and daughters en route to the killing fields. They’ve swallowed such sound bites as “the terrorists are envious of our freedoms” without considering other possible root causes.

Many are still convinced that Iraq had WMD and Saddam Hussein was linked to Sept.11. They naively believe their soldiers are in Iraq to “help the Iraqi people attain democracy” and sincerely wonder why ordinary Iraqis aren’t handing out cookies instead of car bombs.

Not for them the joys of the Internet with its graphic photographs of Iraqi babies deformed as a result of American depleted uranium tank shells, minus limbs due to unexploded US cluster bombs, or the bloody carnage wrought by Israeli missiles lobbed at heavily populated refugee camps.

Images of Stars-and-Stripes draped coffins returning from Iraq have been kept from them, as have scenes of American “precision” strikes on “terrorists” in Fallujah when toddlers are dragged out of the rubble. Instead, they are treated to Iraq’s Interim Prime Minister in front of Congress reading out a speech devised either by Karl Rove or inspired by Norman Vincent Peale’s “The Power of Positive Thinking”.

Allawi deserved a sesame seed cracker, as he extolled the virtues of the new Iraq in his fantasy script.

Then the Mums and Dads were allowed to see the standing ovation he received but there were few wide-angle shots of the three-quarters deserted UN General Assembly where he later took his more-cash, more-troops begging bowl.

It is a pity that more Americans don’t visit the Iraqi Girl Riverbend blogspot for the reality on the ground. In August 2003 she wrote: “Now, areas are identified as ‘the one with the crater where the missile exploded’, or ‘the street with the ravaged houses’, or ‘the little house next to that one where that family was killed’”.

More than a year on, she writes of Allawi: “Yesterday’s speech was particularly embarrassing. He stood there groveling in front of the Congress — thanking them for the war, the occupation and the thousands of Iraqi lives lost.”

With this, the Iraqi blogger hits the nail on the head: “...the security situation is a joke, the press is shutting down and pulling out and our beloved exiles are painting rosy pictures for the American public — you know — so everyone who voted for Bush can sleep at night”.

So powerful is the veil of secrecy and delusion, woven by the current administration, and so emotionally toxic is Bush compared with Kerry’s blandness that another four years of the same...or worse...may sadly be on the cards.

— Linda S. Heard is a specialist writer on Middle East affairs. She welcomes feedback at [email protected]