In the latest issue of Sojourners magazine, Jim Wallis asks what other “religious names” can we give to Bush’s actual implementation of his rhetoric of “freedom and liberty”:

The Bush Doctrine, Sojourners Magazine/March 2005

The Bush doctrine means new threats toward Syria, Iran, and any other regime that doesn’t toe the U.S. line. Even democratic reformers in those countries worry about becoming new victims of the U.S. mission. Ugly Saudi despots rich in oil and friendships with the Bush family likely will be exempt while the civilian populations of other repressive regimes will suffer most from U.S. military action. There has still been almost no serious media discussion of tens of thousands of civilian deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Bush foreign policy has a different religious name than just freedom. In its prosecution of pre-emptive war, the equation of God’s purposes with U.S. interests, and the neglect of global economic justice, there are other words that come to mind – such as hypocrisy, pride, and even idolatry. And many opponents of the Bush administration’s war policies, here and abroad, will frame their dissent in the name of other religious values – words such as integrity, humility, and peacemaking.

I would add the BIG one: EVIL. No other word for it, and no reason to refuse to name it. It’s EVIL. EVIL is darkness, deception, death, and greed. EVIL is separation of persons from their true potential as servants of God; that which keeps us from being a light in that darkness. People scoff whwn I use that word, but there’s no avoiding it.