(God’s) Country First

At first glance, you have to wonder what a photo of Sarah Palin signing one of those noxious “Country First” placards is doing leading this NYT background piece on her religion? In a brilliant piece of photo editing, however, The Times provides vivid warning of the fundamentalist merger of church and state, especially the military component.

As The Times relates, Palin tells the Assembly of God Church, as regards her sons deploying to Iraq, that:

[T]hey should pray “that our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God, that’s what we have to make sure we are praying for, that there is a plan, and that plan is God’s plan.”

Beyond the fabricated excuse for going to war, and the disastrous execution of it, the merger of the American will with God’s reduces the conflict (the way the Administration grafted Hussein onto al-Qaeda) to a war of Christianity against Islam.  It’s not that Bush in his heart felt anything different, but at least with Dubya, he was only the front man for a non-theologically driven neocon agenda.

The way Palin contacts that sign and wields that Sharpie around, however, we could be one McCain heart attack away from a defense strategy fundamentally designed to send the unwashed heathens to Kingdom come.