] The present administration's embrace of the religious
] right also leads, by a bizarre route, to the further
] strengthening of the Israel lobby. Unbelievably,
] born-again doctrine insists that Israel must be blindly
] supported, not because it is the only semi-democracy in
] that crescent, but because it is due to host the second
] coming. Armageddon is scheduled to take place near the
] hill of Megiddo (where, in recent months; an Israeli bus
] was suicide-bombed by another kind of believer). The
] Rapture, the Tribulation, the Binding of the Antichrist:
] it isn't altogether clear how much of this rubbish Bush
] swallows (though Reagan swallowed it whole). VS Naipaul
] has described the religious impulse as the inability "to
] contemplate man as man", responsible to himself and
] uncosseted by a higher power. We may consider this a
] weakness; Bush, dangerously, considers it a strength.