Not Interested in the Hereafter

By DOLPH HONICKER

If you can’t annoy someone, there’s little point in writing.

-- Kingsley Amis

Frankly, I don’t care if Hillary Clinton is a Muslim or Mitt Romney a Hindu. So what if Barrack Obama is Roman Catholic and Rudy Giuliami a Mormon. It matters not if John Edwards is a Shinto and John McCain a Buddhist.

I’m not interested in their piety or their views on the hereafter. I want to know specifically what they plan to do about the here and now.

In fact, if one of them could present a viable plan to end the Iraq War within three months after his/her inauguration, that person could announce that he/she was a devout atheist and win my vote.

For what hath religion wrought besides one Islamic tribe, the Sunnis, engaged in a bloodletting with another, the Shiites?

I offer one other example of what religion has wrought and unwrought. Ava Lowery is a 16-year-old Alabama girl who protests the Iraq War through her web site. On it she offers short films which she calls “animations.”

Created in March 2005, her web site was getting more than 80,000 hits a month by July 2005 and a high of more than 2 million hits in July 2006.

Ava is home-schooled, has family serving in Iraq, leans Democratic and has been interviewed on CNN. The New York Times and Rolling Stone have written articles about her.

When she turned 16, she organized a peace rally in the state capitol building in Montgomery, the Cradle of the Confederacy.

Her raw films are called “someones” -- a string of bloodied U.S. soldiers interspersed with those of bloodied Iraqi citizens and soldiers with stark black-and-white block captions “SOMEONE’S CHILD,” “SOMEONE’S PARENT,” “SOMEONE’S BEST FRIEND.”

Of course there are other issues my candidate would have to zero in on: global warming, health care, education, restoring our vanishing industrial base, the inequity of the tax burden, disappearing pensions, Social Security, ensuring that our veterans don’t get the Walter Reed shaft, giving unions a level playing field, mending our tattered Constitution and, yes, soaking the rich (why can’t a billionaire learn to be comfortable on half his wealth?).

But back to Ava Lowery.

Along with snapshots, her web site runs quotes from our leaders.

“I don’t know of anybody that I can think of who has contended that the Iraqis had nuclear weapons.” Dick Cheney, June 24, 2003.

“Bring ‘em on.” George W. Bush, July 2, 2003.

While Ava’s most ardent backers have been soldiers and their families, this girl, this devout Christian girl, has received death threats such as, “It’s people like you who need to {expletive deleted} die and get raped while your corpse rots in the sun.”

And:

“Are you a muslem {sic} terrorist?”

Sadly, her most vitriolic attackers proclaim to be Christians.

Before Bush decides to invade Iran, perhaps using remnants from the Mississippi Boy Scouts, he should let that country bleed a little bit. I gleaned this item from a recent issue of The Week magazine, via The Wall Street Journal:

“Iran, one of the world’s largest oil producers, had to import more than $7 billion of gasoline over the past year and may soon begin rationing gas. The country’s aging refineries cannot keep up with the demands of the booming consumer economy.

Getting back to our theme were these poll numbers from The Week:

24 percent of Americans say they would not vote for a Mormon (such as Romney) if their party nominated one for president.

30 percent say they would not vote for someone who’s been married three times (Giuliani).

42 percent wouldn’t vote for someone who is 72 years old (which McCain will be in 2008).

43 percent say they wouldn’t vote for a homosexual.

53 percent wouldn’t vote for an atheist.

There goes my vote.

Copyright 2007, Dolph Honicker