The Christian Taliban

While much attention has been given to the Chimperator's disastrous foreign policies, particularly the Iraq War that was sold to the American people based on deliberate, calculated lies, too little attention gets focus on the insidious damage that the Bush/Cheney regime has had domestically, especially in the area of replacing true experts with religious nut cases - those who I and others call the "Christian Taliban" - who care nothing for true science or medical knowledge. It is ironic that the USA took military action in Afghanistan to stop Islamic fundamentalist yet at the same time equally fanatical religious kooks were infiltrating the U.S. government. Israel News has a great article that itemizes the damage Bush/Cheney and their Christianist allies have done domestically. It is a shame that the U.S. mainstream media lacks the courage to expose what this corrupt, anti-knowledge regime has done to the country. I urge readers to read the entire article - it is a strong indictment against allowing one extreme religious view and politics to merge. Here are some story highlights:

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During the Taliban rule of Afghanistan the world got a good look at what happens when religious zealots gain control of a government. Television images of women being beaten, forced to wear burkas, and banned from schools and the workplace helped build strong public support for the President's decision to invade Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11. But even as President George W. Bush denounced the brutal Islamic fundamentalist regime in Kabul, he was quietly laying the foundations for his own fundamentalist regime at home. For the first time far right Christian fundamentalists had one of their own in the White House and the opportunity to begin rolling back decades of health and family planning programs they saw as un-Christian, if not downright sinful.

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Since 2001 dozens of far-right Christian fundamentalists have been quietly installed in key positions within the Department of Health and Human Services, the Federal Drug Administration and on commissions and advisory committees where they have made serious progress. Three years later this administration has established one of the most rigid sexual health agendas in the Western world.

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Information became a prime target of the Christian Taliban. President Bush says he respects "good science," when making public policy. But, the crux of the matter apparently hinges on the definition of "good," especially when it comes to family-planning issues. When good science clashes with Biblical fundamentalist beliefs in this administration, science loses every time.

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Early in 2001 Bush's Christian Taliban began scrubbing federal information sources of offending materials. The censorship campaign prompted Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA) to send a letter to o HHS Secretary Thompson demanding an explanation for the removal of information from the HHS Web site of scientific findings by the National Cancer Institute that, contrary to anti-choice propaganda, abortions do not increase the risk of breast cancer. Thompson never responded but the "cleansing" continued.

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Good science was disappearing from government publications and Web sites at such a pace that the Union of Concerned Scientists issued a report in early 2004 documenting and condemning the Bush administration. So, even as the Bush administration denounced and battled Islamic religious zealotry abroad it was and is nurturing a fundamentalist Christian version here at home, much to the delight of radical right-wing Christians.

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What is remarkable is that this was accomplished without significant public outcry. The reason is that America's Christian Taliban are more public relations savvy than their Islamic counterparts. No American women are being forced to cover up, beaten for appearing in public wearing make up, or barred from the workplace. The changes being made are more subtle and less visibly shocking. They are incremental, technical, administrative -- but far-reaching.

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We need to reconnect with a fundamental ingredient of America's strength: the separation of church and state. That wall of separation has for over two centuries spared Americans ftom the kind of religious strife witnessed in Bosnia, the Middle East, Northern Ireland and Afghanistan. Mixing religious dogma and public policy always creates an explosive compound -- and it always blows.