"The Torah Offers Insights into Bush Aministrations Iraq Fear Tactics"

Think Again: Bible Class

The Torah Offers Insights into the Bush Administration’s Iraq Fear Tactics

By Eric Alterman

June 13, 2007

Tell me if this rings a bell:

“The LORD said to Moses, ‘Send some men to explore the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the Israelites.’”


Happening upon the same passage the next morning, together with the accompanying commentary, I was reminded of those in the media who supported the Bush administration’s campaign to deceive us into invading Iraq. In a 12th-century midrash, the philosopher Nachmonidies explains that the Hebrew describing the incident imply that the 10 scouts “invented a lie” concerning the land of Canaan, whereby they succeeded in bringing terror and despair into the hearts of the whole community.

Leave aside for a moment the fact that the Israelites were looking to invade Canaan just as Bush and Cheney were looking to invade Iraq. After all, Biblical literalism is the scourge of small and twisted minds like our president’s. Look instead at cause and effect. The leaders of 10 of the 12 tribes were entrusted with the fate of their people. But for reasons of fear, mendacity, and self-gain, they frightened them with lies that resulted in their near self-destruction and their loss of all positive movement for at least a generation. (There is no mention anywhere in the Bible of what took place during these 38 years.)

One moral of this parable is that God—whatever that word may mean—helps those who help themselves. In our case, we are slowly freeing ourselves from the grip of the hysteria inspired by our own equivalent of the leaders of the 10 tribes—the neoconservative war-planners and their followers in the punditocracy and mainstream media. We are just beginning to realize that our Calebs and Joshuas—who had the vision to resist the group hysteria that the administration and its allies did so much to incite during the prewar period—deserve the opportunity to lead us out of our desert of paranoia and self-contradiction and into a Promised Land of rational behavior toward other nations and our own citizens.

At least the Bible tells me so...

Eric Alterman is a Senior Fellow of the Center for American Progress. His weblog, “Altercation,” appears at Media Matters


http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2007/06/alterman_bible_class.htm