| Daily Times - Site Edition | Tuesday, February 25, 2003 |
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AN AMERICAN IN PAKISTAN: State of the Union, 2003
Catherine Mayo
When President Bush announced that God was telling him to bomb Iraq, my stomach turned over. He has no right to include God in his State of the Union address. It is forbidden by law; the church and state are completely separate in the United States. No politically elected person can use religion for his own ends
Watching President George Bush’s State of the Union address for 2003 made me very queasy. I tried to remember other State of the Union addresses I have watched over the years. I remembered the faces — Reagan, Ford, Clinton — but I couldn’t remember what they had said. I think they talked mostly about the US economy, and how they were going to make it better in the coming year. I don’t remember them announcing that they were speaking for God.
I think the US people have forgotten that President Bush didn’t win the election. He only got the job because they couldn’t decide what to do with pregnant chads in Florida. He was put in the White House because someone had to be there when Clinton left. He didn’t have an electoral mandate. The US was in a stagnant place, not really wanting to think about its politicians anymore. The people were very embarrassed by Clinton. They hadn’t liked any of their presidents since Reagan. There had to be a body in Air Force One, and George W Bush was good enough.
Then came the horror of September 11, 2001. It could have been a wake-up call to Americans lost in a sea of church scandals and daily reports of kidnapped children. But by September 11, 2002, Americans were still fighting with each other over the virtues of Martha Stewart and Enron. No one had noticed that the world had changed.
The Muslim world is a mystery to ordinary US citizens, especially in the state of Vermont where there are no Muslims. They think of it as a religion like one of the Christian religions. When you are an Episcopalian, you go to your church on Sunday and then keep your religious practices a secret for the rest of the week. The concept of prayers being announced over loudspeakers all over the country at various times of the day is something they cannot fathom.
So when President Bush announced that God was telling him to bomb Iraq, my stomach turned over. He has no right to include God in his State of the Union address. It is forbidden by law; the church and state are completely separate in the United States. No politically elected person can use religion for his own ends.
The government of the US has changed in the last few months, and the citizens of the country haven’t noticed yet. It has become an oligarchy. Its leaders rule with a wave of their hands, laughing into their sleeves. They can create any truth they want, and then create proof that it is real. They are accountable to no one.
I used to be proud of my heritage, the wondrous Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Somehow my forefathers had happened upon an amazing invention, that of rule by the common people. It was such a pure idea that it worked. The people who came to American knew a kind of freedom that was only imagined by humanity before July 4, 1776. An individual could decide what he wanted to do, and then through hard work he could do it.
But now my country is ruled by fear. Fear of the influence of immigrants, fear of the criminals on the streets, fear of its police force, fear of its local zoning administrators. My neighbours in Vermont hunker down in the cold winters, watching TV and arguing with the road commissioner about when the snow is going to be ploughed off Road Number 14 so they can get to work on time.
The people of the US don’t have power anymore. That’s what the Muslim world needs to understand. When President Bush says that he is God, the ordinary people go out and shovel the snow out of their driveways. There is nothing else they can do.
Cathy Mayo is an American journalist based in Pakistan